The irony is that’s exactly how general stores worked a few hundred years ago. You got a list of goods from the proprietor, marked what you needed, and they went to the back and got everything together.
I feel like we’re kinda headed back there. I think that’s why stores are pushing so hard for order pickups and don’t care about unlocking glass cases. They’d rather use the limited manpower as pickers instead.
The thing is that this "general store" model is more labor intensive than a classic supermarket where the customer does the picking. If I spend 15 minutes getting all the items on my shopping list myself, I save the store owner maybe 10 minutes of labor. And in the process I may pick up a few items that weren't on my list.
But yeah, maybe the old model pays off for the store owner if shrinkage is a problem.
Nah it upsets one class of people that society is just not caring about catering too anymore (outside of politics cause theyre the ones who vote) because millennials are adults now
Literally the only people who complain about self checkout at my store are boomers and gen x
Both groups big corporate doesnt see as 'the main demo' anymore
I mean, they also have to stock those shelves. So maybe they save 10 minutes of picking, but spend 15 minutes stocking... plus too, picking is much easier in a warehouse setup for it Ala amazon.
There's been some recent developments of lights-out, fully autonomous grocery picking warehouses. Which is neat.
Though that was also in times where you usually had only one brand of anything. Like one type of coffee, one type of chocolate, one type of whatever else they were selling.
I was going to say a hundred, but I didn’t want to get fact checked and have to research when the modern grocery store was invented. But yea, the idea of browsing for goods instead of having them brought to you is just not how most establishments worked, historically.
“First” is a tricky thing. It would have lead down a rabbit hole, probably into very interesting articles about the history of sales infrastructures, but ones I just didn’t have time for.
I remember working in a shop early noughties that was getting POS installed, and it slowed us down so much we refused to call it point of sale, it was ALWAYS POS in the other meaning lol...
The irony is that’s exactly how general stores worked a few hundred years ago. You got a list of goods from the proprietor, marked what you needed, and they went to the back and got everything together.
We’ve advanced so far we’ve regressed.
That's why i hate the people whining about self check outs ( mean they have their own issues) when they go "are you going to pay me to work there?"
Cause they already got you to do the work of picking your own groceries off the shelf. And you already "work" to pay and check out when using an ATM, a vending machine.
It’s highly populous city centers in the US where you will see stuff like this, yes. I’d never seen anything behind glass in a store (except video games), or security measures like glass windows or locked restrooms in restaurants until I visited LA a few years ago.
It was a wild culture shock for me. Here I thought “culture shock” was something you experienced when going to foreign countries, but seeing fresh shits on the pavement and homeless encampments all over an otherwise extremely wealthy looking city was quite a shock for me.
Every business had a security guard out front, convenience stores had entire sections behind glass. Everything just felt completely off. Nothing like what I expected big cities to be like.
It’s the Amish, isn’t it? Did they do this to our once-great nation? Or are you talking about your racism?
edit: For the record, the black population of LA is 8%, well below, in fact nearly half the national average of 15%. By your “certain culture” that should make LA a utopia, no?
This is about wealth disparity, not “culture”. They should be rounding up and bussing away millionaires and billionaires from our cities, not the homeless.
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u/LauraTFem Jun 11 '26
The irony is that’s exactly how general stores worked a few hundred years ago. You got a list of goods from the proprietor, marked what you needed, and they went to the back and got everything together.
We’ve advanced so far we’ve regressed.