There Are No Girls on the Internet - Why We’re Fighting About Self Checkout – Best of TANGOTI

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Bridget and Mike had conflicting and surprisingly strong feelings about self checkout machines. And it turns out, listeners do, too! We got more emails about this seemingly low stakes topic than any other. Why did this touch a nerve?! We don’t know but there’s something there, and we’re here for it. We read some listener emails, which make great points for and against. Are these machines dystopian symbols of our crumbling social connectedness? Or are they convenient devices for buying groceries, and maybe the real dystopian symbols were the capitalist overlords we met along the way? You be the judge! Self-Checkouts Often Inaccessible to Disabled Shoppers:  https://foodinstitute.com/focus/self-checkout-often-inaccessible-to-disabled-shoppers/ LA Times report on self checkouts and loneliness (paywalled): https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-08-28/some-skip-self-checkout-to-combat-loneliness-build-human-connection TikTok Lawyer explains why you should avoid using self-checkouts in stores: https://scoop.upworthy.com/lawyer-explains-why-you-should-avoid-using-self-checkouts-in-stores-576190-576190-576190-576190 Washington Post piece: Dear grocery store owners: I don’t work for you! https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/rick-reilly-self-checkout-rebellion/ Walmart reveals it's tracking checkout theft with AI-powered cameras in 1,000 stores: https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-tracks-theft-with-computer-vision-1000-stores-2019-6 Feeling lonely? Too many of us are. Here’s what our supermarkets can do to help: https://theconversation.com/feeling-lonely-too-many-of-us-are-heres-what-our-supermarkets-can-do-to-help-211126 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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storylines ahead of the big tournament here in the USA. Listen to the 1021 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so it's the holiday season, and that means we're all spending more time in stores than we'd probably like to be spending. And inevitably, that means coming face to face with self-checkout. Now, I hate self-checkout, but producer Mike kind of likes it. So today, we're visiting a conversation that we had about our very different feelings

on scanning our own groceries and what self-checkout says about convenience, control, and who is really doing the work. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Okay, so Mike, as you know, in our last news roundup, you and I got a little bit heated about our respective thoughts on so self-checkout kiosks in retail stores.

I was surprised. I thought, certainly everybody hates these things as much as I do. I was surprised to find that was not the case. You had a different position. So my position was that those self-checkout kiosks in Target, Walmart, grocery stores, whatever, they generally need to involve a human to work properly. I don't think they're that much more efficient or that much more fast. And I also didn't think the old system of just human cashiers was that bad,

although I have come to sort of update that position since hearing the feedback that listeners have. So that is my position. When I sat down to do that episode, I was surprised to find that you have a completely different position, would you like to articulate it? Sure. It's not completely different because your first point that the machines require a human to operate them, we agree on that. I think everyone agrees that a human still needs to be involved, even if it's a self-checkout. However, we disagree that I think that those self-checkout machines or some sort of self-checkout system have a place in polite society and that they are not

inherently bad. They are not destroying, you know, the fabric of what makes us who we are. They are just a useful tool that can help us check out with our items. So that is something that I want to get into today because that episode was just, you know, one story of a larger news roundup with other stories. And so I wanted to revisit the issue and highlight a few of the angles that we didn't have time to get into. And also hear from some of you listeners on your thoughts on self-checkouts versus human checkouts. The thing that you just said about whether or not self-checkout is sort of tearing at the fabric of who we are as people, for whatever reason, I realized after doing some deep thought

that I carry that as like a worldview. And it's a worldview that I carried completely unchallenged until doing this episode. Do you know what I mean? I just automatically assumed, well, certainly this is a sign of society and decay. and doing this episode was the first time that I really had to step back and challenge why that was an automatic assumption on my part. Yeah, I agree.

I also brought a lot of unchallenged assumptions to this conversation, and I really appreciate the listeners who wrote in because some of them had some really, like, thoughtful, insightful things to say that I hadn't thought about it. I think you hadn't thought about. And what are the other interesting things about this story?

Like you said, it was just one story of a news roundup, like kind of a throwaway. But like, it turned out that you and I, both had pretty strong opinions about it. And listeners did as well. And I think this might be the segment that has received like the most listener feedback of anything that we've ever done on this show. So it's launching it in 2020, which is surprising because it's such a, I don't know, I don't want to say a non-issue, but like, you know, at the presidential debate stage, they're not talking about self-checkout machines, you know. Maybe they should be.

maybe they should maybe they'd win some votes but maybe it's a dangerous issue i don't know but it's not like life or death right there's something sort of mundane about it but for some reason we all have a lot to say about it i guess i've been thinking about why that is you know is it the universal universality of it like every person can relate to everybody buys groceries the question of which line do i get in is just one of a thousand tiny decisions that we have to make every day that is like sort of exhausting and like sort of low stakes, but also like choosing wrong could mean the difference of like 10 minutes of standing in line, which is like the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person when they're standing in line. So there's a lot here. I felt so strongly about this issue that

I was willing to pull on my boots and go out into the snow at 6 p.m. just to prove you wrong about my self-checkout feelings. And yeah, I completely agree with you this is we've never gotten this level of passionate feedback from folks of all the episodes that we've done. So let's get into some of these issues that we didn't have time for in that episode. So one big issue that I definitely want to start with is the fact that I didn't know this. Self-checkout aisles are not generally very accessible. I read a story about a woman who was visually impaired and she was trying to use the self-checkout, couldn't see the screen well enough to check out, asked for help from the clerk,

and the clerk ended up just moving her to the human checkout line instead. And so it set up the system where shoppers with disabilities basically could not use this system at all, which became a lawsuit. The National Federation of the Blind sued Walmart, arguing that the company had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by excluding blind people from using the service in the way that it was intended independently and privately. So a federal judge in Maryland did end up ruling in Walmart's favor. Walmart maintained that its self-checkout system is accessible because staff are trained to help. But if disabled customers have to ask for assistance, not only will the transaction likely take longer, they also lose the option to keep their purchases private. Privacy is a reason why someone might use self-checkout over a human checkout. So this benefit of self-checkout being able to keep whatever you're buying private is just not being offered to all shoppers equally.

