Monday, October 7, 2013

"Humans 1, Robots 0"

"The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being."
 
"There is only one problem with human checkers: They're in short supply."
 
Wall Street Journal , Parody after "read more", 


No Country for Old Men - Checkout Scene Parody 

12 comments:

rhhardin said...

I only use u-scans.

1. No colds. There's no high school bagger with school diseases handling your food.

2. Fast. So far there's one line for 6 u-scans, so you don't get stuck in a slow line. Mostly people don't take too long.

3. You arrange the bagging, which is important if you're carrying 3 bags on a bike (one in front and two on the back). You want to pack cold with cold, and put most of the weight in the front bag.

The rare encounter with a human always requires rebagging afterwards. I always say just put it back in the basket and I'll bag it, if there's a bagger.

deborah said...

No Country is a crazy movie. Good, but crazy.

Aridog said...

You wanna see Robots do ya'?
DARPA ( Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is workin' on that for the Army and Marines. Be sure to check out the "Wildcat" when you finish with the legged supoort critter. :-)

bagoh20 said...

They recently voted here in L.A. to outlaw the plastic grocery bag, because filling pot holes is hard and actually helpful.

Leave it to a little cadre of mini-tyrants to outlaw the use of one of the greatest inventions of my life time. Using those bags I can actually carry as many groceries as a 1969 Buick Lesabre with just my two hands. I think they were invented by NASA for shopping on the moon or something like that. Plus, they are reusable as dog poop bags, and they are the recommended treatment for Grandma's pneumonia by the ACA death panel.

Mumpsimus said...

The great thing about self-checkout lines is, you know there won't be any women writing checks in front of you.

Synova said...

I like a person to check out.

I suppose if I went through the self-checkout often I'd get fast at it, but it's annoying to have to read through all the instructions and then I'm old enough to need reading glasses so I have to dig out glasses. What a hassle.

I'd much rather just go through a line and have a person ring me up while I hit the buttons I've memorized on the key pad to read my bank card.

Birches said...

Self checkouts are good for an few things (not produce) when there's a long line everywhere else. (The new express lane).


But I never use them because I've usually got kids with me and the two are mutually exclusive.

Birches said...

Self checkouts are good for an few things (not produce) when there's a long line everywhere else. (The new express lane).


But I never use them because I've usually got kids with me and the two are mutually exclusive.

Birches said...

Self checkouts are good for an few things (not produce) when there's a long line everywhere else. (The new express lane).


But I never use them because I've usually got kids with me and the two are mutually exclusive.

Synova said...

"1. No colds. There's no high school bagger with school diseases handling your food."

Still no high school baggers in Albuquerque.

(This concludes your Albuquerque update of the Summer of Recovery. Thank you.)

Bender said...

Last time I was at the grocery, at the self-checkout, some clerk with nothing better to do comes over to the end of the belt and starts bagging my stuff.
"Excuse me, no thank you. I can do that."
"You don't want me to bag?"
"No."

Why the hell am I in the self-checkout if I wanted someone else to bag. Too many times in the human clerk line, instead of having all my refrigerated items together, heavy items double bagged, etc., I've gotten multiple items bagged with now squashed soft bread, heavy items on top of light ones, and fresh produce bagged together with poison (cleaning products or bug spray, etc.), which I prefer not to do because, you know, I don't like to be dead.

So, just leave me alone. At least while we still can, before Obama makes some other excuse as to why all of a sudden scanners need to be turned off because of the government shutdown or because the electricity needs to be cut off because of the shutdown or because the outdoors need to be closed because the government is laying claim to the air and thus is being closed because of the shutdown.

ken in tx said...

I have preferred buying things from machines since the 60s. They sometimes cheat me, but, unlike humans, they have never insulted me.