“things have gotten so bad that it has made many people need to steal, so we can’t keep self checkouts open”
They’d rather change their operations than lobby for the poorest to have enough money and not have to steal.
They’d rather change their operations than lobby for the poorest to have enough money to not have to steal.
They’d rather change their operations than
lobby for the poorest topay their employees enough money to not have to steal.I thought surely an organization of GROCERS would lobby vociferously for SNAP benefits (food stamps), at a time when onerous work requirements throw people off SNAP and overwhelm local food pantries.
Instead we get a bit of the pearlescent extraction of the meat cylinder via suction:
Although I fully agree with you, there is no gotcha here. They are greedy and want the most for themselves, that’s it.
Paying people a fair salary is other companies problem
There’s a Walmart near me that I just never bother going to because like 80% of the non-grocery items are locked behind plexiglass. There are 4 self-checkouts and 2 employees assigned to just stand there watching people to make sure they don’t shoplift. They’ve made shopping so hostile that it barely makes sense for it to be a department store at all. Might as well just go back to the old model of telling the employee what you want and then they go get it for you.
I wanted to buy some razor blades and the poor teenager at the Walmart just couldn’t get his magnet key thingie to unlock the plastic lock on the hanger holding the packages. I waited patiently for like 5 minutes and was like look I’ll fix it. I pulled down on the packaging, tore the little cardboard piece and freed the blades in like one try.
I then still paid $40 for them like a good citizen and ignored how much I was getting ripped off.
All while being watched by a million store cameras, three people at the self checkout, the camera reflecting my own image in the self checkout machine, the greeter giving me a dirty look and the detectors at the door.
Its more absurd than airport security how pointless it all is.
Which is basically what they are doing with grocery pickup.
Never thought of it that way… But yes.
I’m here with your regular reminder that is you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t.
Good news, new jobs opening to fill the cashier roles. But watch they will just implement a ticket system and checkout will take 3 hours.
Yeah but tickets cost money so they will make you sign in virtually on their app
How do I do that on my Linux phone?
Hopefully everyone in the place at any given time will start stealing then. Not one person is going to wait 3 hours to pay for their groceries while cold shit thaws or only for a few items because they want to keep raising prices and enshittifying every damn thing.
Pretty sure the self checkout isn’t where most people steal, why not just walk out the door with whatever you want?
You don’t steal all of it, you just miss the barcode on a couple items for the camera, so it looks innocent if somebody stops you.
Well, it’s just a simple fact When I want something, I don’t want to pay for it I walk right through the door
Jane, were you caught stealing again?
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As someone who finds interacting with register attendants painful, and doesn’t steal, this is unfortunate news.
Agreed. Devastating.
Or those who shop while stoned…
Agreed. I am sad.
Shitty thing is they won’t hire more cashiers when they shut these off.
Guessing they’ll also raise prices when they simply return to previously normal operations.
My local grocery had self checkout for about a year before ripping them out and putting normal ones back in. They don’t seem to be understaffed.
Not all stores are awful on all fronts. They don’t have chairs for their checkout people yet though.
They aren’t bringing back cashiers, they’ll have one cashier with a massive line as a deterrent to get you to download the scan as you go app on your phone so you supply the bar code scanner at your expense and they track your phone and change the digital price tags based on your Palantir profile as you walk up.
Or the other option is Walmart has started remodeling their stores into primarily warehouses. The main entrance is badged only for picker workers to hand orders to Doordash or put app orders in people’s cars. The legacy experience entrance will be a temporary secondary option until they get enough robots to make the building fully lights out and automated. Shambling automatons will emerge from the black hell portal in the surface of The Edifice with your tampons and then run facial recognition on you and sniff your car for drug and explosive residue.
I’ll do a big shop, look shocked at the line up and just walk out. Have fun dealing with my cart.
There’s no way I’ll get an app. I get they’ll have methods to entice people but I held off getting Facebook when it was the big thing, I’ll be ready for when corpos want to fuck around.
In fact I welcome it to see how I do.
You’re just silly.
Your car itself will sniff you for drugs and explosives every time you start it and every 30 seconds thereafter, not the Walmart robot.
