When I moved to Oregon from Arizona two years ago, I was shocked and a little put out that I couldn’t pump my own gas, but after I was told more than once by more than one person that Oregon was a state concerned about providing jobs and pumping our own gas took away those jobs, I understood the logic.

After a while I not only got used to sitting in my car while someone else pumped my gas, I began to support that way of thinking.

I rarely use the self-serve checkout stands in Home Depot or Lowe’s for that reason, and on the rare occasion there is no other choice, I find them flawed and impersonal, to say the least. With all the problems I see at Wal-Mart stores, they at least stayed away from the trend of self-serve checkout until now! The employees have had such cuts in hours already, what will this new trend do for the near-poverty-level employees? I often think when I hear about employees not having set days off or cutting hours from 30 down to 21, does anyone work a 40-hour week at Walmart? How can the employees survive? I also wonder “What would Mr. Walton think?”

There are now nine self-serve checkouts where until last month, there were eight registers where real people worked every day. Maybe we should all think about “quietly” refusing to use those registers. Do you think they might get the idea?

Peggy Waggoner

Terrebonne