The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a report this year that cashiers were the second-largest occupation, with 3.5 million employed in the U.S.
And Amazon invented a way to make them obsolete. That’s what we should be talking about instead of all the trivialities we hear all day long. The two largest occupations in North America are going out of existence. Now what?
Wasn’t self checkout supposed to make cashiers obsolete as well?
What happens when the app or the wi-fi malfunctions as it must?
Also this thread:
https://twitter.com/tressiemcphd/status/806121219380678656
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The twitter thread is EXACTLY the kind of escapist, self-righteous avoidance strategy I’m talking about. There is a technological revolution under way that is transforming the very nature of work but you can’t get people to notice because they will turn everything into a “let’s all feel sorry for ME” fest.
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Maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees but a business model of “for when you want to leave the house but don’t want to talk to anyone at all, no really” (no store employees are featured in this Amazon ad) appeals to less people than Amazon thinks. That’s who this is for. Schlepping my person to the store, putting stuff in a bag or cart, putting in my car/walking home, unloading the groceries isn’t significantly faster with the subtraction of a well managed checkout. (The Walmart/Sam’s Club chain is bad, mainly because the technology doesn’t work and they understaff their cashiers) If I want to avoid people, isn’t that what those delivery and mail services are for?
I end up going to at least three different stores to get all of my staple groceries. I just don’t see this kind of store replacing two of these stores.
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Everybody also preferred to go to the nice mom-and-pop store at the corner to get groceries / books / stationery / haberdashery / boxes / stamps, etc and not have to drive to an impersonal ugly Walmart for everything. Did that save the mom-and-pop stores from disappearing?
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” Did that save the mom-and-pop stores from disappearing?”
Exactly. You don’t have to outcompete another busines to destroy it, just take away the thin profit margins they work on.
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And customer preferences are not a decisive factor. It’s not even an important factor. I could illustrate it with a story about the diaper revolt that’s going on right now but I don’t want to bore people. Short version: diaper companies changed the product dramatically, parents are very unhappy, companies don’t give a toss.
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No. However the stores I go to carry groceries/food items that chain stores do not or are just superior in price and/or quality. If that changes, well then those stores are in trouble. For example I go to a small “farmer’s market” because the vegetables are of better quality and are cheaper than the local grocery chains. There are things I buy at the ethnic grocery that are just cheaper (or not absurdly priced) that they just don’t carry. But that might be because of how I eat. (Seriously, the produce section in a lot of these chain groceries is subpar and expensive.) But everyone else that buys stuff that can be found everywhere might like it.
Another thing is that this is not being billed as cheaper for the consumer, just more convenient and I suspect Amazon will charge accordingly. People go to big ugly Walmart (when they have other choices) and put up with inconvenience & impersonality because it’s cheaper. That’s it. I suppose Amazon think the extra security and app troubleshooters they’d have to hire will cost less than the cashiers they’d otherwise have? Grocery businesses have a very thin margin (like 1%) as it is. So I have to question: why did they do this for groceries, first? Retail has much higher margins.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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