They could have saved so much time and money by just paying the cashiers a living wage.
If you can’t develop the agency to acquire employment at a living wage or - here’s a fucky idear for ya - start your own (successful) business, then you deserve to succumb to entrapy, imo
Empathy, it is really becoming scarcer with each passing day.
Hmm I like self checkout because I don’t like dealing with retail people. I’m introverted by nature.
Just get me the F in and get me the F out. Charge the correct price and give me correct change. Machines do this SO WELL.
.
Seriously: if they take away our self checkout, we riot.
I’m on the same boat.
Until the machine needs to verify an alcohol purchase…
Bro, you can just drink thr alcohol before buying.
The one person managing 10 lanes walks over and types in your age. Works pretty well in my experience.
Lucky you, she walked by me 10 times while talking to 15 other staff.
Have they tried adding AI? 3D printing? Quantum computing? Space based solar power?
AI, yes.
Once got flagged for theft because the camera saw me put a box down on the far side of the scanner and then used the handheld scanner because it was large. Evidently the box getting past the fixed scanner without scanning triggers theft even if you scan it.
In a convenience store, I put products on a platform and I don’t have to scan barcode and it just “scans” my whole order all at once with machine vision. It worked well for me, but seems to have the clerk on high alert to watch it like a hawk from any mistakes, which sounds exhausting. I got the sense that it screws up a lot and the clerk is on the hook for it.
No blockchain? Wait blockchain isn’t passe already is it?
No. Yes. Yes. No.
This seems very US coded. In euro they’re doubling down even with self scan on the phone or with a tool they give me. I scan them as I put them in my cart and at checkout I just pay and leave. It’s awesome.
I have a smart cart at my local grocery store that adds the products to my account. I just pass through payment, no need for scanning anymore. Love it.
The cart alsof weighs my products so I only have to scan one barcode. It multiplies by itself.
I’m learning a lot in this thread about European dystopia. I guess if y’all like it to each their own. Over here in the US, we’ve had enough.
I like it because I don’t have to talk to people. It is otherwise an inferior experience.
You still need employees to help hapless customers and flag tech problems, the security cameras from above to dissuade theft, and someone to man the monitors of said cameras. They were banking on full human replacement. Can’t wait for our AI future with a store devoid of employees where they drop a net from the ceiling and pepper spray me because I forgot my eggplant was the organic price.
They are banking on the majority being honest.
We’ll see honest people are when AI has taken their job and they need to eat.
We’ll see how honest (principled) people act when faced with unfair circumstances
This feels surreal, self checkout is insanely normal here and theres no scales and or other sensors besides normal cctv. Switzerland, for context.
Questionable savings? I have saved A LOT of time at self checkouts, especially when just buying a few things. It’s way faster than standing in line behind people seemingly doing their yearly shopping.
The supermarket I went to in the 90s boasted in their adverts about how if there were more than 3 people waiting in a lane they’d open another till. That’s how bad the general standard was.
The time saving is hugely illusory. You really should take your watch and measure. What costs most time at a staffed register checkout is mostly the payment. The staff scans much faster than you.
Pretty funny coincidence here
I don’t see any evidence they’re “pulling back”, at least not in Europe. More and more are self service checkouts than ever before. That said I think stores prefer the kiosks where people scan their items than the kind where people have barcode readers and wander the store scanning (or not scanning) goods.
My experience isnt representative of the situation as a whole, but ive noticed a pull back in our usual shopping locations (mid-west US). Our local Meijer (grocery) closed half of the self checkouts and added two more people to their standard checkout lanes plus a few more to assist the remaining self checkout. Costco near us got rid of their self checkout entirely. Aldi on the other hand installed more self checkouts, but its in a gated area where you have to scan your receipt to get out.
My local LIDL in Ireland just installed a self-checkout / gate system. Curiously there is an ALDI not far away with self-checkout and no gate. Near to that is a Tesco which has self checkout and another lane for the bar code reader devices. I hardly ever see people with bar code readers. I don’t believe anybody likes those - not staff, not customers.
Ok, now will they actually staff the registers? Because every time I’m in the store there’s only one checkout lane open, and before 10am or so, the self-checkout is closed.