This I found so interesting. So the Food Institute spoke to Nikki Shaw, who is the U.S. operations manager at Storm Interface, a company that creates assistive technology products at Taco Bell and McDonald's. And Nikki said, having the option to checkout independently is unfortunately not available to all customers because of inaccessible point of sale, which is like the machines that do the checking out. By denying some customers this option, what message is this retailer sending to those customers? I think that's such a good point. Like, it just sounds like accessibility issues can be a big thing with self-checkout if not everybody can use them equally, which it sounds like is what's going on. Yeah, that is a good point. We're

thinking about it. And, you know, I have to wonder if the companies who make these devices and systems were being more mindful of accessibility, would that lead to devices that work better for everyone, right? That's often something that is seen in, I know at least like software design, that when you really focus on making things accessible for a particular population that has specific needs, the benefits are much broader than those people. and you end up with a nicer, better functioning system for everyone. Absolutely. And also people with disabilities should be able to use them.

It's interesting to think about what that might look like. Yeah, but I really agree with Nikki Shaw that our retailers saying that only certain shoppers get the benefit of privacy at self-checkout. And I think that's a fair question to ask. They probably wouldn't say that because they would be admitting that they're violating the American with Disabilities Act, but it's a fair question to ask. Some shoppers get the ability to use self-checkout to privately check out, and others just don't. Is that what you're saying? So we talked in that episode about how self-checkout might increased theft. However, we really didn't get into kind of my biggest concern around theft.

Like, retailer theft is not an issue that I feel deeply strong about. It doesn't, like, move me. However, when I was talking about theft, I don't think we got into it. One of the things I wanted to talk about is the potential risk to shoppers being accused of theft from using self-checkout, even if they didn't actually steal anything or just, like, mis-scanned or forgot to scan something legitimately by mistake, right? So the reason why I want to bring this up, I'll say this, take this with a massive grain of salt because I did see it on TikTok and, like, I wasn't able to, you know, confirm everything this TikToker said.

However, I did see this TikTok from Carrie Jeregan, who is a criminal defense attorney, and a TikTok personality who warned that she doesn't think that anybody should use self-checkout because it is very easy to be accused of retail theft, even if you just made a mistake or didn't steal anything at all. Basically, she says that because people who are intentionally stealing from self-checkout are really good at it. Like, they've really sharp, like, honed their tactics, and I guess it's difficult to catch at this point.

Because of that, retailers have no sympathy for anybody who makes just a common mistake with their self-checkout. retailers are essentially focusing on people who maybe forgot to scan that big thing of coax that you put under the shopping card or whatever, or people who legitimately didn't steal anything and then blaming those people for inventory loss. So this attorney says that retailers will later check their inventory, and if they come up short, they will go after people who made a legit transaction of that item. She says, so they will begin watching hours and hours of video to see the last person who checked out with the Mario Lego set, because they're two Mario Lego sets short.

And for some reason, they pinpoint that they think you did it. And because of who these big box stores are, they usually have to present very little evidence to get an affidavit for warrant signed. The charges that could land you up to a year in jail get filed, and then you are fighting for your life trying to determine what day you were at Walmart and what all you bought.

I know that, like, I immediately crumple my receipt up and put it in my pocket of my winter code and then, like, hang it up in storage forever. So if somebody ever, it was like, can you provide a receipt for what you bought at Walmart two months ago? The answer would be absolutely not. I would not be able to provide any proof of that transaction. Yeah, definitely not. I would think they were joking if they asked me.

Right. And so that TikTok was probably the first time that I ever started thinking deeply about self-checkout and sort of like what it means. I don't have any data on this, but it wouldn't be a massive surprise. to me to find that that kind of enforcement was not being equally applied. I would have no trouble believing that some people are being looked at a little bit harder when it comes to that kind of thing. I also should say, you know, in case folks don't know, like, when you do checkout with self-checkout, like you are being video recorded the entire time.

So, you know, they definitely can pull back video footage. And I'm sure it probably wouldn't be hard for a Target or a Walmart to be like, oh, we think this person might have stolen something and then provide video. evidence that doesn't really show anything to get that warrant signed. Yeah, I mean, I definitely assume when I'm in Target that I'm being like videotaped all the time, especially at self-checkout. I would be so shocked if they were to contact me like weeks or months after leaving. That seems so surprising.

I'm curious how often that happens. So I was to, you know, I just saw this one TikTok from a lawyer. I did confirm she is a lawyer, but, you know, I was like, is this really happening? So a deep Google search did bring up a few posts of people on legal message boards claiming that they were cues of stealing from using self-checkout when they hadn't actually stole and that they ended up needing to deal with lawyers' fees and like it took lots of time for them to sort it out. So it does kind of seem like this might be an issue that's happening.

And ultimately, this kind of gets at one of my biggest beefs with self-checkout. The implication that me as the shopper should be the one who is tasked with its responsibility, in making sure that everything is scanned correctly and like I'm paying the amount I'm supposed to pay. Like I know that people like to shit on retail employees, but I have been a retail employee. It is important work. Those jobs exist for a reason. And so like, I don't know that we should be so quick to just outsource those jobs to the very same people that we like can't even trust to put their shopping carts away consistently when they go grocery shopping. And just trust that this, that the populace is going to be able to do this correctly.

