God, if only we actually had our own country…

Man, where does everyone in the comments live that it still works like this? Where I’m at, they basically have attempted to replace like 90% of cashier jobs with these machines. There is often either no cashier at all, or one single cashier with like 5 people in their line, each with shopping carts filled to the brim.

The self checkout lines routinely reach lines of 10+ people with many old people who struggle using the machines forced to use them and gumming up the operations more. I avoid going to the grocery store like the plague during any kind of higher traffic time because I don’t want to wait in line for 15 mins.

Other issue with self checkout machines is that some places (Kroger, looking at you) weigh the bag every time you scan an item before you can scan the next, which makes things go soooooo slow.

Oh god yeah, I feel that. I’d have a harder time keeping mine up if my colleagues were actually attempting to engage with me on it haha.

It’s so stupid, but definitely can be helpful professionally to maintain a profile there. Depends on your experience and what field you’re in, of course, but recruiters seem to use it a fair amount.

Definitely don’t use it for the garbage social media aspect (it’s like some weird crowd-sourced Chicken Soup for the Soul shit??) However, I’ve been convinced of its utility after getting a new job through a recruiter there without even looking. The process was sooo easy compared to applying for jobs the traditional way. Icing on the cake was that it came with a 50% raise and was for a position I would never have applied for on my own but I love it. Maybe it was lightning in a bottle, but I figure doesn’t hurt to keep up a page just in case another good opportunity comes along. If nothing else, the recruiters I hear from give me a sense of how hot the market is and what kind of jobs my profile is pinging me for in case I want to make tweaks.

Right? Amazon’s monopoly is definitely a problem but this part feels pretty par for course. Finding the sweet spot between price/competition/demand is like business fundamentals 101. I can assure you this is something all major retailers consider. There are also many analytics companies with their own “secret” algorithms (this probably just means proprietary?) focused on things things like pricing elasticity and optimization and are targeted to these retailers.

It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?

It’s easy to forget because of how quickly the cultural zeitgeist shifted when it finally did, but the early 2000s was still very homophobic. Watching pretty much any comedy from that era reminds you of just how common the punchline to jokes was just, “teehee they’re gay.”

At work I’ve been thrust into a support function for some random system (I’m in analytics) and one of the roles I work with is fairly entry level, so lots of younger folk. I have been floored by some of the basic-ass shit I’ve walked them through. (Like explaining that you can copy and paste the url into a browser if the link isn’t clickable for whatever reason. Also had to clarify what url meant–is this not a common term anymore?) I had just assumed that because they’re younger and grew up with the internet, they’d smoke the hell out of me. But I guess interfaces are so streamlined these days many got away with never having to learn basic troubleshooting the same way I did as a millennial.