Larry Parrish posted:

it's actually so they don't have to waste labor rotating all the labels to the right side out. sometimes your coke etc rep will freak out and threaten to cancel over this kind of thing. ive watched it happen between my manager and some idiot sales manager before.

Tiler Kiwi posted:

thats insane but also im thinking itd kind of be a kickass job to just be some horrible apparition that haunts grocery stores when they gently caress up the agreed upon rituals

chasing some group of twenty some clerks in a darkened sams club and destroying them one by one until the last one banishes me by assembling a flawless super bowl sunday arrangement of the soda inventory

smarxist posted:

excuse me

Alan Smithee posted:

goatse for the frozen meats aisle

who run babybattertown

Tiler Kiwi posted:

marketing is one of those things that you can sit back and analyze and figure yeah, it makes sense for it to work this way given all the conditions in place and how the world operates, but you still hear about a guy whose job it is to get coke products oriented correctly in gas stations or hunting down the misuse of micky mouse in daycares and you just have to wonder how they dont lie in bed at night wishing they'd wake up as a giant kafka bug instead of the absolutely insane joke life they live every day

and then like, all of modern tech poo poo is in some way devoted to expanding the reach and scope of adverts and brand name power, lol

Rutibex posted:

there is no need to choose between imperial and metric, they are both fine systems and both have their use. try the Canadian method the next time you want to measure something!

Tiler Kiwi posted:

the "we can put adverts all over it" angle does make it make a lot more sense

Tiler Kiwi posted:

marketing is one of those things that you can sit back and analyze and figure yeah, it makes sense for it to work this way given all the conditions in place and how the world operates, but you still hear about a guy whose job it is to get coke products oriented correctly in gas stations or hunting down the misuse of micky mouse in daycares and you just have to wonder how they dont lie in bed at night wishing they'd wake up as a giant kafka bug instead of the absolutely insane joke life they live every day

and then like, all of modern tech poo poo is in some way devoted to expanding the reach and scope of adverts and brand name power, lol

vyelkin posted:

earlier today i saw a weather warning for near where i live so i tried to go to weather.com to see if i was in imminent danger of death and weather.com informed me that to learn if i was in danger of dying from weather i would need to disable my adblocker

PopZeus posted:

advertising should be illegal except for one giant phonebook per city you can visit and leaf through. also each company only gets one page.

quote:

In a short CCTV video, a clerk at a small convenience store can be seen taking a bottle of coffee from a cooler and drinking it. When he returns to the cash register, an unseen person's voice emits from a speaker on the ceiling and interrogates him about whether he scanned and paid for the item.

In another video, a cashier is standing behind the counter talking to someone just out of frame. There’s a 'ding' sound, and the voice from above questions the cashier about who the other man is—he’s there to give the cashier a ride at the end of his shift—then orders the man to stand on the other side of the counter.

The videos are just a few examples that Washington-based Live Eye Surveillance uses to demonstrate its flagship product: a surveillance camera system that keeps constant watch over shops and lets a remote human operator intervene whenever they see something they deem suspicious. For enough money—$399 per month according to one sales email Motherboard viewed—a person in Karnal, India will watch the video feed from your business 24/7. The monitors “act as a virtual supervisor for the sites, in terms of assuring the safety of the employees located overseas and requesting them to complete assigned tasks,” according to a job posting on the company's website.

Live Eye is one of many companies profiting from the increasing adoption of workplace surveillance tools during the pandemic, which human rights experts say corporations have exploited to introduce a wide array of spy tools in the name of safety.

“We’re using insecurity about the risk of robbery as an excuse to target workers,” Eva Blum-Dumontet, a senior researcher at Privacy International, told Motherboard. “This is really an excuse to reframe how we’re working. Essentially what’s happening with workplace surveillance is employers trying to keep track of their employees to make sure they match their idea of productivity. This is very toxic for the mental health of employees.”

Live Eye Surveillance did not respond to a request for comment.

On its website, the company claims several major corporations as customers, including 7-Eleven, Shell, Dairy Queen, and Holiday Inn. Many of those businesses are franchised, and it isn’t clear from Live Eye’s materials whether the corporations have purchased the surveillance systems or if they’ve been bought by individual franchise owners.