Like I'm not trained in it. I might be distracted. I'm not going in thinking, you know, listening carefully to these beeps and what actually gets beeped and put in the bag, that is a, that is something that if I do incorrectly, I could wind up with legal fees and court costs or whatever. That does not sound like a great setup to me. Yeah, it doesn't. But, you know, again, I am curious how many cases there are like this where someone legitimately

made some sort of mistake or error. where they thought they had paid for a thing, but they didn't pay for it, and then they end up, like, getting charged with theft. Maybe it is happening a lot. I don't know. But I guess a lot of this debate, again, circles back in the most low stakes way possible

to, like, what kind of society do we want to live in? And it doesn't seem completely far-fetched to me that, like, adult shoppers should understand that you have to pay for the things that you want to take out of the store and operate this machine in a way that makes that how it goes down, right?

Like it's, yeah, maybe I haven't like had a training in this software, but like at the giant, I've used those self-checkouts like hundreds, if not thousands of times. And like any other piece of software, yeah, it takes a little bit of like experience to try to figure out how to work it. But, you know,

it's achievable. I don't want this to devolve into another argument. I know, I know. I'm holding back. Every statement is an opportunity to get into it. Well, so I agree with you on the surface, right? That like, yeah, people, you shouldn't just go into Target

and expect to just walk out with stuff that you haven't paid for all. Or like, do I really, am I really crying? Like, Target has plenty of money. Am I really like crying tears for Target? Whatever. Right. It's not like we're talking about that CVS and Columbia Heights.

That's right. The CD is where everything's free. Yeah, just take what you want. Everything's free. But, like, I just think that efficiently checking out, you do have to bring a level of awareness that I don't always have when I go into a target because I'm not thinking of going into work. And so, like, if you're not, if I, I often when I shop, I'm listening to music or podcast in my headphones, I'm not necessarily listening for the beep, beep, beep of every item. it is conceivable that you could put something in your bag and not hear the beep. If you're like a new parent who hasn't had any sleep and you're distracted and your phone's going off and the kid is crying, like, I don't know that this is a widespread thing, but I do think there are scenarios where perhaps that is a burden that a consumer who is not at work should not have to shoulder when they go in to like pick up some items at Target.

particularly if that burden could wind up with you having legitimate legal trouble over it. Yeah, these are two separate issues, both worthy of debate and discussion. You know, is it ethical to ask shoppers to scan their own items? And separately, should people be prosecuted when they make legit mistakes? Seems like clearly the answer to that second question is no. Oh, yeah, a thousand percent. So do you remember Andy Rooney? All the time every day.

I miss him so much. So for people who don't know who Andy Rooney is, God rest his soul. Andy Rooney used to be on 60 Minutes. He had a segment, which that was literally just him, like, complaining for 20 minutes. Like, I will never forget a segment

where he just walks around a grocery store and, like, picks up fruits that he doesn't like and is like, ah, canalops. Who needs them? And meanwhile, I'm, like, riveted. I'm like, oh, this is great TV. But there is a piece in the Washington Post that could have been written by the spirit of Andy Rooney.

It is like one of those style pieces called Dear Grocery Store Owners, I don't work for you. The whole thing is snarky as hell, but this is the thing I wanted to sort of tease out. The piece reads, Dear grocery store owners, have you seen me in the break room? No. There's a reason. I don't work for you. I don't want to work for you. I was bad at it as a middle schooler and I'm worse now.

And then it goes on to say, a lot of stores position a receipt checker to see whether people actually paid for all the stuff they have. Wait a second. You set up this system. You made us do all of this. So now that we've slogged our way through our temp job with zero training, you're going to audit us. And I think that that kind of gets at something where nobody asked your average consumer

whether or not this was a dynamic they wanted to do. I guess you have the choice when you get into the self-checkout line or the human line. Although at our target, oftentimes if you go in there late at night, there is no human option. It's just self-checkout. You and I both know this to be true, no? I don't know what's going on with the human cashier lines at that target. They are a checkout option of last resort for me.

So you're like, I would never, rarely am I dealing with the human line at that specific target? Unless something has gone wrong. Absolutely. But that thing that happens after you do self-checkout at some big box retailers, where then you have to show them your receipt and they have to check to see and maybe they have to put a little marker thing on it, that has been a source of consternation for the public for a while. You've probably seen videos of people like refusing to show their receipt.

Apparently, from what I have read, you know, I'm no lawyer. This is not legal advice. But you don't actually have to stop and have that interaction with the person who is like, can I see your receipt? I think that the fact that that is a moment of frustration for so many people, I think gets at what this Washington Post piece is talking about, that people feel like, well, you asked me to scan out my stuff and now you don't even trust me to do it. Like either you trust me or you don't.

This is one spot where you and I see eye to eye. because I hate that. You know, I've, A, I hate people like stopping me and, you know, having this interaction with a security person who is acting like a cop even though they're not. I hate that. And then they want me to, like, take all my stuff out of my bag. I take a lot of care when I pack my bags. And when I'm, like, done with the checkout and carrying my fully packed bags, I'm, like, ready to carry them home. I'm not ready to imprompt to take all the contents out

and show them to some security goon to check me. So I agree with you there. I don't understand why they can't be doing that checking with all of the cameras that they've got showing me from like five different angles while I'm checking out. Like if they don't see me stealing something when I'm actually doing it,

why just do like these random checks down the line? Don't like it. So let's talk about that because retail chains are investing a lot of money on like very serious, kind of creepy surveillance technology. And so it does seem to wit that if you have all of this technology to then be like, and then you have to go through this little indignity of showing me your receipt and opening your bag on top of it. It does seem a little much. So Walmart uses what internally they call the missed scan detection,

which they say helps detect when an item lands in a shopping bag without being scanned. And so they're basically these AI powered visual scanners and cameras. that are at both the self-checkout register and the registers run by the store cashiers. There was at least at some point use of facial recognition technology in Walmart. In 2022, Walmart faced a lawsuit that was seeking class action status,

