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Walmart's NYC-based innovation center is experimenting with a cashier-less store concept called Project Kepler, which "aims to reimagine the in-store shopping experience with the help of technologies like computer vision," Recode reports. Project Kepler is in part aimed at creating a store that would feature no checkout lines or cashiers, but use computer vision to detect which products customers leave the store with and then charge their accounts accordingly. Why it matters: Amazon is also experimenting without cashiers, while roughly 3.5 million Americans operate cash registers for a living. Recode also reports that Walmart's new start-up subsidiary, called Code 8,...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Wednesday that retail sales clerk and cashier were the two largest occupations in the United States in May 2014, with their numbers increasing slightly since 2013. In its annual report on wages and occupational employment, the BLS found that 4.6 million Americans worked in retail sales while 3.4 million more worked as cashiers, making up almost six percent of total U.S. employment. The two job categories increased by a combined 400,000 workers since 2012. Retail workers made $24,020 a year on average, while cashiers made $20,670, according to the BLS. …

The touch screens will only accept debit or credit cards, adding to the slow death knell of cash and coins. This all goes along with an overall revamp of McDonald's restaurants worldwide aimed at projecting a modern image as opposed to the old-fashioned golden arches with a slightly creepy (to my taste anyway) clown guy hanging around the french fries.

Panera Bread is going to start using kiosks to input customer orders. The fast-casual chain will start adding about eight kiosks per restaurant, writes Venessa Wong at Bloomberg Businessweek. Customers will also be able to order by phone. As a result, there will be one to two fewer cashiers in restaurants. Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich said that the new system would help accuracy of orders. Customers would also be able to customize their food. Shaich told Businessweek that it won't be cutting back on workers. The former cashiers will now carry food to customers' tables.

Profiling. That word has taken on such an ugly connotation in recent years. And yet, if you want to be a successful couponer, you MUST profile. And don't feel guilty about profiling cashiers. We all profile in one way or another. Those "enlightened" souls who claim they don't profile are lying. In fact, they are probably profiling people more than the rest of us.My favorite part of the recent TLC show, "Extreme Couponing" was when Joanie Demer aka Krazy Coupon Lady flat out admitted that she profiles cashiers. And how does she profile the cashiers? As Joanie stated she...

SAUDI women activists expressed outrage and confusion overnight at a new fatwa challenging a government initiative to allow women to work as cashiers in supermarkets and department stores. The fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, issued on Sunday by the kingdom's governing body of clerics, said the cashier jobs were not permissible because they resulted in the women mixing with unrelated men, which is prohibited under Saudi Arabia's ultra-strict form of Islam. Signed by the country's grand mufti and six other top clerics, it contradicted a push by the government to create new jobs for women, who face high unemployment in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supermarket checkout clerks are going the way of the bank teller - available if you want one, avoidable if you don't. Self-checkout machines, which let customers scan, bag and pay for their own groceries, offer shoppers a chance to avoid the lines at the checkout stands. "This is like an ATM for them. It's quicker and easier," said Jennifer Panetta, a spokeswoman for the six-state Harris Teeter chain, based in Matthews, N.C. "They are in pretty much all our stores." About one-quarter of grocery chains are trying them now, with some 34,000 machines in use in stores...