Had a very disheartening experience yesterday at a grocery store. Hy-Vee is a chain based in Iowa that has been around for several decades and always had an image and reputation for being employee-owned and humane to its employees, even known for hiring disabled and mentally-challenged people. Looks that all that philosophy is gone now. The store is in an upscale area of my suburb with lots of new development. I noticed that they had got rid of their express checkout lanes and replaced them with scan and go machines just like Walmart did about a year ago.

I mentioned this to a couple customers and they replied that they had no problem with the change, saying that they assumed the store was having problems hiring people for the express lanes. I told them that people need jobs and that I doubt that hiring issues were the case. Typical upper-middle class attitude, blame the worker and not the greedy management. I will do my best to boycott the scan and go machines, just like I do when I have to shop at Walmart. But it disgusts me how many people don't care about the elimination of jobs for more profit, at least not until it happens to them or someone close to them. They prefer convenience over standing up for other workers. I hope that the store gets burned by people using the scan machines and cheating the store by not ringing up everything on it, as I've heard it's possible to do that and game the system by doing that and also ringing up one of an item and then carrying out several more of the same item without ringing up the rest. But I doubt the upscale shoppers there would take the risk of stealing and getting caught. They have too much to lose.....