alleging that Walmart violated Illinois' Biometric Privacy Act by improperly using cameras and advanced video surveillance systems, as well as software and databases provided by the facial recognition company Clearview AI. So Walmart's spokesperson says that they were just testing out facial recognition technology that they weren't actually like rolling it out

in the stores. But it does sound like all parties agree that this facial recognition technology was being used. We've already done so many episodes on why that technology is janky, faulty, racist, sexist, like, it just don't work, really, is what it is. And so if that's the technology that you're kind of counting on or flirting with to deter theft, it really presents a whole host of issues because it's really just not really reliable. Yeah, facial recognition, as we talked about on a bunch of episodes, is like bad news reinforces a lot of bad disparities. Certainly in this context, when it's, you know,

one step away from somebody being charged with a crime. Yeah, and, you know, the point that it's a lot of money invested in these systems, yeah, can't argue with that. And that's sort of one of my, questions slash theories is that it just said this sounds like a lot of investment in surveillance technology. And I feel like if this is the level of surveillance technology that you need to make self-checkout work, then there is a problem. Like, and I can't. So first of all, logistically, I cannot imagine that the costs of investing in that kind of technology apparatus is not being

passed down to the consumer in some way. I don't have any inside knowledge of that. I just, I have to assume that's the case. You know how. it's now becoming clear how much retailers lied about retail theft and how much it was hurting their stores. And I think that they did that to justify really cracking down on surveillance, really making the shopping experience worse for consumers and being like, well, it's not our fault. It's crime. I wonder if there's some aspect of that going on here. Like, part of me wonders if, for whatever reason, Walmart really wants to be investing in this kind of surveillance technology and they're using self-checkout as a way to justify that.

It's like, oh, well, we have self-checkout now, that increases theft, ergo, we have to have this very involved surveillance technology in all of our stores. I just wonder because it's such a huge investment in very serious surveillance technology that I don't know how it makes sense to have it otherwise. Yeah, that's a really interesting thought. We were doing some research for this follow-up. episode here. One of the things I came across was somebody who had worked in software building a bunch of this type of surveillance stuff that grocery stores, big box retailers

could use to have like scanners and AI trackers following people around in the store to try to reduce theft. And they made the exact same point. This was a person who had built those technologies who said that all of them didn't work, were janky, and were extremely expensive and not justified by the cost. According to them, it was not even close. So the idea that the reason retailers are pushing for this stuff is to justify increased surveillance. We see examples all the time of people in positions of power making decisions that cost them money just so they can like maintain control right like just last week we were talking about annawintour shuttering pitchfork even though it was profitable because there was like rumblings of unionization right like killing a powerful well-liked brand just to like maintain that control and so spending a bunch of money on surveillance equipment even though it doesn't pay back in money the owner gets to like feel that level of control let's take a quick break another podcast for from some SNL late-night comedy guy,

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And like part of that for me was the assumption that self-checkouts are making us lonelier or like has something to do with the fraying threads of society and humanity. That was an assumption that I made not basically. on any kind of facts or research or reading that I had done about it, it just to me stood to reason that if we are in a loneliness epidemic, especially for older folks, which the search in general released a report about this, the threat of social isolation recently, and like it is a damning report, if that is happening, then certainly the rise of technology like self-checkouts is making it worse. So is that actually the case? Well, you tell me. I read this report in the Los Angeles

Times that suggests the U.S. is in the middle of this loneliness and isolation epidemic. and that self-checkouts are actually worse in the situation. The Times report talks about the value of warm, low-stakes relationships like that between a shopper and a cashier, especially for older people. They spoke to University of Michigan psychology professor Tony Antonushi, who said that these kinds of connections are a critical tool for maintaining emotional well-being later in life as social circles shrink. So some supermarkets have actually taken intentional steps to use the shopping experience at their

store to combat loneliness through chatty lines. Jumbo, a grocery store chain in the Netherlands, has Kutzkasa or the chatty checkout line for shoppers who are not in a hurry and actually want to have a conversation with the clerk. Jumbo's chief commercial officer explained to the conversation saying, many people, especially the elderly, sometimes feel lonely. As a family business and supermarket chain, we're the heart of society. Our shops are an important meeting place for many people and we want to play a role in identifying and reducing loneliness. So the first of one of these lanes was so successful that the family-owned company started rolling out these chatty slow checkout lanes in 200 of its stores. Not only were customers really responding positively to it,

but this situation also apparently appealed to the employees. They are trained to recognize signs of loneliness and come up with local initiatives to combat social isolation. The lanes weren't just big with older folks, but all shoppers of all ages seemed to really get a kick out of them. So this is nice and it sounds like it's working and it sounds like it's a needed thing and I really like hats off to jumbo for starting with initiatives. But I just don't know if a retail cashier should be should be shouldering the burden of staving off what sounds like a real crisis of loneliness for people. In this Surgeon General's report on loneliness that I mentioned, the Surgeon General lays out this like six point plan for combating loneliness. And it's things like

investing more in volunteer organizations or religious groups or policies around public transit or education or physical spaces like parks and green spaces and libraries. So like more robust public infrastructure. Yes, I love public infrastructure. However, here in the U.S., I don't think that like a polite, chatty clerk can really take the place of meaningful investment in these kinds of social goods. Like I almost be like, I like what they're doing with these chatty lanes and it does seem like it's helping, so I don't want to make it seem like I'm poo-pooing that. But I think that it's a lot to ask of a retail cashier who is like their job is to ring you up and be polite. I don't know that we should be should be should be shouldering those folks with this burden of easing something

that clearly is related to a fraying social goods infrastructure. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this. One of them is that that jumbo chain sounds really cool. I would love to go check out one of their chatty lines next time I'm in the Netherlands, whenever that might happen. I'm definitely going to do it. It sounds like a really nice thing that that grocery store chain has chosen to do for its community. That feels like the sort of,

I don't know, Jimmy Dean movie feel-good capitalism story that if only the world were more like that, things would be a lot better. Maybe it is like that in the Netherlands. I don't know, but it's not like that here in the U.S., right? Like, I think there are a lot of differences.

