Self-service machines are a form of pseudo-automation; rather than actually automate tasks, they offset them to unpaid customers. Typically implemented for customer convenience and to reduce labor costs, self-service is often criticized for worsening customer service and increasing loss and theft for retailers. Though millions of frontline service workers continue to interact with these technologies on a day-to-day basis, little is known about how these machines change the nature of frontline labor. Through interviews with current and former cashiers who work with self-checkout technologies, we investigate how technology that offsets labor from an employee to a customer can reconfigure frontline work. We find three changes to cashiering tasks as a result of self-checkout: (1) Working at self-checkout involved parallel demands from multiple customers, (2) self-checkout work was more problem-oriented (including monitoring and policing customers), and (3) traditional checkout began to become more demanding as easier transactions were filtered to self-checkout. As their interactions with customers became more focused on problem solving and rule enforcement, cashiers were often positioned as adversaries to customers at self-checkout. To cope with perceived adversarialism, cashiers engaged in a form of relational patchwork, using techniques like scapegoating the self-checkout machine and providing excessive customer service in order to maintain positive customer interactions in the face of potential conflict. Our findings highlight how even under pseudo-automation, workers must engage in relational work to manage and mend negative human-to-human interactions so that machines can be properly implemented in context.

翻译：自助服务机是一种伪自动化形式；它们并非真正实现任务自动化，而是将劳动转移至未获报酬的顾客。自助服务通常以提升顾客便利性和降低劳动力成本为目的而实施，却常因导致服务质量下降、增加零售商的损耗与盗窃风险而受到批评。尽管数以百万计的一线服务人员每日仍需与这些技术互动，但人们对这些机器如何改变一线劳动本质却知之甚少。通过对使用自助结账技术的现任及前任收银员进行访谈，我们研究了将劳动从员工转移至顾客的技术如何重塑一线工作。我们发现自助结账导致收银任务发生三重变化：（1）自助结账工作需同时应对多位顾客的并行需求；（2）自助结账工作更侧重于问题处理（包括监控与约束顾客行为）；（3）传统结账通道因简易交易被分流至自助结账而变得更具挑战性。随着收银员与顾客的互动更聚焦于问题解决与规则执行，他们在自助结账场景中常被置于顾客的对立面。为应对这种对立关系，收银员采取了一种关系修补策略，通过将责任转嫁至自助结账机、提供超额客户服务等技术手段，在潜在冲突面前维持积极的顾客互动。我们的研究结果揭示：即使在伪自动化条件下，劳动者仍需通过关系性劳动来管理与修复负面的人际互动，以确保机器在具体情境中得以有效实施。