it was so much time saved, compared to running around and replacing paper/stickers
And sure they COULD change the prices on random “whims” but they’d get a ton of angry customers. imagine grabbing an item for 5 bucks on the shelf, then when you get to the checkout, the price is 10?
Where I live, having a price be different at checkout would actually be illegal (thank legislation), but they could still change it overnight. But they can already do that anyways…
almost as if it requires zero human labor! I wonder if labor cost savings will happen? Think of the profit margins right there for the taking! Certainly this benefits the worker, yes? The one that isn’t laid off, sure.
Ehh, I used to work retail and do signage for my department. The amount of time spent on signage in a day wouldn’t have noticeably changed the bottom line. The extra 30 minutes we would have gained per department would have been spent on cleaning and restocking. When one person staffs your department at open, it’s not like you can go to zero because they don’t need to change price tags.
Fucking the customer and protecting them against mislabeled prices are the real wins there.
What changed the bottom line is having to pay employees to do it. I also used to work retail, and if you never had to do this, then you could probably have a least one less person on per shift
Is there some law saying that the price on the sticker must be honoured? I know some of them are unauthenticated protocols and you can change them with a flipper or some random CC1101 gadget
Mass has a law stating the lowest advertised price must be honored. (Which includes in store price tags, which are required for grocery items.)
Theres also a sort of bounty system baked in- if an item scans higher, than lowest price, youre entitled to one for free/ 10$ off, setting a ceiling for the discount, (i say one because you dont get to clear out the shelf for free on a miss-mark. But my mom has, for instance, run into a friend at the grocery, who found a missprice, and was telling everyone to grab a jar of pasta sauce before she checked out because its free if you grabbed it before they fix the sign. When we went to check out, there were like 50 people claiming the free jar, and some porridge manager trying to keep up with the discounts.
Theres also a hefty punishment for not honoring that Freebie. Punishment can iirc include up to 30 in jail for staff who refused. The investigation is probably the worst though- weights and measures can and apparently will shut down a groccer for up 30 days to investigate for refusing to honor the missmark.
So here, I dont think youd see a store trying to use dynamic pricing as a short term thing (probably reset the price daily before opening though) The risk of someone documenting the price change with their phone would likely outweigh the reward of anything shorter term.
As to the flipper scenario, seems like a bad idea- the store would most likely be able to pull up logs from their price changing systems, proving they never gave that price, leaving you having just tried to defraud a government agency with your report.
You’d be better off forging a price tag, photographing it in situ at an analog store, then getting rid of it. Less direct evidence of you commiting fraud.
Seems like a high risk low reward crime. Defrauding the government / hacking charges for at max $10s
it was so much time saved, compared to running around and replacing paper/stickers
It’s right there in the original comment. If it saves a significant amount of time, it reduces the overall labour burden on the workers, meaning it’s likely they will require fewer workers to complete a night’s shift (restocking, price updates, cleaning, etc.) with no real benefit to the workers considering cost savings will just be hoovered up by corporate.
The benefit to the worker I not having to waste their time with doing something that could be done better, the issue is how the company responds, not the actual “work” itself going away.
The idiotic arguments I see every time jobs are automated away is just “less jobs bad”, yes in our capitalistic system where companies are insentivized the way they are I understand not having a job is worse then having one where you do stupid busy work, however that in itself is a stupid reason to bemoan any efficiency or time saving gains by actually useful technology uses.
I am a hard worker and I like to find ways to be more efficient and optimize my time spent on tasks, things like this are exactly that in theory.
That doesn’t benefit the worker at all though. It is an overall detriment to the worker class as a whole.
In this case, no one is saying “less jobs bad”. They’re saying the hording of savings from job elimination is further increasing wealth disparity, shifting money from the worker class to that of the elite. It’s not like the workers’ salaries will go up or the cost of goods will go down as a result.
