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The Doorman's Fallacy in action

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Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#281

Post by michaelmrose »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #176
michaelmrose wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home Depot self checkouts are large touch screens with a nice wireless gun. It doesn't even check weight. It is one of the least shitty SCO experiences unless you have a bunch of bolts and shit in which case why are you even in self checkout when they always have at least one physical register open? I don't understand why people do this.

Agree. Home Depot ones are quite effective. The only sand in the gears, is that, if I use my business card, it always asks me for a job number. It's possible that this is something that contractors appreciate, but they have separate, manned, lanes for them. The ones that truly suck (in my area) are the CVS ones. They have a glass jaw, and it's quite easy to make a mistake that requires the exasperated attendant to co…

Designing things that people like to use is a mechanical skill that has little to do with liking others but much to do with understanding others

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#282

Post by michaelmrose »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #173
michaelmrose wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually not possible to close the transaction before finalizing the items to be added to it. Generally as far as tap is concerned the pinpad won't go into the mode where it can collect money until the cashier totals it. It is actually possible depending on the software to go back to a prior screen after the pinpad has registered a tap and make a change and depending on timing have the original tap still go thro…

No, it's often quite possible to scan the watch while the transaction is still open (depends on the store; not all of them support that). The payment method is still open, and is closed by the cashier. Yeah, it's "trusting" the store, but it has never resulted in unwanted charges. I do it for the person in line behind me. I can afford it, if there was to be an issue, and the service desk is about ten feet away. In Ja…

It's an edge case most hardware doesn't expose the ability to start charging you until the cashier totals it.

The only exception is that with some hardware/software is that within a narrow window it may be possible to go back and make a change after putting the pinpad in payment mode.

Remember the pinpad is a second computer not a peripheral.

I have never in decades of paying for things ever seen a checkout where you can tap right away.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#283

Post by darth_avocado »

mhb wrote: post #274
darth_avocado wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congratulations. You've identified different business models. So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how? > If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices It is true. https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-pric…

> So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how? It's a problem because the business models are providing alternatives of what their customers value. You're arguing that because Costco, one of, if not the most successful retailers in the world, can do it why can't all stores? I can assure…

At some point you’re just picking items and responding to them. This is taking the discussion away from your core argument. You talk about Costco but conveniently leave out in-n-out because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

My core argument has been that corporations offload tasks onto customers and then use the money saved to boost their own profits.

Your argument is that the cost saved is passed on to the customers.

I’ve provided examples of why that doesn’t happen, and provided examples of companies that don’t sacrifice customer experience while maintaining lower prices to show that the rest of them are not doing the same.

I am yet to see any substantial evidence from your end to prove that savings are indeed getting passed on to customers. And unless that’s something you want to discuss, we should end it here.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#284

Post by nkrisc »

SoftTalker wrote: post #255
nkrisc wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d rather live in a place where waitstaff are comfortably compensated for their labor. Automating it will just lead to one kind of misery after another. Where does it end? Why do we want to go there? We can choose not to.

That sounds nice but falls apart when customers have to actually pay for it. The most workable solution we've found is for employers to compete for employees, and employees to work for a wage that's acceptable to them. If you pay more than that, a competitor who pays less will take all your business.

But that’s not really what happens either because the employees are fundamentally at a disadvantage and don’t have perfect information.

Employers will generally take whomever will accept the least, and when bills are coming due, employees will take any job for some wage, not the best wage.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#285

Post by inglor_cz »

consp wrote: post #149
superfrank wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hadn't heard of it, but I feel like it's kind of a corollary of the whole, "what's measured is managed" idea or maybe the Streetlight effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect ). It's easy to measure a doorman's cost, but hard to measure their impact. Few, if any, guest are likely to mention the impact of a doorman on their stay except in the exceptional case. That means when budgets start to g…

Isn't the hard data the loss of the hotel a few years down the road due to being noncompetitive due to declining customers caused by the penny pinching?