For one thing, those cashiers in the Netherlands, they have subsidized health care, they have just a bunch of other social safety net things. They probably have a much higher salary, I have to assume, than their counterparts here in the U.S. I was looking into what cashiers make in the U.S. And, like, you know, I used to work hourly wage jobs, but it's been a while.

And people are making $10 an hour, right? Like, that's just like not a lot of money. expect those people to shoulder this burden like you were talking about of chatting with strangers and making elderly folks feel connected. Those are really virtuous things to do, but for somebody who's working like three jobs, 60 hours a week to like scrape by, that feels like it's really asking a lot. And that context of what is the experience like for that employee, that cashier, I feel gets left out of a lot of these arguments that we saw about like, oh, self-checkouts are making us all isolated.

We should have more like friendly chit-chats with the cashier who's checking us out. You know, I've definitely had experiences in my life where I had like a nice, warm connection with a cashier who is checking me out. But just as often, I've had the experience of like, wow, this person is really tired and they're not giving me the time of day and I'm not going to take it personally, but I'm also not getting a lot of warm fuzzies out of this interaction.

I'm just going to get my things and get out of here. Well, that's another thing is that I have definitely, with my own eyes, witnessed retail clerks, take the time to really connect with people who are shopping in a way that I'm, like, amazed by. And so I don't want to make it seem like there are no retail cashiers who are doing that

because I know that there are. My mom is a big shopper, and I know that a lot of times that shopping is being done out of the place of wanting a warm connection, and so she's clearly getting a warm connection, and that's what she's going in for, so it's really not about the item that she's buying. But, like you said,

if you're a retail cashier, you probably have your own struggles with loneliness. And so, like, are we just, like, passing down this burden from cashier to cashier to cashier to cashier to cashier? And, you know, if we really, as a country, cared about this loneliness epidemic, which it seems like we're saying that we do because the surgeon general put out a report on it.

It's clear what we should be putting our investment and energy toward, right? Public good and social good stuff like parks and libraries and community centers and all of that. Like it just feels like under capitalism, it is like, well, we should have parks and libraries for older folks. Best we can do is an underpaid barista who is nice to them.

Like that's all we got to offer. And it's just so sad. Like it doesn't have to be. to be that way, but that's how it is, that's how it feels to me. Yeah, an underpaid barista and half a million dollars in surveillance technology. Right. Well, that help? Yeah, like, what if we invested in the barista? And this also bumps up around this, like, popping online discourse around chatting and retail employees. I'm chatty by nature. I have a podcast, so, like, I love to chat somebody up. And if you, if we're having a face-to-face, I'm asking how your day was, I want some

details. When we were in Berlin that time, they are less chatty people. And I asked that barista how his day was going. What a mistake. He looked at me like I had just insulted his mom. God. Yeah, they really value efficiency over there and I loved it. I felt like by the end of the trip, I finally had it down where I could like perfectly execute telling the barista my order, receiving it, paying and leaving in the most efficient way possible. And in that moment, I felt like a small piece of pride, I guess, for like making it work in the German retail context. So it does sound like, you know, we're talking about how chatting with the retail clerk is good for folks who are experiencing social isolation. But it does sound like not everybody wants to have the chat with retail clerks.

recently writer Bailey Heard, who also worked as a server, tweeted, Sorry if this is rude or whatever, but I really hate people who refuse to endure even the tiniest bits of small talk. Can't tell you how many times I've walked up to a table and said, how are you doing today? Only to be met with complete silence and a blank stare. And that's, I mean, like, it kind of gets into a thing of like, people are just trying to do their job.

And certainly, you know, you get from corporate or whatever, like, oh, you're meant to be chatting in this way or chatting in that way. I used to work for a, when I was in college, I worked for a clothing retailer. I don't want to say which one because I, I mean, I was very young, but I quit in a very unprofessional way. But when they, for whatever reason, they gave us this guidance that when you were letting somebody into a dressing room to try on a bra or underwear or a camisole, like some sort of

intimate item, they wanted you to share a secret with them. And so that was like the guidance that we got. And so you were, you were meant to be like, oh, like an example they gave was, oh, you're, you're trying on this bra. I love that bra. I'm wearing it right now. Like that would be the kind of like secret they wanted you to share. What?

This is wild. Share a secret. I always wondered if somebody was like, oh, let me, you want to need a fitting room? Yeah, here you go. You know, I once hit a guy while I was driving and I just kept going. I didn't even stop.

I don't even enjoy your items. So what I'm saying is like retail clerks and people who are working in the service industry They're like often given guidance from corporate to like be chatting in a specific way. I don't know. I do feel like we have this situation where people are complaining about this. And these people are just trying to do their jobs, I guess is what I'm saying. Like at Trader Joe's, which as far as I know, Trader Joe's does not do self-checkout. Like none of the Trader Joe's has had self-checkout.

I was thinking about them. I think Trader Joe is like the anti-self checkout. Yes. And they actually, it sounds like maybe they want their cashiers to be like a little more chatty you than other places. I saw this TikTok that I hated where somebody was bemoaning the fact that to shop at Trader Joe's, they feel like they have to do emotional labor of chatting with the cashier to buy their groceries. But here's the thing. If you are someone who is shopping, you're not the one doing emotional labor in that situation. The person who is required by corporate or their boss to be polite

and chatty with you, even if they don't feel like it to ring you up, that is the person doing emotional labor, not you, you're not doing that. All of us to say, I think that the question of what we get and what we lose through the chatiness and politeness of a retail person is a whole separate thing. When technology comes into the conversation, it was easy for me to assume, like, automatically when you're doing self-checkout, you're losing this human connection, and that's bad. But from doing this research, I do think that is a little more complex than that. Yeah, it is. Should we get into the listener? Feedback? Let's do it.

