Have you noticed?

Have you noticed how many retail outlets grocery, home improvement and more have been busy installing self-checkouts .

Oh yes and with those installations have you noticed how many cashiers are not working. Oh yes, they feel they can cut back on manned checkouts and we the customers can just check ourselves out. Are they offering any incentives for us to do the work? A discount, a coupon or even a bagger?

I was at Fred Meyer on Thursday and yes they now have 8 self checkouts at the front end with eight manned checkouts in between. The customer backup was all the way back into the aisles, they only had two

cashiers working and only one customer was using the self checkout. So they are assuming if we get fed up enough we will just go check ourselves out.

The result: Cashiers are losing their hours, which means they will be losing benefits and guess what, they are improving their bottom line. Unless we as customers let them know we are not going to put up with it, I am afraid we are going to see the trend continue. If you can, stand in that line and let them know this is not acceptable.

Carol Mulholland

Spokane