#you can use them at checkout

[cheridraws]

my built in camera app doesn't even read QR codes so I had to download a SEPARATE app to read these cursed codes. its SO BAD

RIGHT, like why would you institute a system like this when you had a perfectly functioning one before??? And it’s even inaccessible for some people, as you said! What are you supposed to do if your phone can’t read QR codes? What if you don’t have a phone?

The paper coupons in those little magazines were fine!! They were cute even!! I looked through that shit like it was the evening paper!Now I have to go through a laggy app that barely works, or try and fail to scan a QR code in the middle of the store (and mine doesn’t even have service so. what am I supposed to do??)

Kroger I’m begging u go back to paper pleasepleadeplease

[muffinlance]

Crochet Pattern: Rollable Isopuppy (Giant Isopod Dog)

Crochet an isopuppy! As cuddled in Salvage; story and pattern both by me. Whether you’ve read the story or not, treat yourself to a Very Good Dog. You deserve it. <3

>>> Get the pattern here! <<<

[id: Photos of a crocheted isopuppy (giant isopod dog) from various angles. It has the head and tail of a dog, with isopod legs, shell, and antennae. It is a very Good Boi. End id.]

Also that is now my site for patterns, both sewn and crocheted (Dragon Zuko is also up there), so. Subscribe if you're interested in that. If you're interested in my writing, that's at this site. Also I'm on Ravelry now.

>>> Isopuppy Pattern! <<<

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

my strongest take is that if you have more than 5-10 items (range depends on size and ease of scanning) you should not use the self-checkout when there is a perfectly good cashier line already.

If you bring alcohol or other age restricted items to the self checkout I will kill you in the middle of the Walmart and everyone behind me in line will be cheering.

[dragonanne4fun]

.

[libelelle]

ALL CUSTOMERS BEED TO EXPLODE

[leafy-m]

So I hit my 700th edit for the WHA wiki today, because I am a totally normal person

[mbat]

i think people should be fully allowed to opt out of working jobs and still be able to live comfortably no matter what their situation is and im not fucking kidding

[july-19th-club]

i'm NOT sure but i think it MIGHT have been possible that our in with the local newspaper was . potentially in some way . flirting with me? in a way where i was able to maybe halfway pick up on it and. reciprocate . idk we had a little chitchat about the weather and then it became about star trek and wars themed coffee mugs until my boss showed up. and like during the entire convo with my boss he was also sort of talking to me? like in the angle he was standing at and when the convo stopped being about work stuff and devolved into chitchat he kept like. sort of including me eye-contact-wise. that might not be flirtign maybe its just normal conversation. he made a point to say he was glad we hadn't put jk rowling on our march madness author bracket. which is sort of apropos of nothing unless he wanted to make a point of telegraphing his social/political leanings such that anyone listening would know that information about him if he was attempting to get their attention in a positive way. also dont know if THAT'S flirting but it seems like it's Something. socially. also he gave me a free newspaper which was funny

[ikkan]

went to ups to return my pc and the old man working there literally asked me if i was shipping it. like no, sir….this my emotional support pc that i decided to just casually place it down on the desk, here, so i can rest. 🙃

[raziraphale]

had the least annoying trip to the pharmacy in a long while (I didn't have to wait forever to flag down an employee to check me out)(because they stopped bothering to staff checkouts)(even though some products like bus passes/tickets are locked behind the cash and can't be checked out without assistance) and it was all thanks to some idiot driving their car through the front windows and taking out the self checkouts by accident

[swagging-back-to]

my unpopular opinion is that i actually really like self checkout in stores and I'm glad it's been implemented at basically every big retailer.

[neverendingford]

.

[yuumei-art]

My 8th annual charity art sale is happening now! Use discount code GIVINGTHANKS at checkout to save 15% OFF on all orders, and 100% of the profit will be donated to environmental charities! Everything in my shop from wall scrolls, artbooks, prints, postcards and koi lanterns are all on sale! Get them at YuumeiArt.com/shop You can find the receipts to prior year's donations here

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[jinwoosbabyboo]

Talk to Me, I Talk Back

The Lads Men don't play about you HOWEVER COMMA you also don't play about them. [Requested by: Anon]

Zayne

You and Zayne were standing in line to order coffee. The line moved slowly and just as you two were up next some lady pushed in front of you, shoving Zayne into you.

MC: She don't see us?

Zayne: I'm sure she has her reasons for cutting

MC: She shoved you Zayne

Zayne: Let's not cause a scene in this cafe

MC: Frankly I don't give a damn

You stepped up bumping the lady with your hip hard. She tumbled off to the side nearly falling face first into the display case.

Stranger: Well excuse me!

