He helps customers who don’t know how to use the machines while watching to ensure they aren’t shoplifting. “It’s like I’m one person working six check stands.” He’s been manning the self-checkout stands for about two years at Vons supermarket, where the workload has increased. Holland, 56, who is Black, has been working in supermarkets since 1996 in California. Milton Holland, a supermarket employee who splits his time between being a checker and overseeing the self-checkout systems, said, “It’s just overwhelming.” Much of the focus on self-checkout technology considers how it will affect consumers, but according to research and cashiers Prism interviewed, it can also impact how workers experience their jobs, from increasing their workload to forcing them to police customers in new and uncomfortable ways. About 3.3 million are cashiers, an often low-paying job in which women and Black and Hispanic people are overrepresented. Some 9.8 million people work in retail in the U.S., about 200,000 more than in 2010, according to a 2020 U.S. Meanwhile, in recent years they’ve also faced the rise of self-checkout systems-a technology that’s far from new but is creating new headaches for workers as market analyses show the market for the machines expands and shipments of the machines rise. Working face-to-face with customers during waves of deadly outbreaks, cashiers bore the brunt of the impacts in retail. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, retail workers keeping grocery store shelves stocked and ringing up items at checkout were deemed “essential.” They-along with nurses, EMTs, transit and sanitation workers, delivery workers, laundromat staff, and more-kept our communities running.
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