Interesting human editorial piece mentioning OPMR's U-Scan.
Sat Sep 09 04:06:24 2000
(COMTEX) B: Next on the endangered species list: supermarket cashiers
B: Next on the endangered species list: supermarket cashiers
Not gas stations, where you swipe your card, pump your petrol and fly, but
service stations, where you'd roll up to the pump, your arrival announced by the
urgent ding! ding! of a bell. The sound would summon some guy with a rag in his
back pocket. He'd pump your gas, check your fluids, clean the windshield.
Took a few minutes, I guess, but you didn't mind. Things, of course, have
changed.
Like bank tellers and telephone operators, the gas station guy has largely been
usurped. And guess what? The humble cashier may be next to go.
Call it an educated hunch from a guy who saw the future the other day while
shopping in a Maryland supermarket. When it came time to pay, I found myself
with two options. I could stand in line and let a cashier tally the total, or I
could use the store's new U-Scan device, where you pay for your purchases
without ever dealing with another human being.
Intrigued, I chose the latter. Touched the buttons on the screen. Followed
instructions from the computerized female voice. Ran the bar codes under the
reader until it beeped. Swiped my plastic (the machine also accepts cash),
bagged my groceries and split.
My 15-year-old was impressed. Cool, he said.
That seems to be the consensus. Barry Scher, a spokesperson for Giant Food, a
mid-Atlantic grocery chain based in Landover, Md., says the device is being
tested in two of his 176 stores.
``It's very popular,'' he says. ``Customers like it. We`ve found that most
techie types go to it immediately. People who are doubtful, including me,
approach with cautious optimism. After they do it, they say to themselves, `Hey,
that was easy.' ``
Giant is so pleased that it plans to install the system in all new and remodeled
stores. According to the manufacturer, Optimal Robotics in Montreal,
approximately 650 stores in over three-dozen states are using U-Scan.
So how long before cashiers become an endangered species? How long before
there's no more, ``Will that be paper or plastic?'' ``Do you have any coupons?''
or the ever popular, ``Boy, looks like somebody's having a cookout!''
Scher doesn't think that day is coming. ``I heard the same argument when we
first had computer-assisted scanning in 1975. We said at the time and we say
today, that the system makes us more efficient. If we're more efficient, we make
more money, which enables us to open more stores, which means MORE jobs.''
Maybe so. But even at that, one thing is indisputable: Human interaction just
took another hit. These days, it sometimes seems you can do all of your errands
and never have to talk to another person.
Given that other persons are frequently a pain in the gluteus, I'm sure some of
us rather like that idea.
I'm kind of sobered by it, myself.
We talk a lot about the loss of community, how people are pulling away from one
another, about social isolation and the end of any sense of belonging to
something larger than yourself. Well, it's a loss, an isolation, that has come
upon us just like this _ in increments of technological innovation that remove
human encounters from the equation. Like ordering concert tickets on a keypad.
Receiving e-mail from a person sitting two desks away. Or buying groceries from
a machine.
More and more, we slide through each day untouching and untouched.
OK, you can't argue with convenience. Can't argue with doing more, faster. Can't
argue with saving time.
But I think you have to argue with, or at least ask questions of, anything that
removes another human interaction from your day. Frankly, we don't have that
many left to spare.
Or as one woman told another as they were leaving the store ahead of me:
``I guess now if you don't like the way your groceries are bagged, you have no
one to blame but yourself.''
ABOUT THE WRITER
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him
at the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33121 or by e-mail at
leonardpitts(AT)mindspring.com, or by calling toll-free at 1-800-457-3881.
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