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Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

bbc.co.uk

121–130 of 428 posts

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency. Chat and shop. It’s a twofer. And if you like interaction but not having to get to close, it’s great.

But it's not efficient, is it? These people could be doing something more productive with their time than staffing a checkout in order to make small talk.

I have heard from employees at supermarkets that shrinkage with self checkout is elevated to the point it does not really matter.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're excluded, simple as that. We're rapidly approching the point where you're: a) Expected to have, engage with and be active on a smartphone b) Be accessible via the mobile network (have an active phone number that can get SMS) c) Be "always online", frequently checking the bank in 'real time' to verify transactions, account balance etc d) Have battery life on your device. It's no good if you have just 5% an…

Just want to point out that the same people who say "sorry if you don't have a phone you can't shop" are probably the same who claim requiring ID to vote is "voter disenfranchisement" and that disabled people should have special exceptions made for them. The claim "sorry you don't have a smart phone you can't buy food / clothes" has implications for people (children, the elderly, the disabled, the poor). Just replace…

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Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#123

I used to work at a major multi-billion dollar retailer. One of the biggest complaints from customers was waiting at the check out line, especially for small, quick orders. This is the future of grocery stores, like it or not. Employees are expensive and make mistakes, whereas machines are cheap, don't take breaks, and work pretty reliably once you set them up correctly.

machines implement stupid broken ux patterns which make shopping hell. on edit: evidently people would like their supermarket checkout experience to be as pleasing as the typical online shopping experience, thus a quick downvote.

I agree. I've found self-checkout (of the variety common in US supermarkets) to be no faster than employee-run checkout for normal grocery loads. It may be faster for a handful of items, but once the shopper has many items, particularly a lot of produce, the lookup mechanism (picture matching, usually) for he produce slows the whole thing to stand-still. Add in manual ID verification for alcohol and drug purchases and it slows even more. Add in problems with coupons, payment, or other errors, it slows more. And then most of them have some sort of scale on the bagging end which never works well - bulk items, too many items to fit on the shelf, etc.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#124

I used to work at a major multi-billion dollar retailer. One of the biggest complaints from customers was waiting at the check out line, especially for small, quick orders. This is the future of grocery stores, like it or not. Employees are expensive and make mistakes, whereas machines are cheap, don't take breaks, and work pretty reliably once you set them up correctly.

machines implement stupid broken ux patterns which make shopping hell. on edit: evidently people would like their supermarket checkout experience to be as pleasing as the typical online shopping experience, thus a quick downvote.

I think the average online shopping experience is, at least for me, far preferable to the average supermarket experience with queues and so on.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#125
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. They have your ID and banking information when you enter. You open the doors using the company's app, which works in conjunction with BankID, a secure national identification app operated by Sweden's banks.

Of course they have a way to identify you and prevent you from signing up again under another name. How else are they going to block you? But just because they have your BankID it doesn't mean that they have your account balance or other banking data, if that's what you're referring to.

Stealing is still a crime, so there is no need to have direct access to your account. At the very least you would owe the store for what you stole, just like if you're late on an electricity bill. You essentially can't escape that without emigrating.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#126

I believe Sweden has pretty good policing, and the Swedes are just about as honest as you could ever expect a nation to be, but if this was in "rural" Denmark and someone decided to raid the store, there would be very little stopping them. Police is in many cases at least 30 minutes away, if not more, and have no resources to investigate the theft of 10L of milk. In many cases the staff is a store is just as much pre…

I'm not sure that'd be a solid strategy. You have to scan your ID to get into the store. So just to raid for a 10L of milk, you'd have to then break and enter, not just steal the milk. The store is probably riddled with cameras and, with the low population density, there's not a great chance you can get away with breaking and entering, much less stealing.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#127

So this is basically run on a trust basis, right? And if you steal, you will eventually get caught on video and be blocked from entering the store? I can imagine this working well in small villages. You'll get a few thieves and vandals, but eventually you can weed them out. Pretty genius.

Do you not have road-side produce honesty stands where you live? It's no different to that.

No, this is different, because they can block you.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#128
post #2

Ok but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.

There is an offline version of BankID if you insist. At least last time I checked.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#129
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Expected to have, engage with and be active on a smartphone And not just any smartphone: a smartphone controlled by Apple or Google. Further cementing their influence over society.

Would it have been any better if Nokia and Blackberry had dominated the market?

It would have been, at least to some degree, better if Nokia, Blackberry, Apple, and Google had dominated the market instead of Apple and Google.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#130
post #2

Ok but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.

Thankfully the Swedes are not as luddites as the Germans and adopt more easily solutions that make their lives easier In fact I wouldn't be surprised if these stores were cashless, in several Scandinavian countries shop attendants handling change manually are already on their way out

> Thankfully the Swedes are not as luddites as the Germans and adopt more easily solutions that make their lives easier

Germans are not luddites, they are careful with privacy. They have more than one reason to be careful with it [0, 1]. There's a tradeoff between "personal convenience" and "civil liberties" like privacy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennkarte

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

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