I put forth a guess that airline passenger terminals have not been made more efficient with automation because that would expose just how inefficient the airline is away from the public areas of the terminal. The ground crew service has to be automated first, in order to actually see any benefits.
For instance, boarding procedures are intentionally inefficient, for two reasons. If the passengers boarded quickly, and in an orderly fashion, they would just have to wait even longer for the ground crew to prepare for departure. And the first-class passengers have to be guaranteed space in the first-come-first-served overhead bins. That's really the only reason to board early. If you don't have a carry-on bag, you might as well wait until just before they disconnect the boarding ramp, because they will still be loading bags and running checklists at that time.
The baggage claim areas are intentionally hard to reach from the embarkation areas, because people will have to wait for their bags when they get there anyway.
A lot of the inconveniences you experience as a passenger in the airport are there by design.
So I would further guess that the arbitrary check-in deadline exists as a method to resolve overbooking conflicts. If that particular flight had been overbooked, the human could not have done anything other than offer a conciliatory apology and some compensatory voucher, depending on their mood and your demeanor. The deadline conceals the fact that the airlines sometimes sell the same seat to multiple people.
To a deeper extent, when you create and then raise a child, and your child grows up and interacts with others, that is also a case of you unconsciously interacting with others.
Follow the chain of creative identity backwards in time to the beginning, and you end up with the cause of the universe, whatever that may be, unconsciously interacting with itself, through everyone and everything.
It's not very relevant, and perhaps not even important, but it's an interesting perspective :)
- Alan Watts
- "Your computer systems somehow completely failed to notify me in advance you cancelled my flight. Your airline has a legal obligation to book me on an alternative route, and pay compensation in the event of a significant delay."
- "I've followed your suggestion and been all round the airport looking for somewhere to print my ticket confirmation details, but can't find anywhere, and it's 11pm. Look, it's on my laptop screen."
- "Would you like a complimentary upgrade? You'll need to change your shoes first to comply with our business class policy, mind you"
- "We're overbooked, would you be interested in the option of a £500 and a hotel stay overnight? Any questions?"
- "You don't have an onward ticket? Not even a boat or bus ticket yet? OK, despite experiences you may have had with other airlines, we're strict on enforcing that country's visa policy, so you'll have to buy one. Here's the cheapest we sell, and this is the process for obtaining a refund after landing."
- "Oh, you've got a ticket with that airline, have you? We've got a codeshare agreement now - would you like us to put your bags through?"
- "The flight is delayed for five hours, here's your complimentary meal"
- "Look, I understand that your 777 has significantly fewer seats than the 747 it's replaced at short notice, but we're some of the first people to arrive, why would you bump us off? We're travelling on business so we need to be there and aren't at all interested in your compensation package. Yes, we have to be there on that day, for a trade show. No, we're not frequent flyers with your airline, but if it makes a difference a colleague of ours just got headhunted to a VP position in your airline. Yes, he sits next to us for the next month. Oh, there are seats available now?"
Needless to say, even where software can be written to deal with these edge cases, keeping it up to date with the latest issues isn't cheap, especially when you need (inexpensive) staff hanging around your kiosks just to deal with people that don't understand how to use them anyway.
Discrimination tends to happen in reverse, with special privileges created for customers that have a particularly strong need to travel, customers that have suffered from the airline's cockup, situations where customers need extra help etc. It's difficult to argue that "Computer says no" is an overall improvement on that.
I think it is, overall. Fixing problems may take a bit longer but they'll get fixed for everyone, rather than ad-hoc fixing it for upper-class folks who are friends with VPs and hanging the regular folks out to dry.
Disgruntled business people missing part of the trade show they'd bought the flights for, the couple of club scheme members the algorithm prioritises boarding the flight instead of being offered the option of cash compensation and masses of free points for flying tomorrow they might have actually preferred and a VP getting a flea in his ear for the worst airline service ever probably leaves everyone strictly worse off than before. Not to mention how much more incredibly rude it appears to the average person if an airline informs people they can't board the flight they're waiting for via the passport scan machine rather than a sympathetic human that's just going to ring a couple of people to check whether there's anything that can be done.
The pain is a lot less, though possibly still slightly less unsympathetic, depending on the mood of the attendant you'd otherwise have gotten.
Which airline, if you don't mind my asking?
I felt a little bad doing it, especially after listening to the actual calls where people would just sound so annoyed and frustrated as they continuously asked for an operator, but the client insisted that less people actually reached their call centers.
It was actually brilliant because it was responding to real frustration in a useful way, and it was disarming because it was a humorous thing for an automated system to do.
* fixed that for you
Now I deliberately avoid any automated checkout and go straight to the human cashier. if you insist on replacing humans with machines, it has to be flawless
Humans can optimise the path from the conveyor belt to the bag so that the item just so happens to pass via the barcode scanner.
I could do that too, but the machine throws a hissy fit and doesn't let me scan the next item until I've placed it in the bagging area, and waited a second for the scales to stabilize. In the time it takes me to scan and bag one item on the automated checkout, an experienced human cashier can get 5-6 items bagged.
And that's only if things go as expected. Sometimes the scales bug out. Sometimes I have to navigate menus to specify what fresh produce I'm buying (while human checkout operators have memorised all the numbers). Sometimes I make a mistake and I'm not allowed to self-correct it. I have to wait for a human to come along and fix my mistake.
Not to mention, the machine is yelling instructions at me the entire time. "Yes I know I should use the pin pad to complete my transaction, in fact I did so while you were still playing the previous audio clip."
The only time the automated checkout is faster is when there is a queue at the real checkouts. And even then, the queue might be worth it just so I can avoid the automated checkout yelling at me.
