Checkers’ Smart Trolley: Convenience or Corporate Callousness?

Checkers - our prime South African retailer - is trialing a new "smart trolley" that does the check-out as you put stuff in it. This means that thousands of people will very likely lose their jobs as check-out clerks and baggers. As always, it is the corporate types wearing fancy suits who think poor folk would make it on their small salaries if they just spent less, who really seem to think this sort of batshit crazy scheme is a good thing.

Because of course they do.

So here's the thing.

I opened the link to the article proudly proclaiming news of this marvellous technological innovation by the Checkers brand retail stores, which is now probably the biggest retailer in South Africa (considering it also owns the Shoprite chain and a few other smaller ones as well).

"No more queues" eh? Sounds enticing, doesn't it? But at what cost?

And you see, right there is the question that 12 year old me (who loved sci-fi and future tech) wouldn't have asked. At least, probably not right away.

You see, "progress" and "advancement" means embracing technological improvements while accommodating the human equation. What does that mean? Well, for starters, if you plan to introduce machines to do the work done by people, you need to account for how you're going to deal with the people whose roles you're making redundant. You can't just replace human workers with machines - fire the lot - and then still claim to give a shit about people - especially the people you employ.

And it seems you need to have some level of emotional maturity to think beyond the introduction of bright blinking lights and tricks and gadgets that make cute noises waved before your eyes - and to wonder what the "magician" as it were, isn't telling you. Where does the white rabbit hide before he pulls it out of his hat? Ah, those are all trade secrets, as most magicians will tell you.

It starts with queues. Everyone hates queues, don't they? Well, I'm not sure about the Brits - who claim to have invented the concept - just ask Arthur Dent - but here in South Africa, I'm pretty certain everyone despises queues. So much so that we're always inventing new was to deal with them - or even avoid them entirely.

For example, some people stand in a queue for a few minutes, then wander off to do something else, and come back hours later to tell the next person in the line that they were there before them - and insist that this somehow entitles them to push in at the head of the queue. Sure thing, mate, I was here before too - last Tuesday in fact, so what? I remember MTN introduced a system where they gave people queuing at one of their branches at Greenacres an electronic tag that would buzz and vibrate when it was finally their turn to see a consultant - and they could shuffle off and carry on shopping in the meantime. All very convenient, and it beat waiting around when you could've been doing something else.

But this is different - because these other attempts to address queuing as an unpleasant reality of dealing with shops or consultants and the like - as imperfect as they are, don't end up costing someone their job.

While being "designed to put customers in control of their shopping experience from check-in to check-out" sounds very fancy-pants, enticing and advantageous, if this will cause people to lose jobs (check out clerks and packers) - and it looks like it will - then I think this is a shitty idea.

Checkers - the parent company of Shoprite Holdings - these days is the biggest retailer in the country. They've outlived and bought out all their competition - matter of fact, they're pretty much a monopoly now. Their nearest competitors are Spar and Pick 'n Pay, and somewhere beneath that, still clinging to the veneer of "upper class" delusion, Woolworths. Interestingly enough, Checkers is the one that seems keen to outdo Woolworths with their sudden burst of fancy-pants-ness. I think it's really weird that a mass-retailer in a country so financially challenged (i.e. fucking dirt-poor, plain gesê) as South Africa is, is trying so hard to look (and charge) like it's aiming at masses of rich "consumers" who, frankly, do not exist.

Don't get me wrong: innovation is a good thing. I love technology and sci-fi and advancement and progress. But not at the cost of what is so laughingly referred to these days as "humanity". Face it, it's an all too scarce commodity these days, isn't it? I see it vanishing from the world around me day by day. I see it in scams and crappy ideas like this put forth by people who think nobody's ever thought about this before - or decided against it because of what it would do to the more vulnerable portion of "society": the poor. If you don't know who that is in this case and need that spelled out, it's the people who actually work in retail. The 6 to 10ers. The corporate slaves who work long, hard hours, including weekends and even on public holidays for little pay and even fewer benefits. The people who keep the shelves at Checkers stocked, clean and organized; the people who greet you at the till, process your payments, pack your bags, and wave you off wishing you a pleasant day - even if they don't feel like it is, has been or will be. Did anyone at Checkers HQ bother to ask them what they thought about this brilliant innovative idea?Did the suits who sit around glossy tables making big decisions pause to consider how something like this would impact their workforce? Did they consider that - if this "trial" is a success and they decide to roll it out nationwide - how many people on that workforce would be made redundant? Or did they just add up the numbers - the cost of salaries and UIF and pension contributions, sick days, leave, casual workers and insurances versus expenditure on X amount of "smart trolleys" per year - and focus on how much money they might likely save by "letting people go"?

