JCPenney to Eliminate Check-Out Clerks
July 22nd, 2012Via: CBS:
But the store is getting a makeover – specialized boutiques within the store like a denim bar – and more.
The CEO of JCPenney is the former retail chief of Apple, and he wants to shake things up to restore the company to profitability.
But one of his ideas – replacing clerks with a self-check-out system – well, that doesn’t go over too well with some customers.
“I think it’s a bad idea all way around if you ask me,” says Jack Soffel of Robinson.
Soffel shops at Penney’s and worries that the change will result in poor customer service.
“I don’t want to walk into a place that’s so austere that it’s nothing but mechanics and automation,” he adds. “I like to talk to people, they help me, they ask me, they take me to find things.”
Penney’s CEO Ron Johnson says the store will switch the traditional bar codes on price tags to RFID’s – or radio frequency identification chips – and use self-service checkout machines found in many grocery stores.
Well, sure – why should they have to pay someone $9 an hour to sell us things that they pay people $3 a day to make??
This is what we get for ever having believed that technology was ever intended to make our lives better. The Luddites saw this coming.
been saying for years that once the vending machine tech becomes feasible the rest of us will just be extraneous. beginning of the end for the working class
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There you go, eliminate the lowest paid workers in the company. Not the over paid managers, office drones and CEO/CFO/CTO/ASSo’s.
Sort of like when school systems eliminate teachers and not the over paid Administrators, Board of Directors, District Administrators, Sports Administrators, etc.
btw … the unstable self check out lanes always screw up in some way. Barcode blurred, barcode on a odd part of the product where the scanner does not hit, item not in system, clearance item, etc. They always have one person there managing the the self check out lanes in case of error.
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