It seems like no reasonable person wouldn't notice this flaw, let alone the presumably several people involved in creating this software, so it leads me to believe that there is some reason the shops want to encourage not using these checkouts.
I wonder why?
None of the steps are really that long by themselves, but in aggregate it's easily another 1-2 minutes checking out.
Been using this for years in Canada. Most well known as PayPass (MasterCard) but also PayWave (Visa) and Contactless Payments (American Express). By far it's the fastest and easiest way to pay (including vs cash), and I use it whenever I have a choice. I'd say it takes me well under 10 seconds which includes taking out and putting away my card.
I've noticed the newest terminals in sit-down restaurants are even working with it now, by moving the prompt for the tip to the start of the process (before you tap or put your card in) instead of the end.
Although I take my time to go through it. Damn, if it's done by machine, I can do it on my own pace.
My position, having worked as a checkout assistant FWIW, is the opposite. Using the self-checkout is redistributing money from the poor to the rich, AFAICT: you're saving the company wages, paying the same amount, and doing the work for free.
If the out of work checkout assistants got a living wage then you might be on to something.
However, checkout assistants are not very well paid and the job is horrible (it's not the worst, arguably, but could be improved).
I do not however feel responsible for the bad moral decisions of other people. My action in itself doesn't increase profits of the wealthy, it's actions of other people. These people need to be made socially responsible (for example via progressive taxation), not me.
It's really not even that bad, if you like talking to people. The checking groceries part can be sort of meditative and relaxing.
I prefer automated checkout too - but I'm curious as to why you think the job is "terrible"?
Before my first software development gig, I worked for 6 months as a cashier. I won't say it was all rainbows and roses, but it wasn't "terrible". Hard on the feet (standing), but I was young at the time so it wasn't too big of a deal. Dealing with irate customers could be interesting at time (pass 'em to a manager if you couldn't calm 'em down). Occasionally you'd get someone trying to return an item bought 20 years ago (actually had this happen to me).
But there were also the "regulars": The 70 year old lady who came in every Wednesday to purchase a bunch of liquor - who'd then walk out, and hop into her brand new Vette. The weird cat dude, who always smelled, but was friendly - purchasing a cart full of cat food, and another of rubbing alcohol and swabs (poor cats). The guy you always carded for beer, because he looked underage - and even though you know he wasn't, you did it anyhow, and he complained - but corporate policy, ya know?
Then a break - go face the aisles, or stock new stuff, or pull the old stuff. Have some lunch or some dinner. Eventually close the store, sweep the aisles, clean up, shut down, and go home.
For me, it was an "after school" kind of deal - not a career. But it wasn't a terrible job. Just difficult on the mind and body (it was a bit boring at times). My fellow employees were all friendly, and management was nice and helpful. I always got paid on time, meager as it was.
It gave me a better perspective and understanding for those working behind the counter, because I know what they're going thru. Plus, it also taught me how to properly scan items quickly (though when I started, the place I worked at didn't have scanners - they didn't get those until a couple of months later). Even so, when an item doesn't scan, I find it a bit frustrating, but most systems have a way still to enter the UPC number...
...still, I wouldn't want to go back to those days.
I don't like the bagging system that has to ensure you put your item into a bag, and that has a quite noticeable delay in responding to your actions.
I also don't like the tiny area they have for the bags. What am I supposed to do? Put full bags back into my half-emptied shopping cart alongside items that haven't been scanned yet? It makes me uncomfortable, like they'll think I'm up to something.
I also tend to buy items in bulk, like 2-liter bottles, and it's nice to say "I have 8 of these" and pass one to the cashier.
This is really not the case the self-checkout lines are designed for.
I use them almost exclusively for those cases where I duck in and grab a couple things quickly, and want to get the hell out. It's always faster and easier than even the 12-items-or-less express checkout line, not to mention the regular lines, where you get stuck behind somebody with a cart rounded to the sky and $400 worth of groceries in it.
It depends on the store. At the grocery store a few miles away, I can scan an item and immediately put it in a bag. At the grocery store closest to me, you scan the item and place it on a belt, which takes it to the end of the counter. You bag everything at the end. By contrast, at that store, a cashier can scan an item an place it directly in a bag.
Automated would I walk out the door and rfid or whatever senses what I'm carrying and charges my account.
Or, I don't go to the store at all and shit just shows up on my doorstep, periodically or whenever I hit a button.
I wonder how much of this is super markets jumping on to the fact people are conflating automation with using a machine and assuming self-service checkouts are proof of a technological revolution. At the end of the day the same amount of work is being done at the till as if a cashier was working but it is now being done for free and a company won't miss a chance to capitalise on an opportunity like that.
The Target on the other hand has rows and rows of empty checkout tills. They try to get you to use the automated tills but that line is so much longer that it just boggles the mind. Any time savings is wasted on the machine having an error,
In particular, I was instinctively looking at the screen instead of the camera, despite the big sign telling you not to.
Walking over to the check-in counter, a polite explanation of the situation I found myself in (and, possibly, my moderate-level status with the carrier but I don't fully know) made the service attendant remove the problem in about 30 seconds, guaranteeing that both I and my luggage would make the flight with no problems despite being 'technically past the deadline now'.
Flesh-based interaction points, by their very nature, have a tendancy to span a far broader range of service quality than machines. The bad are far worse because machines don't gossip and hate their jobs. Conversely, machines have little hope when things go south compared with a good service employee, who'll do their level best to go above and beyond their basic responsibilites to make whatever issue you have either go away or minimally impact you.
My experience is that one of the most apparent examples of this is if you ever find yourself significantly up the greasy ladder of the airline status game for whatever reason. I postulate that because carriers have realised that 'bending the rules' is a relatively 0-cost commodity to exchange for brand loyalty and this is precisely factored into the training and job directives of their employees.