I’m all for eliminating useless busy work, but the rewards of that should be reaped by those doing the actual damn work. Assuming you work for some company and not for yourself, all that time you put into being more efficient and optimal does is makes your employer more money and gives you a dopamine hit for being told you’re a good boy.
It does, as it’s one less manual thing they need to do.
You’re making exactly the argument I’m talking about, efficiency gains bad because companies always look to cut people when efficiency improves rather then investing back into their people because number must go up and shareholder value and yada yada capitalism shit.
At the lowest level, we should be happy when things are made easier or more efficient as that means we can spend less time on it and therefore should be able to now use that time for something better.
What do you want? People still working in the fields or mines at the scale they used to? It literally does not make sense. What we need is either socialism or extremely strong social benefits systems for people whose jobs are no longer relevant, its not like they got enjoyment out of those things in the first place a majority of the time it’s just to make ends meet.
What we need is either socialism or extremely strong social benefits systems
This is exactly what was implied by my previous comments. I already told you flat out that I’m for eliminating useless busy work. Why would you assume I want “people still working in the fields or mines at the scale they used to?”
I’m not sure why you were arguing with me then, we have the same understanding.
The ability to change price tags digitally is a net positive in theory for the worker and the company, my initial comment while sarcastic is exactly why I mentioned Miners and Farm workers, jobs that have been mostly eliminated or completely changed due to technological advancement, that on its own is not a bad thing like some here would argue.
Not only a time saver so employees can actually be available to help customers and restock shelves, but also so much less waste created. I worked for a company that had paper tags a long time ago and we threw away so much trash every week for price changes, sometimes daily. Even if the prices didn’t change, we still had to print and put out updated tags because of expiration dates. I often would wish we had digital tags.
ive worked in a store that had that
it was so much time saved, compared to running around and replacing paper/stickers
And sure they COULD change the prices on random “whims” but they’d get a ton of angry customers. imagine grabbing an item for 5 bucks on the shelf, then when you get to the checkout, the price is 10?
our system only updated the prices at night
Where I live, having a price be different at checkout would actually be illegal (thank legislation), but they could still change it overnight. But they can already do that anyways…
almost as if it requires zero human labor! I wonder if labor cost savings will happen? Think of the profit margins right there for the taking! Certainly this benefits the worker, yes? The one that isn’t laid off, sure.
Ehh, I used to work retail and do signage for my department. The amount of time spent on signage in a day wouldn’t have noticeably changed the bottom line. The extra 30 minutes we would have gained per department would have been spent on cleaning and restocking. When one person staffs your department at open, it’s not like you can go to zero because they don’t need to change price tags.
Fucking the customer and protecting them against mislabeled prices are the real wins there.
What changed the bottom line is having to pay employees to do it. I also used to work retail, and if you never had to do this, then you could probably have a least one less person on per shift
we already had 1 person on that shift, this one doesn’t go to zero.
I’m sure Walmart only has one person working at a time
In jewelry before open… yup.
Is there some law saying that the price on the sticker must be honoured? I know some of them are unauthenticated protocols and you can change them with a flipper or some random CC1101 gadget
Mass has a law stating the lowest advertised price must be honored. (Which includes in store price tags, which are required for grocery items.)
Theres also a sort of bounty system baked in- if an item scans higher, than lowest price, youre entitled to one for free/ 10$ off, setting a ceiling for the discount, (i say one because you dont get to clear out the shelf for free on a miss-mark. But my mom has, for instance, run into a friend at the grocery, who found a missprice, and was telling everyone to grab a jar of pasta sauce before she checked out because its free if you grabbed it before they fix the sign. When we went to check out, there were like 50 people claiming the free jar, and some porridge manager trying to keep up with the discounts.
Theres also a hefty punishment for not honoring that Freebie. Punishment can iirc include up to 30 in jail for staff who refused. The investigation is probably the worst though- weights and measures can and apparently will shut down a groccer for up 30 days to investigate for refusing to honor the missmark.
