BetterMost Community Blogs > My "Great White North"
Bitch, Bitch, Bitch
injest:
Del
I think the main trouble with live customer service people is there is never enough of them. For example, those self checkout registers? If there were enough real cashiers to check everyone out in a reasonable time I don't think people would use them.
To me the self checkout is making me work for the store. I am not a bag boy. Nor am I a Walmart cashier...nothing wrong with BEING one of those things...if you are getting paid to be.
Why should I give them my labor for free....
opinionista:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on August 10, 2007, 07:36:54 pm ---Interesting. I read a decade ago that the future industry would be service-oriented. And I wondered then, really? How? No one I know in customer service likes it because people can be complete assholes or idiots or invariably, lost souls completely clueless who want long explanations and a dozen services at once, all the while the line of ill-tempered, in a hurry customers is stacking up and stacking up and stacking up...and then some can be dangerous.
Then technology came to the rescue with the answer! Automated systems, that's how. People don't want to be in service industries, so they let machines do the bulk of the serving. It's cheaper all the way around. Notice the increase in 'check yourself out' lines at grocery stores.
From what I read, the banking industry is waiting for the current baby boomer generation to die away, because the generations that have come after them are used to interfacing with computer systems so they will be able to do away with live tellers altogether. All banking will be via computer.
The future is less live people, not more.
--- End quote ---
I think this will do nothing but increase unemployment and poverty.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: injest on August 10, 2007, 08:01:36 pm ---Del
I think the main trouble with live customer service people is there is never enough of them. For example, those self checkout registers? If there were enough real cashiers to check everyone out in a reasonable time I don't think people would use them.
--- End quote ---
Agree, but it's very expensive to keep a store fully staffed all day. From my experience working retail, there are peak hours of business and for the rest - I have a theory that humans are really pack animals. When one shopper with their basket full of merchandise heads for the empty checkout lines, suddenly everyone decides it's a good time to check out and everyone converges at once. I'm not sure why that is. Suddenly the checkout lines are jammed packed. Then they get all checked out and again there's a lull. It's like this all day.
Armed with this knowledge, when I go to the grocery store and see jam packed lines when I'm ready to check out, I know if I just loiter for another 5 minutes or so, read a magazine, the lines will all clear out and I won't have to stand in line.
--- Quote ---To me the self checkout is making me work for the store. I am not a bag boy. Nor am I a Walmart cashier...nothing wrong with BEING one of those things...if you are getting paid to be. Why should I give them my labor for free....
--- End quote ---
Because they're in the business of making money and the more they throw onto the customer, the more money on their bottom line. Isn't capitalism wonderful?
I agree. I go through the live person line, I don't want to bag my own stuff - even though I probably would do it a lot more skillfully than some of the knuckleheads who work these places and haven't been trained worth a damn would.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: opinionista on August 11, 2007, 07:54:46 am ---I think this will do nothing but increase unemployment and poverty.
--- End quote ---
Yep. Wave of the future. Mechanize all the unskilled labor jobs. Cheaper for the business owners because there is less overhead. Capitalism again.
ifyoucantfixit:
I wait in a line rather than use one of those mechanical checkers... I too hate all those bad parking lot asses. And as for the stupid
computer answering machine services. AAAAAAAArrrrrrghhhhh dont get me started...those are my pet peeve. I get so angry when i call a number, and they demand all of your personal info...last four digits of your social, name spelled, and phone number, and then as soon as you get to a real live {who is neither real nor live} person they ask you the same stupid things all over again...I just boil. :P :P
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