CVS Phasing out most "live" help

What? No one has an opinion? No hatchets to grind?

I've been known to use the self checkout on occasion but I prefer dealing with a human.

Labor costs can kill a business though so I kind of get it from a business perspective. If a store starts losing money, everyone loses their job. It's a rock and a hard place.

I've seen several wonderful little shops in my neighborhood go under in the last two years. Each time the owner was so stressed out and exhausted because they were trying everything, especially getting rid of staff, in order to keep their doors open. Then the stress and exhaustion became too much and they closed up shop.

Then the people they bought goods from have to get rid of staff and so on and so on and so on.

I try to make it a point to spend my money as locally as possible even though it always costs more.

I would like to deal locally, too, but I've about given up on the idea for other than groceries. The last two things I bought over the internet took me a total of about two hours shopping locally, without success. It's not only a question of time; if they never heard of the object they act like I'm the one that isn't quite bright - usually by repeating my request very s-l-o-w-l-y. If not that, they sometimes respond with "What do you want with that?", or "Hey, this over here is what you really want." I found both items at Amazon. It took maybe twenty minutes, but I'm on dial up, after all.



I'm glad they've found jobs and all, but. . . .

PS I do favor the local bike shop. He really does provide really good service and knowledge, and is often cheaper than internet deals.

At first I just didn't like the impersonality of dealing with a computer terminal rather than a human being. I'm the kind of customer who kibbitzes with the hired help etc. But then I started to think, wait a minute. If these mechanical things become popular and take over, then those nice high-school kids who have part-time jobs behind the registers will be outta work. Don't use these abominations, Andy.

Mom and pop stores going out of business because they can't afford to service the payroll has no bearing on this at all. I've never seen a small neighborhood store try to substitute a machine for a sales clerk. Only the big guys can afford to do that because of the size of the sales force they already have on payroll. They want to cut down on that payroll; self-serve checkouts make sense for them because it's a one-time investment (rather than a weekly payroll item) with minimal maintenance costs.

The reason the mom-and-pops are closing shop isn't because of payroll or other overhead. It's because there's no way they can compete with the big guys -- the Wallmarts and the Home Depots and the Albertsons. They don't have the volume to justify the much lower prices that the big guys can afford to offer. Wallmart doesn't worry if it loses $1 milllion a day on a given low-priced item, as long as the ridiculously low price brings hordes of customers into the store. No worries, mate, we make up for it on other items. Can you see any small family-owned operation being abble to take a similar attitude? They end up with a deficit of $100 and they have difficulty making payroll.

Nahh. The guys who're pushing the self-service check-out system get absolutely no sympathy from me. They're not hurting. They're just trying to jack up even more obscene profits.