When you say it like that, it doesn't sound as bad as it is, does it? "Letting people go". It sounds like a release of prisoners, not so? Well, while that might ironically be true in an anti-corporate and anti-capitalist sense, the reality of people losing their employment and incomes is quite different. They're not being set free - they're being condemned to the tragedy of unemployment in a country where work is scarce and finding any kind of meaningful employment is like winning the lottery.

That said, I see no mention of staff cuts - or affected staff being kept on and reskilled or redeployed to other tasks - or "let go". I see no mention of them at all. Which is somehow even worse.

I often wonder what sort of person can just sit there and arbitrarily make decisions like this - not for survival, not for progress or advancement, but for something so soulless as mere corporate profit. For a godsdamned percentage - or in the cases of middle and higher management, for the sake of rewards - promotions, a seat at the golden table, an increase, bonuses, shares in the company even. "Wow, what a good idea, Johnny, we'll save BILLIONS with this one!" 

The mind boggles, doesn't it? At least mine does. But then, I think too many people these days need to be checked for a zipper at the back of their necks just to see if they're human at all, or just pretending. To me, their veins are filled with the oil that lubricates the corporate machine, or the black ink found on spreadsheets. Their eyes glisten with ambition and a coldness and absence of humanity or empathy that would give a polar bear frostbite.

But am I perhaps over-reacting? A touch too dramatic perhaps? I know I can be a tad theatrical... but... Am I? I'm sure that some would say so.

I'm sure it would be nice to have a built in scanner in the trolley to add up how much Checkers is over-charging us for sundry items, but we already have calculators on our phones don't we? Thanks very much, but for those of us who aren't too damn lazy to tap our own phone screens, that won't end up costing the customers for development and manufacturing of this fancy tech stuff that each Checkers store would need to pay for - and pass on the costs to the "consumer".

Gods, I loathe corporate-capitalist speak, don't you? It's downright demeaning - and fucking dehumanizing. People aren't people anymore, we're "consumers". When did we all agree to become that instead of people? "Clients". "Customers". Dehumanized statistics whose only purpose is to move decimal points a little to the left - or to the right, to be responsible for nothing more than fluctuations in stock prices, profit margins and statistics that drive sales charts and graphs. The size of the bonus the CEO receives come Xmas time depends on that, while the poor check-out clerks, packers and baggers wonder how the hell they're going to pay for presents for their kids this year - or school supplies, the next.

Well, I don't need a screen to tell me where the stuff I'm looking for is - chain stores keep rearranging their store layouts every few months anyway - just so we get a guided tour round the whole fucking store looking for stuff so as to entice us into emotional impulse purchasing. But that's part of the game, isn't it? Oh wait, that's a different brand - my bad. Same "game" though.

Sure, all the blinking screens, hi-tech sensors and lights might be blindingly awesome and I'm sure it looks great on your resume' being the first store in the country to institute an idea that basically meets the brutal genius on the scale of corporate greed as that idiotic "self-check-out" fiasco - but once the novelty wears off (and it always does) how will people feel knowing that the "cool" plastic screen on their trolley and their new-found "convenience" has cost an untold number of Checkers employees their jobs and incomes?

Aside from all that, have they thought about the consequences of removing the human element from the check-out process at a busy supermarket? The ludicrous "self-check-out" system faced the same challenges - for example, it relies entirely upon the honesty of the buyer to scan every item they walk out with (according to the article, shoppers still need to do this themselves manually) - or on an employee to leer over their shoulders to ensure that they do. How would Checkers account for this? Would they have a security kiosk on the way out to check till-slips to ensure everything in the "consumers" bags was scanned and paid for? Hence... ANOTHER queue anyway. I know of at least one recent incident in which a woman was almost criminally charged with shoplifting after she left a shop without scanning a box of milk she forgot was in the lower basket of her shopping trolley. Have they really thought this all through as thoroughly as they seem to think they have? This stuff all appears on my list of things that make me go "hmmmmm".

What other brilliant innovations may follow? Will adding an electronic voice to the glowing box on the handlebar of the trolley soothe the little voices of our consciences wailing about the true cost of this "innovation"? Will having Checkers' own "Alexa" give us a grand tour round the miles of shelves help us to relocate our failing or absent humanity?

You want to know what customers actually want, Checkers? Since you seem to be so out of touch with reality, I'll tell you: Customers want lower prices - especially on basics and fundamentals - not silly scifi gadgets that make real human beings unemployed and unable to feed themselves or their families, will end up costing them more anyway - and THEM guilty of supporting those soulless fuckwits who think this fucking batshit crazy and socially irresponsible lunacy is some sort of fucking improvement.

This sort of dystopian level shit wouldn't be out of place in a corporate crapitalist hellscape like the USA is, Checkers... only, this is not the USA - it's South Africa, and here we know a thing or two about treating human beings like human beings, not as percentages, or numbers - or even as commodities.

Go back to the drawing board, ShopriteX/Checkers boffins. You're drunk.