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1247 points mangoman | 3 comments | 05 Dec 16 14:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.758s | source
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delegate ◴[05 Dec 16 17:27 UTC] No.13107158[source]▶
Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad.

I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement)..

I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables.

I know all the people who work in these supermarkets. The cashier in the supermarket downstairs always sings a quiet song while she scans my products, she knows my daughter and she's always nice and friendly.

The cashier in the other store talks to the customers. She stops scanning and starts talking while the line waits. Some customers might join the conversation. I know she has an old cat that eats an unlimited amount of food if allowed to do so...

There are similar stories about other shops in the neighbourhood - they come to work, they serve the people in the neighbourhood, they go home. They do this until they retire.

These people like their jobs because we respect them for what they do, so they feel useful and they work hard.

I don't mind waiting in line for 3 minutes. Or 5. It's never longer than that, even if the cashier discusses the latest news with the old lady.

The humanity of it has value for us here and that value is greater than the time we'd save by removing the people from the shops.

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crazypyro ◴[05 Dec 16 17:37 UTC] No.13107308[source]▶
Trying to save jobs that are no longer the most efficient way of solving a problem is not the way to promote the value of humanity, in my opinion. People want groceries as cheap and fast as possible. They don't go to the grocery store for social interaction and forcing the majority of people to pay extra for something that only the minority get value out of is not a competitive strategy.

If humanity were to take your opinion, we'd never evolve as a society, lest we remove a need in society and with it, someones job.

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1. biztos ◴[05 Dec 16 19:12 UTC] No.13108311[source]▶
This comment makes me suspect you may have never been to a farmer's market, or a market hall (of which Barcelona has some of the world's most glorious examples).

While it's possible that some people "want groceries as cheap and fast as possible," I don't think either of those is true of the hundreds of people I join at my local market every week.

I go there mainly because I like buying directly from the producers. I want there to be independent farmers in the future too, for reasons of taste, culture, ecology, and food safety.

But I also enjoy my interactions with some of the sellers. Some people probably go mainly for that reason. The market is full, despite a big ugly multinational supermarket 100m away that has cheaper (and worse) versions of just about everything on offer. That supermarket is also full, though I think the reasons why are not as simple as market efficiency.

A lot of us will continue to share the parent poster's opinion, and hopefully in sufficient numbers to keep all the little bodegas going. Because we care about food, and we care about living among humans.

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2. theon144 ◴[05 Dec 16 19:16 UTC] No.13108345[source]▶
Farmer's markets will be unaffected by this, obviously. The possibility to buy your groceries in this manner would still exist, as that's a different "use case", and I absolutely support and enjoy it. In contrast, I don't believe there is anything worth saving regarding the human interaction in supermarkets - in fact, I think that working an 8 hour shift which consists solely of scanning items and saying a couple pre-defined sentences is a very dismal, and in fact much more inhuman experience than what Amazon is proposing.
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3. biztos ◴[05 Dec 16 20:30 UTC] No.13109175[source]▶
Depends on the supermarket I suppose. A few times a year I go to a rural-ish supermarket in the US (town of maybe 5K people) and it's very old-school, the check-out people are very nice and gregarious, the baggers bag with great skill, etc.

I certainly hope the poor folks who toil at Aldi or Safeway might find a better thing to do with their lives, and if those stores are displaced I won't be too sad.