All right. Well, I'll just start reading then. So this one came from... Hey, Bridget here. Just an FYI that this listener wanted to be anonymous, so we are bleeping that listener's name. In case you're wondering why there are bleeps, that's why. Hi, Mike and Bridget. Wow, this issue just evoke strong feelings. I've never felt the desire to comment on something before. But self-checkouts is what brings me to comment.

I'd be curious to see if other small things like this get more comments. I like self-checkouts mostly because I get to do my own bagging. Cashiers and baggers aren't paid enough to make sure my bread doesn't get squished. My favorite method is what Meijer does, that's a brand in the Midwest, the store. They have a phone app where I can scan and bag as I grab things. Then I just zip through the payment. It would be even better if I could pay through the app, but alas, they probably won't do that because of shoplifting. Disclaimer, I think shoplifting is a consequence of poverty and don't blame shoplifters.

Do what you got to do. I'm a stickler for data interpretation, so I have some thoughts about the stats from the last episode. 67% of people have experienced the failure at self-checkouts. What is the percentage failure for human checkouts? Also, 67% represents the percentage of people who have experienced an event. What's the failure rate per transaction? Given that a majority of people like self-checkouts, I would posit that failure rate per transaction is low. Speculation.

I think the part that fails the most is the weight sensor that is making sure you bag items. The stores that I shop at don't use the sensor, and it's much more smooth. I don't know why they care. You've already scanned the item, so you can't steal it. That's such a good point. It is a good point. Yeah, right. You've already scanned it.

You can't steal it. So as a data practitioner, are you a data scientist or a data practitioner? Because this is like, I know Mike asked somebody who works with data. You probably were like, great questions. Thank you for seeing the data like I do, which is precisely. Yeah, that's right. I mean, is, you know, quite reasonably focused on, like, What is the denominator here?

What's the failure rate per transaction? I think I made, you know, a similar point last time that 67% of people said they've experienced a failure with self-checkout. I've experienced a failure with, like, everything, my computer, my phone, my car, my relationship, my cat. Like, everything fails at some point or another, right? But I'm not going to throw it out. You are absolutely correct. It is the little things that I think people feel the most strongly and passionately about. So if folks are listening, if you're like,

oh, here's another little tech thing that we should talk about in society that we all deal with and what are your thoughts on it? That would be a great segment. So if folks have those, please write in, I want to hear them. Who knew that these little things

would be such a sticking point for folks? Yeah. It's also satisfying to talk about because I do have strong feelings, but I don't have like identity connected to it. So it feels possible to talk about them and like hear new perspectives and change my mind in a way that doesn't,

it doesn't always feel that way about some other issues where there's disagreement. So, B.C. concludes, it's the small things, isn't it? It sure is. Okay, so the next email is from Phil Jones. Hi, Bridget, I've got a lot to say on this subject, but first and foremost, you're right, fuck those machines. For whatever added context this might provide,

I live in Gattano, Quebec, on the border with Ottawa, Ontario, the nation's capital. My general stance is that those machines are worse for everyone, as you stated. Then we got four bulleted items here. Number one, it slows the customer down is they now have to operate the checkout, a specialized job people have long been hired and trained for. There are quarks to the machine that only a seasoned operator knows how to maneuver around. There are special items that need to be dealt with differently than standard barcode items. It's a mess. Number two, it takes away a job from cashiers who now stand around and monitor a bank of machines that took their job.

The cashier was promoted to managing a row of insulting facsimiles of their former role. Number three. It removes a bagger job entirely, as that's now on the customer. Number four, it makes scamming the store that much easier, so it's worse for loss prevention. The classic steak for the price of bananas scam. Ultimately, the machines continue to degrade interpersonal connections and community. We might see the same cashiers every week at our local grocery store or pharmacy, and whether we like them or not, recognize that we're part of the same world.

and need to get along to meet our own needs. These machines put yet another barrier between us and our fellow humans. So let's take a break there because Phil has laid out a lot for us. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite.

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Let's get right back into it. First of all, Phil, keep emailing me because you can write an email the way that this was so eloquently laid out and like bulleted, this is the kind of email that I really appreciate. Please keep emailing me. Phil's email kind of gets at that tension that I feel, right? That it does feel like, for whatever reason,

self-checkout is indicative of some kind of a fraying of a social fabric that, you know, like one of the concepts I was reading about when I was preparing for this episode is this concept of a frictionless society that it's automatically better if you're not having to deal with the friction that sometimes comes with navigating another human, that you order your groceries online and do curbside pickup, you order Uber Eats and they leave it at your door. You don't even have to like talk to them. And questioning the assumption that this is actually a better, more cohesive society because the point of being in a society is navigating other humans. And sometimes we don't like it, but like that society, I think that Phil's email really,

really gets at the tension that I feel around that of like, well, is this better? Is a society where I'm dealing with humans and navigating the intricacies of that daily. Is that automatically a better society or a more efficient society? Yeah, I think Phil definitely has a very dystopian view of the impact of these machines. Like we're all deep in the sub-basement of Metropolis, glumly scanning our items. They are good questions. And it's, if nothing else, this is useful for us to like step back and think about, like, what does it mean to be connected to familiar strangers?

in our community and forced transactions in the checkout lane with the cashier, what is the value of those? Like, maybe they're both good and bad? So that was Phil's dystopian take on why those machines should be fucked. However, Phil goes on to list a few scenarios where he does use the machines. Another three points. Number one at Shoppers Drugmark slash Pharma pricks, think CVS. Depending on the location, there's usually one actual cashier in a bank of machines.

