Let’s be very clear before somebody sends me a lawyer’s letter: Checkers is not fomenting bloody revolution in SA. No matter how much it might look like the supermarket chain is toying with the idea of collapsing the economy and plunging us into chaos, this is not actually going to happen.
Yes, Checkers has excitedly announced the launch of a “smart trolley” that is essentially a self-checkout terminal on wheels. And yes, self-checkout technology is a deliberate assault by the rich on the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, who work as cashiers in this country’s largest industry. And yes, if even a minority of these women were put out of work by automation, SA would collapse faster than you can say, “You want a plastic?”
But that’s not happening, because Checkers is only rolling out a few smart trolleys, just enough to send a tiny jolt of energy through a middle class that is now so desiccated that you have to rebrand grocery shopping as a chance to pilot a space ship. Mostly though, Checkers is unlikely to be going all in on automation because the global retail industry hasn’t yet decided whether it’s a boost or a burden to the bottom line.
In both the US and UK some retailers are replacing self-checkout terminals with human beings, partly in response to protests by shoppers and unions and partly because, for all the advances in technology and security, a lot of people still need help with self-checkout, and a few people still steal.
Likewise, here at home the brave new world of self-service that Pick n Pay was touting in 2016 has vanished, perhaps because someone in government explained the facts of life to the board — namely that they could either have human cashiers and a country, or they could have robots and a crater.
This, of course, flies in the face not only of commerce but of the very fundamentals of late capitalism in which, we are told every day, everything would be better if we could all just be more efficient. Efficiency, we are taught, is a shining city on a hill, something that serves the greater human good.
I’m not knocking efficiency. I can roll my eyes as passive-aggressively as the next person in a stationary queue. Hell, sometimes I even roll my eyes at them just for dramatic effect.
But far too often, I think, efficiency is weaponised to serve shareholder value, that planet-killing parasite whereby — in the case of SA’s supermarkets — women travel long distances, usually in the dark, to be paid between R5,500 and R8,000 a month (an amount that apparently includes them being ambassadors for, and the face of, multibillion-rand corporations) so that extremely wealthy people can get their inflation-plus-10 returns.
In other words, when the suits start dangling shiny gadgets in front of us and murmuring about how they’re going to unlock productivity straight out of a C-suiter’s wet dream, it’s worth remembering that when shareholders are the only people who matter, productivity and efficiency don’t necessarily include human realities.
Indeed, we might actually be the last big spanner in the works, we humans with our inefficient need to eat and sleep and love and go outside; the final blockage capitalism must, by definition, seek to dissolve.
For now though, I’m sure sense will prevail and Checkers will limit itself to a couple of space-trolleys. After all, the only things worse for its shareholders than thousands of inefficient humans is millions of angry, jobless ones who can’t afford to buy its products.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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