I walked away from self-scanning, physical AI slop and the inhuman
When a company replaces its manned checkouts with self-service/self-scanning machines, the first impression I get is the company doesn't want to interact with its own customers, and couldn't care less about customer service. Invariably I'm also under the impression, from the way the self-service machines are designed, that such companies generally perceive their customers as potential criminals. That's probably the main reason I have a visceral dislike of self-scanning terminals. My boyfriend is militantly vocal about it. If he's told to use a self-scanning machine, he'll either reply with 'You're doing yourself out of a job!', or 'I'm not getting paid to do it, or getting staff discounts!'.
Most people agree with this sentiment. I see that daily, with my own eyes. At least half the customers in my local Asda would much rather join a long queue for a manned checkout than use the self-service machines. The once busy petrol station across the road is virtually dead since it became completely self-service - at a rough guess, 90% of customers are going elsewhere. Nobody in my local pub scans the QR code to order drinks from their table, despite all the discounts and incentives Marsdens promises for doing so.
I'd recently stopped frequenting my nearest store, because automation made it a deeply unpleasant and inhuman place. When the checkout staff were replaced by self-scanning terminals, several gangs realised it was open season for raids and carjackings, because they can do whatever they like, unchallenged, and disappear into the labrynthine council estate long before the police show up. Subconsciously, the gangs know their actions are against a faceless corporation rather than against a store run by members of their own community.
What was the corporation's response? Treat all customers as potential criminals, make them navigate security barriers to get in and out, and subject them to all kinds of surveillance.
But it was after one specific episode, several weeks ago, that I decided enough was enough: I brought my shopping to one of the self-service machines there. The damn thing wouldn't scan the codes on a couple of items, and was insistent I had the wrong number of items in the bagging area. So, I carried everything to another terminal, which was a bit of a struggle.
After scanning a couple of things with the second machine, the red light went on - apparently the purchase of makeup requires staff approval now, and I needed to wait around for that. At the same time, I had that fucking facial recognition camera pointing right at me, despite it being nowhere stated that customers are giving implied consent. Why should anyone put up with this?
With it being my time of the month, my tolerance for bullshit really couldn't have been lower. I had an epic mood swing, stormed out and just left everything on the scanning area. It was the only thing I could have done, given the jobsworth-style fuckwittery became a rigid system that cannot be reasoned with.
My frustration was later offset by a realisation that all the technical issues were attributable to the technology being designed for, and to encourage, a low-trust society. Everything from counting the weight, to the gram, of our shopping, to the approval of purchases, to the facial recognition and security cameras. My actions were entirely warranted reaction to that.
Another experience I had, some months ago, with the automation thing, could be inspire a dystopian absurdist novel.
My boyfriend and I were in the east end of Brighton, late one Saturday morning. We were both a little hungover, and he was peckish. No problem, I thought. Anyone who passed through the Marina would think there's no shortage of places to get a coffee and maybe a sandwich.
As it turned out, Brighton Marina is a bit like that town on The Truman Show. A large number of the building fronts are facades, to give the Marina the appearance of being some gentrified 'cafe quarter', and pretty much the only options are a table in a proper restaurant or Wetherspoons. Unless, of course, you get a meal deal in Asda, on the other side of the underpass.
Well, McDonalds was nearby. We could, I thought, pay a friendly member of staff at the counter, and be on our merry way. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Food needed to be ordered through one of the cashless touchscreen things, and collected from the one single staff member. We couldn't even do that either, since all the touchscreen things were occupied by people screwing around on them, and evidently not actually ordering anything. We gave up waiting after ten minutes.
Giving Pizza Hut a try seemed like a good idea, as that was a couple hundred metres away. The menu there is a bit pricey, for some reason, but potentially worth it. As with McDonalds, there was only one staff member to be seen.
'Excuse me, could we have one of them?', my partner asked, having picked what he wanted.
'You need to order through the app.', she said.
'We don't have the app, though.'.
'You need to use the app.', she insisted.
'Okay, so people need a smartphone and an Internet connection to buy food? What about old people, those with learning difficulties and the visually impaired?', I asked. She didn't have an answer.
'Bollox to this.', I said. 'Even if my phone had a working Internet connection, there's no way I'd install a random app, and risk being a victim of another data breach, just to buy a damn pizza!'.
Why is everything in the Marina so obstinately inhuman? At that point, we decided to cut our losses by travelling a mile to The Camelford Arms (my favourite pub in Brighton, by the way). It was only at The Camelford Arms that we realised how much nicer it is to be dealing with businesses that actually care about what they built, their customers and the community.