MC: You're excused wait in line next time instead of shoving my man out of the way.

Zayne: So much for not causing a scene *pinching the bridge of his nose*

Rafayel

You decided to go on a walk with Rafayel because he wanted to clear his head before he started sketching. He spoke animatedly making big gestures with his hands and ended up accidentally knocking a passerby's phone from their hand.

Stranger: Hey asshole watch yourself!

Rafayel: Sorry ma'am it was an accident

Stranger: What if you broke it!?

MC: *picks up her phone* It landed in the grass without a scratch its fi-

The stranger snatched it from your hand. You draw back in shock and looked at Rafayel to make sure he was seeing this tomfoolery as well.

Rafayel: *whispering* stay calm

Stranger: Tell your boyfriend to be more careful!

MC: *Snatches the phone and slams it on the concrete* Maybe you should be more careful look at that you broke your phone

You grabbed Rafayels' wrist and pulled him along.

Rafayel: That was sexy ... I think I'm hard now

Xavier

You and Xavier stood outside of Jeremiahs flower shop trying to agree on somewhere to eat. Suddenly a stranger waddled up and shoved a stack of papers in Xaviers arms.

Stranger: Hand these out

Xavier: Uhhh

MC: You could ask a bit nicer don't you think?

Stranger: Shut up lady this is a conversation between men

You tucked your phone in your pocket, grabbed the stack of papers from Xavier and dropped them in the nearest trash can.

MC: Now your conversation is done let's go Xav

The stranger sputtered in disbelief as you dragged Xavier away.

Xavier: He probably just needed help

MC: Maybe he'll ask nicer next time and you need to stop letting random strangers make you hand out flyers

Xavier: It's hard to say no

MC: If I had a dollar for every time I found you handing out flyers I'd have two dollars...it's not a lot, but it’s insane that it happened twice.

Sylus

You were standing in line for checkout and Sylus sauntered over to you after you sent him back to grab a pair of jeans that you wanted.

Stranger: Uhm excuse me sir the line starts back there

MC: Oh he's with me

Stranger: I'm not talking to you I'm talking to this rude idiot

You look at Sylus who is giving this Karen a bored stare. You look around dramatically before looking up at Sylus in disbelief.

MC: Who is she talking to?

Sylus: Couldn't be us

You look back to the Karen who's red in the face with anger. You step around Sylus so you're face to face with this lady.

MC: Let's use our big girl brains here … if he's with me why would he stand at the back of the line?

Stranger: He cut the li-

You raised your hand to stop her.

MC: Your mouth is moving a lot like a rat shut it please

You finally get called to the next open register and Sylus leans down to whisper in your ear.

Sylus: You're feisty today ... you don't like seeing people be rude to me?

MC: She's lucky I didn't punch her in her jaw

Sylus: So violent, but I'm the cruel one?

[mystery-twin-mystery-bags]

NEW STAN-CO AD JUST DROPPED!

They say that money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you a Mystery Twin Mystery Bag so that's essentially the same thing. With the holidays coming to a close, now is the perfect time to secure your own bag! Preorders are open now until January 15th!

Shop | Kofi All proceeds go to aid for Gaza.

Art by @gin-juice-tonic

Image Description:

Image 1: Stan Pines, in his Mr. Mystery attire, stands in front of a yellow background with favorite red and orange question marks. He is smiling at the camera and holding cash and credit card. He says, "Hey folks, were YOU given the best gift of all these past few holi-days? The gift of spending power? You know what I'm talking about. Some cold hard cash? Or maybe one of those checkout aisle gift card things that look like credit cards?"

Image 2: Stan is still smiling at the camera, holding up a finger. "If you answered 'yes' to one or more of those questions, I've got some friendly advice for you. You're gonna want to USE that spending power on something that'll really impress. Something that'll make your unspecified designated gift-giver say 'They spent that money we gave them so good! We should give them more money!'"

Image 3: Close up on Stan grabbing a Mystery Twin Mystery Bag, which is a navy blue pouch with Dipper and Mabels's zodiac symbols in the Palestinian flag colors. Stan says, "And I've got just the thing you need to buy to make that happen!"

Image 4: Stan pulls out a key chain of himself and points at it while smiling; the keychain mirrors him. "A keychain of ME!* Nothing says 'Financially Savvy' like your old pal Granule Stan. *Keychain depicted here not representative of any of the actual keychains being sold. The real ones are much nicer.

Image 5: Stan stands looking proud of himself, tugging on the collar of his suit. "Buying one of our Mystery Twin Mystery Bags will have your gift givers dipping right into their retirement funds to pensions just to get more money to hand out to ya, guaranteed! Or my name's not Stanford F. Pines."