If I'm only ever buying a couple of things, it is more discreet for the more personal purchases. And the one I frequent the most, there is usually like uncannily often an elderly person buying multiple six packs of Pepsi bottles. There's the Quebec context for you. I didn't know they drank a lot of Pepsi in Quebec. It's just faster to use the machines. Second bulleted item from Phil. At Costco, I'm basically only ever buying a handful of things that are cheaper and used at scale. I live with my partner, no kids.

We don't need most things in bulk. Waiting in a 10-person long line with overflowing jumbo-sized carts is entirely unnecessary. At Costco, the machines are basically the express line. It's overseen by as many as four people for six machines. There are at least a dozen cashier lines with both a cashier and a bagger. no jobs are being lost here. This is possibly the ideal situation for the machines. So I don't have a Costco membership.

I would die of happiness to have one. Phil is just confirming my widely held belief that Costco is my version of heaven, and I want to go there. Yeah. And I think this also reemphasizes the connection between how the workers are treated and the customer experience that people get to have when they go to this store, right? We talked about that Dutch store where because it's in the Netherlands, there is a social safety net.

They're providing a really good experience for the customers. And the management is not trying to nickel and dime every minute and action of the employees' time. Instead, they're allowing the employees to like, and not just allowing, but encouraging and facilitating the employees that spend some time like caring for the customers. Costco is another company that, treats its workers pretty well. And then at the other end of the spectrum, we have like Dollar General, which is notorious for treating its workers about as bad as you can legally treat a person.

And they were just like all in for the self-checkout where they would have, you know, one or two people in the store, managing the entire store, all aspects of the operations from like managing to stocking the shelves, to receiving deliveries, to mopping the floors, to fixing the self-checkout machines when they invariably like need to be cleared. these things are super related. Yeah, I do think there is definitely some connection between how the, like, I mean, it's just decisions being made at the corporate level trickling down to the experience that us, both as humans who are shopping and humans who are checking people out are having.

Yeah, like, what is valued? Phil goes on, I've experienced failure at any and all stores I've used the machines at. Grocery stores are particularly bad because of the complex set of items. I think the machines are optimal at five or fewer barcoded items. Beyond that, a trained human is far more efficient. Checking out a grocery store is a two-person operation. That's why there are baggers, at suburban stores at least. I find they're mercifully absent in urban stores.

I prefer to bag my own groceries, but I can only do that efficiently because someone else is handling the entirely separate process of scanning items and handling exceptions. The cashier and I are a team. I used to work in the retail tech space, again, this is Phil, as part of an internal communication SaaS company. When researching, integrating advanced retail hardware, I found a trove of dystopian tracking devices from camera setups to heat map where customers stop in a store

for optimizing product positioning to tracking Mac addresses of people on the street for pinpoint advertising to shelves with pressure sensors to present video advertisements. Shit that's not even worth implementing or having developed in the first place as the cost is so much higher than the return. Automated checkout machines are the one ubiquitous piece

that made it to the mainstream. The most frictionless version of these is indeed the most dystopian, the Amazon Go model where you're individually tracked throughout the store and are charged for all the items once you leave the store. Easy but nightmarishly removed from human interaction and giving over so much personal data to Amazon. No thanks. Sorry for the long email. Thanks for the awesome show. Cheers, Phil. That is terrifying.

And I think that the cost of some of this technology, it must be. astronomical and I can't imagine it's worth it. And so I, it just feels to me like it is investing in surveillance tech per surveillance tech's sake. Yeah, so thanks Phil for writing in because that was a pretty insightful email with some like specialized knowledge. Let me go on. This one comes from Susan. Bridget, I think you're going to like this. Bridget, Mike, I dislike self-checkout immensely and only use it a force to. For example, if the line for a person is really long and I only have one item that is maybe once every year or two. My goal is to never use it. I think it's impersonal, frustrating, and job stealing. When I lived in Boston, the stop and shop near me had these wands

you could take with you as you shopped and bag your groceries in your cart. You just had to pay on the way out. I didn't mind those and the technology seemed more reliable than the typical self-checkout. You paid a cashier, but you didn't have to put your groceries on a belt. Occasionally, they would randomly flag you for a spot check of your items, I guess to prevent theft. After they scanned a few items you were on your way. I actually liked that system way better than self-checkout. Susan goes on to thank us for the episode about Claudine Gay. She brings up some really good points about that, that it's not a coincidence that all of the Ivy League college presidents called to testify before Congress were women. It's not a coincidence that two of the three women

are now gone from their leadership roles. It's not a coincidence that the prime target for the far rights campaign was a highly qualified black woman. There are so many mediocre white men holding positions of leadership that are never targeted. Yeah. So thanks, Susan, for the nice email. Well, thanks for listening, Susan. And I do like this email. It kind of, I like it because it affirms my worldview, surprisingly, you know.

