Via Infowars.com CNN: Check yourself out at Home Depot:
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — The Home Depot’s do-it-yourself clientele can now do it themselves at the checkout counter as part of a technology upgrade the company promises will make for shorter lines and faster service. …
The technology also could help Home Depot with a proposal it announced earlier this year to shift more employees from full-time to part-time status, Lewis said.
Four self-service checkout terminals are being set up in about 800 city locations to replace two or three employee-operated stations. The company also is buying performance software to assess cashiers’ skills.
Sixty percent of Home Depot staff are full-time. The other 40 percent are part-time.
Company spokesman Don Harrison said the retailer’s move to self-checkout is not an attempt to cut staff.
“Nobody is losing a job or being displaced as a result of this,” he said. “We can always use help back in the aisles waiting on customers. Will it mean a shift toward more part-time work? I don’t know.”
At one Atlanta Home Depot store, restaurant manager Mike Clark, 35, used the self-checkout to buy a snow shovel and a rake in less than three minutes.
“I look at it like you are getting four machines for the price of one employee,” Clark said. “It’s very efficient.”
Part-time work is good for corporations, no benefits to pay for. And shoot, in most of my many part-time jobs I was forced to work nearly 40 hours a week. The only difference is I didn’t get health or retirement benefits and my hours could be cut if they didn’t need as many people. Most people who work part-time have either another full or part-time job.