What Will Happen When Only Self-Checkouts Remain?

Other than in times of war, societal changes that could possibly take a detrimental turn are never suddenly implemented. They usually occur one step at a time and in such a way that people become acclimated to a new way of life without much fuss or protest. In some cases, they may not even know it is happening.

Take the Kroger store in Cool Springs, Tennessee. As of Friday, there are no longer any checkers and no baggers. Every checkout station is self-serve only. The first question is: will grocery prices go down? Probably not. The second question is: why should anyone care? After all, according to ABC 6 in Cincinnati, the home of Kroger’s corporate office, no one is going to lose their jobs. Some people will be deployed as assistants should someone experience problems with the automated lanes. I’m not sure what will become of the others. Kroger says that the self-checkouts at that store were seeing a higher volume than those with cashiers and baggers and that there are no plans for this to become a company-wide practice. At least for now. But once the grocery giant discovers how much money it can save by eliminating checkers and baggers, the pink slips will probably start flowing.

That’s a shame. Our local grocery store is very close to my house. So close, in fact, that the employees and I are on a first-name basis. They let me know when my favorite beer is out of stock and when it will be replenished. Once when I was searching for peppers, I was grousing that the only ones left looked like they had been used to replace the bowling balls on a PBA tour. The produce manager showed me the trick of reaching up and under the shelf above to the back of the top row to find the ones that were still in good shape. And yes, I have now passed that bit of knowledge on to you. Use it well. You don’t get that kind of service out of a computer or robot. The store also employs special needs people to work as baggers. While that may not seem like a particularly big thing, it is an act of decency in a world in which indecency is all too often the norm. Where will these people go when only self-checkouts remain?

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But at the grocery and, on those occasions in which I have to go, the big box stores, I have noticed that only one or two of the regular lanes are open. People are being herded to the self-checkout lanes whether they want to use them or not. I rarely go to McDonald’s, but the last time I was there, my only option was to place my order via a kiosk. The only time I saw an employee was when someone emerged from the back to give me my food. It didn’t feel convenient at all but rather post-apocalyptic. To a certain degree, this was to be expected. The demand for higher minimum wages prompted many companies to take a closer look at automation. A robot or a kiosk may need to be serviced or rebooted now and then, but they never call in sick, unionize, or rage-quit in the middle of the lunch rush.

And so, the great atomization of society continues. We can barely communicate with one another now outside of social media. And we would rather plow through the grocery store, oblivious to one another, so we can get back to our scrolling and binge-watching. Communities will be composed of networks rather than people. Future researchers may look back and determine that one of the reasons for the fall of Western Civilization was the fact that we became so cloistered that we were easy to control.