How do you map the exact reason, though. A hotel could have gone down years down the road due to Covid, some war that influenced existing clientele, general drop of tourism, change in weather patterns that made summer less attractive, competition from AirBnb, being bought by someone totally inept, spread of remote work instead of business trips, aging population that does not like to travel anymore, or combination of all those factors etc.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#286

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

michaelmrose wrote: post #282
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's often quite possible to scan the watch while the transaction is still open (depends on the store; not all of them support that). The payment method is still open, and is closed by the cashier. Yeah, it's "trusting" the store, but it has never resulted in unwanted charges. I do it for the person in line behind me. I can afford it, if there was to be an issue, and the service desk is about ten feet away. In Ja…

It's an edge case most hardware doesn't expose the ability to start charging you until the cashier totals it. The only exception is that with some hardware/software is that within a narrow window it may be possible to go back and make a change after putting the pinpad in payment mode. Remember the pinpad is a second computer not a peripheral. I have never in decades of paying for things ever seen a checkout where you…

I suspect that you may be in Europe.

The US has systems that make it easy to take the money away.

Giving it back...'nother story...

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#287

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

michaelmrose wrote: post #281
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Home Depot ones are quite effective. The only sand in the gears, is that, if I use my business card, it always asks me for a job number. It's possible that this is something that contractors appreciate, but they have separate, manned, lanes for them. The ones that truly suck (in my area) are the CVS ones. They have a glass jaw, and it's quite easy to make a mistake that requires the exasperated attendant to co…

Designing things that people like to use is a mechanical skill that has little to do with liking others but much to do with understanding others

I'm not so sure about that.

It really depends on what we are designing, and who we are designing for.

> little to do with liking others

Sounds pretty bleak. I've come to understand what a profound disadvantage misanthropy is.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#288

Post by aaron695 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #60

I’d not heard of this fallacy* but it makes perfect sense. Well executed human greeting is such a killer asset if you get it right. There’s a few million years of genetic programming inside us all that responds unreasonably positively to hospitality. If someone enters my home and is not drinking their desired beverage in under four minutes, I have brought shame on me and my family! I think we are all programmed to re…

[dead]

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#289

Post by mhb »

darth_avocado wrote: post #283
mhb wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how? It's a problem because the business models are providing alternatives of what their customers value. You're arguing that because Costco, one of, if not the most successful retailers in the world, can do it why can't all stores? I can assure…

At some point you’re just picking items and responding to them. This is taking the discussion away from your core argument. You talk about Costco but conveniently leave out in-n-out because it doesn’t fit your narrative. My core argument has been that corporations offload tasks onto customers and then use the money saved to boost their own profits. Your argument is that the cost saved is passed on to the customers. I…

You're the one who started talking about specific examples and I agree that that's irrelevant since different companies decide how to allocate the money they save by reducing labor costs. Which is actually a refutation of your general assertion that labor cost savings don't constrain prices.

Your argument is based on the conspiratorial belief that "corporations" are a monolith conspiring to allocate the savings from self checkout. You have not explained why each of them is not incentivized to use that savings to reduce costs to take more business from their competitors. Is your answer that the businesses are all colluding? You have also not explained why they are constrained at all in the amount they can raise prices. The drip theory makes no sense. This is all basic economics.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#290

Post by _jackdk_ »

gblargg wrote: post #163
_jackdk_ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to get paid to scan groceries. I have no intention of doing it for the same companies for free.

So you spend more time checking out and more time being idle waiting for it.

Not in my experience, because the self-checkouts have to be designed for untrusted users instead of trusted employees. So I spend more time reacting to "please scan item" -> "place item in bagging area" -> "unexpected item in bagging area" -> wait for employee to notice that my checkout needs an override.

Whereas a manned checkout lane gives me a proper belt to put my items on and someone who can usually operate a terminal fairly quickly.

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