Yeah. And it's interesting that, you know, Susan is clear that she dislikes them, the self-checkout immensely. But then goes on to describe this other less oppressive system of checking oneself out that was less objectionable, right? So it's, I do have to wonder how much of this people's visceral reaction against self-checkout is just the sort of jankiness of the machines and the frustration of standing there while it's like furiously beeping at you and telling you that you've done something wrong, that like maddening, frustrating feeling. I think I have a

special sensitivity to machines beeping at me. Part of me, wonders if my feelings on self-checkout are because I am the befuddled person who can't figure it out and the machine is beeping and everybody's looking and I'm like having an issue. Yeah, but it's just software right? And it's

one can master it. I'll get there one day. Okay, here's our final email from Emily. Emily brought up some really good points. I've been working as a cashier at a grocery store since 2020 and have been on the front lines the self-checkout debate, mostly from customers complaining to me, a person with no power over

the addition of self-checkout machines at our store, about how hated they are and that they're taking my job. While I can certainly see where they concern about my job security comes from, at least in my personal experience, the inclusion of self-checkout machines has actually made my job easier and more secure. Pretty much every member of my team has suffered some sort of checking-related injury, be it bone spurs, carpal tunnel, or tennis elbow from the repetitive motions of scanning items. With self-checkout, rather than having to take unpaid time off work, since this usually starts before you've worked enough hours to get paid time off, we can instead work to self-checkout machines, which require less manual labor and therefore

less stress on work-related injuries. As for the machines taking our jobs, I'm a little more split on the truth of this. On one hand, I don't want to go to bat for any corporations looking to raise profits by cutting labor costs, but on the other, as someone who was an essential worker during the initial COVID lockdown and the ensuing spikes and variations, I can tell you it is a thankless job, but I don't begrudge anyone who quits to move on to less people facing work. The front end has the highest turnover rate of any department at my store. Since having self-checkout machines, I at least do not have to deal with customers complaining to me about understaffing and long lines. Obviously, I'm just one person with one experience, but I figured I'd give my point

of view since it became such a heated topic. Love the show and I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for your time, Emily. thank you so much for this email because I really wanted to get the perspective of somebody who currently works retail. I did not even think about the repetitive motion of scanning out people's items and what that might do to someone's body. And so the alternative of being like, well, you don't have to take time off and make no money. You can do the self-checkout, which is a lot less physically demanding on you. I didn't even think about that as a potential reason why self-checkout might be better in retail establishments. And so I'm really thankful for that perspective.

Also, I didn't think about this either, but it makes so much sense that people who have issues with self-checkout complaining to the retail cashier who like, she was like, oh, well, I actually made the decision to put that to put that in the store. Thanks for letting me know. I'll take it out. Like, what do people think that like that's how the decisions get made? Like, even if you have issues with self-checkout like I do, you don't need, like complaining to the retail cashier who, who did not make the decision to put that there is not the proper way to do that. Complain on your podcast, people. Yeah.

And not just complaining to this cashier who sounds like didn't really want to hear it, but also framing it as like, and I'm complaining because I really care about protecting your job. Like, get over yourself. You don't care about this person's job. If you cared, you would like say something nice to them

or like tell a joke, not just like complain at them about how you are inconvenienced. I'm complaining at you for your benefit, don't you see this? Yeah. And also like it just, I mean, it also kind of goes back to the conversation about retail establishments and loneliness. Like, it just confirms to me that putting the burden on retail cashiers to stave off the loneliness epidemic, when Emily is saying that the people, the kind of experiences people are having working at the front end like this are not really that great and that people are rude and people, you know, maybe it's not something that people would want, would, would. have a lot of warm thuzzies about.

Yeah, that aspect really, like, stuck with me. I've been thinking about that a lot since we did that episode and read these emails, how, you know, I personally feel like I've, you know, the experience of living in a city during 2020 when COVID disrupted all of our lives and we were, like, trapped inside. It really, like, changed a lot of things that certainly changed me. And so one part, one thing after this conversation is I've just been thinking about how has it changed me, right? Like maybe I should go through the cash, the like human cashier line a little bit more often.

I don't know. I recently, you know, I think over the weekend, went to the grocery store that same giant that we've been talking about all the time. And there was some kind of issue happening at the self-checkout machines and the line was just like not moving. And so I was like, you know what? As a little experiment, I'm going to get in the human cashier line. And I did have a perfectly nice interaction with the woman checking me out. We talked about the fennel I was buying. It was a nice interaction.

So maybe the self-checkout is like not even the thing. Maybe we just like need to treat each other a little better. Oh, I think that's right. Like the self-checkout can be like an internal test of how we're doing, how well, or how badly we're connecting and thinking about our fellow human. Yeah, it's true. I mean, a lot of time when I'm feeling particularly low or stressed or angry or something, those are the times when I just want to head down,

go into the self-checkout line. And yeah, maybe that can be a little, like, signal to me to be a little more mindful of my mood and maybe try to change it by, I don't know, being kind to somebody or something. Oh, I have to do that within. intention. When I'm in that place where everything is going wrong and I feel like I'm about to lash out, it's like a personal challenge with myself to like go do something nice for a stranger and see if that reconnects, like reconnects you, recalibrates you, grounds you. Like it's like a personal challenge because otherwise I just know myself and I can really spin out and it's like,

oh, the reason that this work thing didn't go well, if this person had nothing to do with it, let me take my anger out on them. Like, so it's, it's like a little, a little challenge that I have to myself to sort of reconnect and stay grounded. And then also just like stay, I just try to stay grateful and checked into the fact that we're all sharing space together, sharing this world together. And like, it comes with annoyances and hangups. But at the end of the day, like, what a gift. Yeah, it's true. And, you know, maybe we have to have three or four mundane draining.

interactions to be able to have that one good one that like changes our mood, spins it more positive and gives us those those warm fuzzies with the stranger at the store. All right. So thanks again for writing in getting this kind of listener feedback is amazing, feels really good. And Bridget, we still need to do that experiment where we go to these stores and like actually compare, although it feels a little less charged now. Oh, when we were QAing the episode, I was like getting getting my shoes on. I was like, let's do this.

But we're still going to do it. Details to come. And as I said, I want to start really unpacking other low stakes tech stuff. One that I might have is QR code menus. Maybe that'll be next because I have a lot of feelings about QR code menus. And if you do too, maybe start percolating on that. But yeah, thanks for listening. And thanks for sharing your feedback with us.

And Mike, I guess I'll see you at the grocery store. Yeah, I'll see you there. I'll wait from the self-checkout. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.

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