A former 7-Eleven field consultant who oversaw multiple stores told Motherboard he was concerned when a store owner showed them Live Eye Surveillance’s promotional videos. The consultant, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their contacts still with the company, said that the surveillance system is a “solution in search of a problem,” because employee theft and shoplifting actually cost 7-Eleven franchise owners very little.

Even worse, the former field consultant said, the particular form of surveillance Live Eye is selling could actually be putting store workers in danger.

In one of the sample videos Live Eye sends potential customers, two black-clad robbers, one carrying an assault rifle, run into what appears to be a 7-Eleven store and force the clerk behind the counter. As the clerk starts to open the cash register, the Live Eye system dings and a voice informs the robbers that the police have been called. They run out of the store.

“That’s how someone is going to get killed,” the former field consultant said. “You don’t startle someone with an assault rifle. That violates 7-Eleven policy. There’s a reason why the silent alarm is silent” at banks and other businesses.

7-Eleven did not respond to Motherboard’s questions about whether it condones the use of Live Eye’s systems. The company did provide a statement saying: “7-Eleven, Inc. cares deeply about the safety of our associates and customers. We provide every 7-Eleven store with a base security system that includes CCTV and alarms, however, independent franchise owners can install their own system on top of what is provided."

The pandemic has driven the spread of workplace surveillance tools for both blue and white collar workers, Blum-Dumontet said, but it has a disproportionate impact on low-paid employees.

“There are a lot of people who have lost their jobs, a lot of people who don’t have much choice whether to accept a job or not,” she said. “This is why employers are getting away with opting for these forms of surveillance that take a real toll on employees.”

Oneiros posted:

bullshit jobs are a lot more widespread than just marketing

also i've seen shops cover fridge doors with gigantic vinyl advertisements before which at least have the advantage of not having a failure mode that fucks both purposes

i wonder how much of the drive for this poo poo is actually supporting dynamic/discriminatory pricing

Milo and POTUS posted:

Someone needs to swirly matti

camoseven posted:

Nothus posted:

https://twitter.com/MannistoM/status/1408825562156707840?s=20

Rent seeking soda prices

BattleMaster posted:

This is the guy who sells these things

The Nastier Nate posted:

How does dynamic pricing on a LCD display even make sense? The price is determined by the bar code when you bring it to the register…not what a sign on the shelf says

The Nastier Nate posted:

How does dynamic pricing on a LCD display even make sense? The price is determined by the bar code when you bring it to the register…not what a sign on the shelf says

FFT posted:

bar codes identify what's being sold, not prices. "2 liters of X soda costs 15 cents more today" doesn't require changing bar codes, just changing what X soda costs in the POS system.

BattleMaster posted:

This is the guy who sells these things

silentsnack posted:

also have to question what kind of bougie fantasy-world shitlib assumptions go into the reasoning that decides it's a good idea to devote more space to pushing what the sellers want to sell, regardless of whether anyone wants to buy their garbage products and whether that means the stuff people actually did want to buy becomes harder to find, or dynamic pricing to make potential customers have to rethink whether they want to buy something at inflated prices now or put it off for later (or never)

are we certain that adverting Idea Guys are even sapient?

silentsnack posted:

also have to question what kind of bougie fantasy-world shitlib assumptions go into the reasoning that decides it's a good idea to devote more space to pushing what the sellers want to sell, regardless of whether anyone wants to buy their garbage products and whether that means the stuff people actually did want to buy becomes harder to find, or dynamic pricing to make potential customers have to rethink whether they want to buy something at inflated prices now or put it off for later (or never)

are we certain that adverting Idea Guys are even sapient?

The Nastier Nate posted:

Yes that’s true but neither of those things have anything to do with what the magic mirror says.

A non-traditional checkout makes more sense

The Lone Badger posted:

It is entirely trivial to change what price an item scans at. But you need to change the advertised price just as quickly and fluidly, because if the scanned price is higher than the displayed price (on the shelf) you are in legal hot water.

Thanatosian posted:

I don't know how true it is, but I've been told that brands frequently pay grocery stores for prime shelf placement. That would strongly incentivize them to want to stock the brands paying them the most, I would think.

smarxist posted:

just what we need; a way to make surge pricing on commodities easier

Crow Buddy posted:

I think he is saying the POS and the cooler doors are tied together.