Coming soon: McDonald's with even less human interaction

In the future McD's might release a feel-good press release claiming they are moving to a $15/Hr wage "For the good of their employees." (They hide the fact they've laid of 30% of their workforce.)

Sales rise as a result of good PR while their costs have gone down. Everyone wins except for the people laid off.

Way to dodge all that logic with, "What? You talkin' to me?"

One article in slate.

One.

Sorry, but science works according to the burden of proof, not one article in Slate. "Clean Coal" is a charade - even if you can reduce the air pollution, there is still those pesky high levels of CO2 per unit of energy issue to deal with.

Give it up.

Five years ago, when your link was written, people were still pinning hopes on the technology.

As recently as 5 months ago, not so much.

http://insideenergy.org/2016/10/11/clean-coal-fact-or-fiction/

And while this article still tries to hold out hope for some kind of out of thin air technology to come to fruition. Nobody else is.

Not because it's dirty, but because of price. It's a market force.

"Clean Coal" only increases the price, if it were actually real. It's never going to happen. We're not going to spend money capturing emissions from burning coal when doing so rockets it's cost way above renewables, natural gas, and nuclear.

And digging the stuff out of the ground isn't going to be cheaper any time soon.

I agree that CVS self checkout is pretty fast, but I've had the opposite experience at grocery stores, and only use the self checkout if there is no line, most customers are way slower than store cashiers. The Shaws at the Pru had self checkout for awhile but did away with those lanes and added back cashiers.

Self Checkouts were a god send to CVS and Home Depot. Only because if you only wanted one or two items, you can use a self check out far faster than you can a cashier. They work well for a couple of items that don't require anything extra (PLU lookups, weight, etc etc), but the minute you have several items or lots of stuff requiring PLU's (i.e. bread, fruit, etc). the time savings go way down (as does the hassle-value go way up). This is why they don't work well in supermarkets.

I think in most CVS's cases, no job really was lost when they moved to self check outs. You still need an attendant to help customers with the self check outs. (age restricted items, coupons, usage, etc).

The CVS near me, a busy CVS, does not have self check outs. They still only have 1 person on register, and if help is needed she calls someone for a backup (who usually is stocking), and if they need a third person, a manager might come up. If you need more than 3 people to check people out at CVS, you're having one hellva sale or a run in band aids or something! (and usually are staffed for it)

And frankly, that practice of running your front end has been in place for many years as it was how we did it eons ago when I worked at a drug store (a chain similar to CVS that JCP/Eckerd (Rite Aid now) sucked up in the 90s). We never had more than one person dedicated on register, unless it was around Christmas or we were having a big sale. It was always "call for backup".

Even still, the CVS(s) in DTX (both on Summer & Washington) still have at least TWO people on check outs during most times. One attendant, and one actual cashier. Slower times, it's just one. So no real job was lost there when places moved to self checkouts, because there was always a low number of physical cashiers anyways long before cashiers existed. The self checkouts, and the abundance of them (1 attendant + 6-8 self check outs) just made it seem like we lost jobs.

Higher rates for Red and Orange.