[floodyberry-]

Poring over individual transactions sounds like a terrible, if not impossible, way to identify aggregate trends

[chrissnell]

You’re absolutely right and to be clear, my dad also pours over data roll-ups, charts, etc., but he’s never stopped looking at receipts. It’s a habit he’s had since the 70s. Back in the day, he used these electro-mechanical cash registers that had very loud typewriter-like receipt printers. At the end of the day, the manager would run the journal and my dad—-in his office across the store—tell you what kind of a sales day it was simply by listening to the sound of the register doing the end-of-day sequence.

[cushychicken]

There's a persistent meme on HN that it's straightforward to make a business that "runs on autopilot", with no human intervention. I'll admit that such a business is possible, but I'm deeply skeptical of the durability of such a business.

I'd much rather bet on a business owner like your dad, who's deeply involved. Sounds like your dad's receipt reading was a great habit to have, and paid dividends far outside of just "making sure things were running OK on a daily basis".

[wildmanx]

Most of the time, the brain does this better than any machine.

That's why we don't have self-driving cars yet.

[floodyberry-]

Unless you're Kim Peek you're not doing inventory or trends in your head.

[dotancohen]

Then you underestimate the human ability to recognize patterns.