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Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

bbc.co.uk

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

#231

Post by NullPrefix »

OskarS wrote: post #194
qmmmur wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? That people should be indentured in low paying jobs to be old people's friends?

It's a little bit... weird to think of "working in a grocery store" as indentured servitude. You know, not everyone has to be a software engineer or full-stack whatever. There's absolutely nothing wrong with working in a grocery store, it's a fine way to make a living!

No one's forcing you to be full stack dev, you could always hang out with the mole people. Errr... I mean linux sysadmins.

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

#232

Post by macspoofing »

vages wrote: post #162

There will be a market for both automated and manned grocery stores in the future. Until we have developed artificial general intelligence, I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. In stores with a reasonably wide selection of goods, I usually have to ask for the location of at least one thing. Although locating stuff _could_ be solved by looking it up with an app, I would…

>I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers

Why not? Also, it's not necessarily a computer recommending anything. The decision of which cracker to pair with which cheese was already made by human experts employed by vendor, the computer just scales the suggestion of pairing to thousands or millions of people.

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

#233

Post by tpmx »

cambaceres wrote: post #221
tpmx wrote: post #202

The BankID service seems to trip up many people here. Swedish residents have a personal identity number issued at birth or immigration. Format: YYYYMMDD-NNNN. More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed... BankID is a service run by the Swedish banks that interfaces with the banks, individuals and third parties (like this chain of unmanned stores). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID T…

> There is growing awareness that this service should not be run by private companies/banks. I don't agree. I'm a Swede too (as I assume you are), and I have basically never heard anyone complain of BankID being owned by the banks. I am really happy that our government does not own BankID, since they suck badly at developing software.

My understanding: After the recent money laundering revelations the banks have become relatively strict in accepting/keeping certain customers. I think that most of all the banks are afraid of being blacklisted/sanctioned by the US.

This leads to friction and situations where some people are essentially excluded from large parts of society.

The banks also don't seem to be all that interested in interacting with their invidual customers in the flesh.

I think the natural conclusion of this is that the issuing of electronic IDs becomes a government responsibility, decoupled from banking.

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

#234

Post by leetcrew »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #224
leetcrew wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the cheese counter staff at whole foods are usually pretty knowledgeable (more so than me anyway). but even at a lower end store, the people that work there aren't idiots. they might not be able to tell you what cheese would go well with a california syrah, but they can probably recommend a good blend for homemade mac and cheese.

You'd be surprised how useful local butchers are at big chains. They really know their stuff and have been able to sort out cuts for me, even are happy to slice up some cheap big beef cuts into stir fry, they can make special orders of sausage, etc. Same goes for the bakery, I stand by my local ACME bakery being the easiest and very tasty birthday cake around, even above mom and pop shops.

oh for sure. I'm probably gonna go to an independent butcher if I want a nice ny strip, but otherwise I'm going to the local chain and asking the butcher what cut they recommend for the recipe I'm making.

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

#235

Post by ghaff »

msh wrote: post #212
ghaff wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it depends. If I have a shopping cart full, including typically, a bunch of produce, I'll go to a cashier. If I've got a half dozen bar coded items to scan, I'll probably just do self-checkout.

Some shops have scan yourself where you scan things with your phone when putting them in your basket, even produce then have a barcode, maybe not on the item but then at a sign at their location.

I've never seen that in the US and produce isn't barcoded unless it's shrink-wrapped--which it isn't in most stores. And I'm not sure that seems any easier than a normal self-checkout in any case.

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

#236

Post by crocodiletears »

dtech wrote: post #145
random_upvoter wrote: post #104

I worked in a supermarket for a while and there was plenty of old people who came to that shop almost daily just to interact with another human being.

I would recon that isn't a problem in small rural communities, especially if the alternative they have now is no shops.

I could see this being beneficial for some communities real far out in the sticks

If major chains is all a small rural community has left, then I'd liken this to cracking open the bones of a well-pecked carcass and sucking out the marrow before discarding the corpse

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

#237

Post by dhimes »

msh wrote: post #212
ghaff wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it depends. If I have a shopping cart full, including typically, a bunch of produce, I'll go to a cashier. If I've got a half dozen bar coded items to scan, I'll probably just do self-checkout.

Some shops have scan yourself where you scan things with your phone when putting them in your basket, even produce then have a barcode, maybe not on the item but then at a sign at their location.

Mine you get a little "zapper" to scan the bar codes with. I select, scan, and bag into my cart. When I get to checkout everything is bagged, so I save that time as well.

The only "pain" is having to look up the produce and weigh it, but with a little practice I got to be pretty fast at that too.

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

#238

Post by crocodiletears »

random_upvoter wrote: post #104

I worked in a supermarket for a while and there was plenty of old people who came to that shop almost daily just to interact with another human being.

There's an interchangeable, overpriced, soulless gas-station chain on nearly every street corner in my town. When I fill up my tank at any one of them, I'm forced to listen to the sound of 9+ pumps puke out celebrity-gossip, advertainment pieces, and PSAs telling me about the coronavirus. You can't mute them anymore. Inside, the shelves are lined with nearly identical selections of overpriced merchandise.

I could be anywhere in the midwest.

I still have have a preference for the station I use, because the staff and I at a couple of the stations recognize each other, and have developed rapports over the course of many 30s smalltalk sessions. It's superficial, but it helps build social trust. We exchange small favors. I forgot my wallet one day, and the guy behind the registered covered for me and told me to pay him back when I could. I've told off a belligerent customer or two in ways they couldn't without being fired. We've discussed the local jobs market, and at points turned each other on to different employment opportunities.

I'd pay higher prices if I knew it got them more money (and got rid of those damn telescreens).

Nevertheless, I wouldn't pay for that kind of interaction directly if I could. I have a couple groups of regular friends. If I wanted social interaction alone, I'd get with them.

It's not really about the interaction itself, it's about having some semblence of place and community in a world that's too big, too standardize, too indifferent, and too increasingly automated to think about you as anything other than an instrumentalizeable commodity, or a function to be optimized.

Every technological step forward like this puts us under increasing surveillance, dedifferentiates the spaces in-which we live, and obviates the labor of large segments of our society while reducing the power of all but a select few.

Hyperbolically, I feel like we're all just a few years from being stuffed in padded rooms with an ad-supported games console and permanently affixed morphine drips to optimize mortality, health, and quality of life metrics.

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

#239

Post by qmmmur »

rootsudo wrote: post #143
qmmmur wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? That people should be indentured in low paying jobs to be old people's friends?

People aren't indentured to work in Sweden. They don't have to work and have choice of where to work. It's also nice, to talk to people, instead of talking down to them.

I have done plenty of jobs that are shit pay in the same tier of manual labour (stockist, hospitality) and have never met anyone in that field who didn't want to do somethinge else if possible.

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

#240

Post by winthrowe »

the-dude wrote: post #177
Ygg2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean theft? Isn't shrinkage just term for employee theft?

I do mean theft. I am not a native speaker and thought shrinkage applied to both.

My understanding is shrinkage typically refers to the sum total of all product received but unsellable, whether from theft, spoilage, or or breakage.
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