Guys, I hate to say this, but let's not kid ourselves. Several posts above essentially are saying "Don't worry.... cashiers won't lose hours (or their job) because of this... because of X"
In my city, damn near every store *except* Target has self checkouts. That includes all general merch stores and grocery stores.
In those stores, this is the setup. 1 employee for every 4 to 8 self checkouts during busy hours. That employee is often times also pulling duty as the cart attendant or whatever that companies equal to a GSA/GSTL is. Furthermore, at these stores during slow hours (early mornings, late nights, etc) they don't even have anyone watching them. Just the front end manager who comes out occasionally when they get an alert that some kind of error happened.... which, from my own personal use and observation, is incredibly rare.
The fact is, these machines are pretty much problem free these days.... and when they do have a problem, it usually takes an employee literally about 5-10 seconds to resolve it. These machines have also been around for the past few years.... most people these days know how to use them. Yes, even grandma.
If you are a cashier and you hear that your store is getting these, you need to be the first one in line to transfer to another job in the store or cross train out of the front end ASAP. Yes, these machines will slash a substantial amount of hours for cashiers, and yes, it will reduce the number of cashiers your store needs to keep on the payroll to begin with.
Something else to keep in mind.... these machines are designed to replace cashiers. Each of these machines basically *is* a cashier. If you are at a store that usually has 1-4 cashiers scheduled at a time.... you are essentially no longer needed. The GSA/GSTL can handle any issues, and can easily call the salesfloor for backup if needed.
And before anyone says I am paranoid.... consider this last fact. As far as STL's/ETL's are concerned, payroll is priority number 1. They don't care about feel good arguments like "Oh, guests will miss talking to cashiers" or "oh guests will have to bag their own stuff". When your store is cut so slim on payroll flow can't even finish trucks, salesfloor has no one to work the floor, and the DTL is threatening leadership's jobs.... what is a smart STL/ETL going to say?
"Gee... the DTL is about to write me up for payroll. We don't have enough payroll as it is for the rest of the store. I basically have 4 robotic cashiers up front... Gosh, should I allocate 20 hours to human cashiers or send those hours to flow/salesfloor/pricing/plano and let the GSTL/GSA handle the self checkouts with no cashiers?"
It's the truth people.