So here, I dont think youd see a store trying to use dynamic pricing as a short term thing (probably reset the price daily before opening though) The risk of someone documenting the price change with their phone would likely outweigh the reward of anything shorter term.
As to the flipper scenario, seems like a bad idea- the store would most likely be able to pull up logs from their price changing systems, proving they never gave that price, leaving you having just tried to defraud a government agency with your report.
You’d be better off forging a price tag, photographing it in situ at an analog store, then getting rid of it. Less direct evidence of you commiting fraud.
Seems like a high risk low reward crime. Defrauding the government / hacking charges for at max $10s
There is in my country
Though its written like:
If theres unclear pricing, like 2 prices, customers get the better deal
Ah yes those poor (checks notes) price sticker changing workers.
It’s right there in the original comment. If it saves a significant amount of time, it reduces the overall labour burden on the workers, meaning it’s likely they will require fewer workers to complete a night’s shift (restocking,
price updates, cleaning, etc.) with no real benefit to the workers considering cost savings will just be hoovered up by corporate.The benefit to the worker I not having to waste their time with doing something that could be done better, the issue is how the company responds, not the actual “work” itself going away.
The idiotic arguments I see every time jobs are automated away is just “less jobs bad”, yes in our capitalistic system where companies are insentivized the way they are I understand not having a job is worse then having one where you do stupid busy work, however that in itself is a stupid reason to bemoan any efficiency or time saving gains by actually useful technology uses.
I am a hard worker and I like to find ways to be more efficient and optimize my time spent on tasks, things like this are exactly that in theory.
That doesn’t benefit the worker at all though. It is an overall detriment to the worker class as a whole.
In this case, no one is saying “less jobs bad”. They’re saying the hording of savings from job elimination is further increasing wealth disparity, shifting money from the worker class to that of the elite. It’s not like the workers’ salaries will go up or the cost of goods will go down as a result.
I’m all for eliminating useless busy work, but the rewards of that should be reaped by those doing the actual damn work. Assuming you work for some company and not for yourself, all that time you put into being more efficient and optimal does is makes your employer more money and gives you a dopamine hit for being told you’re a good boy.
It does, as it’s one less manual thing they need to do.
You’re making exactly the argument I’m talking about, efficiency gains bad because companies always look to cut people when efficiency improves rather then investing back into their people because number must go up and shareholder value and yada yada capitalism shit.
At the lowest level, we should be happy when things are made easier or more efficient as that means we can spend less time on it and therefore should be able to now use that time for something better.
What do you want? People still working in the fields or mines at the scale they used to? It literally does not make sense. What we need is either socialism or extremely strong social benefits systems for people whose jobs are no longer relevant, its not like they got enjoyment out of those things in the first place a majority of the time it’s just to make ends meet.
This is exactly what was implied by my previous comments. I already told you flat out that I’m for eliminating useless busy work. Why would you assume I want “people still working in the fields or mines at the scale they used to?”
Sheesh.
I’m not sure why you were arguing with me then, we have the same understanding.
The ability to change price tags digitally is a net positive in theory for the worker and the company, my initial comment while sarcastic is exactly why I mentioned Miners and Farm workers, jobs that have been mostly eliminated or completely changed due to technological advancement, that on its own is not a bad thing like some here would argue.
Choose your adventure:
Companies being shitty with price and time saving is not the same as keeping around pointless jobs that could be done more efficiently.
Not only a time saver so employees can actually be available to help customers and restock shelves, but also so much less waste created. I worked for a company that had paper tags a long time ago and we threw away so much trash every week for price changes, sometimes daily. Even if the prices didn’t change, we still had to print and put out updated tags because of expiration dates. I often would wish we had digital tags.
The amount of trash not being wasted is amazing.
Ah yes, the surge pricing only updates every 24 hours. This makes it acceptable
Well, i dont know about the rules in america
Great news for the workers who don’t get laid off as a result.