Self-Check Out & The Reality of Service Workers

MEME: Stock photo of white woman happily scanning and bagging her own order.

As an avid social media user, I come across a lot of memes that are posted to garner discussion. Although memes are meant to be lighthearted I’ve engaged in some rather heated debates about the topics of dating/relationships, political affiliation, race, class, and gender. I always have a method, read the comments first to get a feel of the room. As social media users, we tend to access circles that are of our likeness. But every now and then I venture down a rabbit hole of entitled vitriol laced commentary that I have to talk myself from pushing my internal go button because I don’t want the headache or 3–4 days of notifications.

One day I replied to a post that featured a meme about self-checkout as its talking point. It’s a stock photo of a White Women happily scanning and bagging her own groceries. The caption states:

“It’s not convenient for me to help corporations fire workers so they raise their profits. I stand in line and when the lines back up, the store calls more cashiers to the front. If we keep doing it, they’ll need to hire more people. NEVER SELF CHECK-OUT. You are not a store employee…stop being one for free.”

As someone who has been employed in service work my entire professional tenure I giggled. As someone who has held leadership roles I cackled. The hilarity of most consumers is their delusion of grandeur. I’ve experienced the entitlement, the arrogance, and the flippancy towards service workers. The typical handle is, “I hate corporations”, but any minute inconvenience it quickly becomes, “I’m going to call corporate!”

So here is a list I’ve constructed to deconstruct the reality of self-checkouts and challenge the way you think about and treat service workers.

You don’t like self-checkout yet,

1. You call cashiers derogatory names because their shift is ending or it’s time for their break and they had to shut their line down.

2. Antagonize cashiers by telling them soon enough machines will take their jobs.

3. Throw a temper tantrum when you pull out 35 coupons for the same kind of item and you’re denied.

4. Stand in line on your phone while the cashier rings up a 110 item order and cop an attitude when it takes longer than 2 minutes.

5. Ask Black female cashiers if that’s their real hair or make other racially charged microaggressions towards them.

6. You see the cashier has a long line and you ask if you can run and go get one more thing (when it’s really 5).

7. You argue the price over every single item when you know damn well what you picked up and how much it cost.

8. Treat other service workers like shit (not saying excuse me, invading their space by reaching over them in aisles OR not moving out of the way when they come through).

9. Expect a cashier who has checked out over at least 50 patrons already to pretend to be genuinely invested in your personal life or how your day went.

10. Act like a 3-year-old when lines are understaffed and let everyone know you’ll never shop there again.

11. Allowed your child to eat an unwashed apple or half a banana and attempt to hand that slobber covered germ-infested item to the cashier.

12. Brag that a cashier position is menial work yet have trouble identifying your cabbage and onions in self-checkout.

13. You nag a cashier because your store didn’t have any more jeans in a size 5, or the “while quantities last” means no raincheck.

14. You try and make returns at the register (knowing that’s not the way).

15. You try and pay at the customer service desk (not the way either).

16. Ask service workers, “where are you from?” who you perceive as “other”. Only to brag about the time when you visited their country to do missionary work (“Oh you’re from E-thi-opia? I built a church there for poor kids!”)

17. Make empty apologies about them working late nights/weekends/holidays (“What time do you get off today? 11 PM, that must suck!”) when you really don’t care and they know you don’t either.

18. Expect cashiers to engage your child and become upset when they don’t (although you should be teaching your child about boundaries but that’s another story for another day).

You lack common courtesy, you lack common decency, you in no way value cashiers or any other service workers. You only see them as an impetus between you and the products you believe you can’t live without.

So remember, the next time you go to the grocery store, the convenience store, a clothing/shoe store, or encounter any kind of service worker make sure you check yourself. Oh, and by the way, self check-out is inevitable and you have capitalism to thank for that.

“Thank you for reading and have a nice day!”