Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech
(www.businessinsider.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 14 Oct 2023 14:00
https://lemmy.world/post/6790769
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 14 Oct 2023 14:00
https://lemmy.world/post/6790769
Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech::When Walmart’s anti-theft self-checkout tech alerts an employee of a missed scan, it can cause some uncomfortable situations.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Retailers broadly are facing increasing theft and have responded by locking up merchandise, warning investors of major losses, and implementing new technology to help combat the issue.
In 2019, Walmart introduced computer-vision technology at its registers to reduce inventory shrink, a term retailers use to describe merchandise losses from theft, fraud, error, and other causes.
Employees overseeing the self-checkout stations can monitor the registers from mobile phones and, in the case of issues, pause the machines to prevent customers from checking out.
The employee, who has worked at Walmart locations for over two years, said the self-checkout technology caught many customers off guard — particularly when they saw that the registers flagged them and then played back a video on the machine’s screen showing them scanning items.
“It was personally uncomfortable for me to notice somebody purposefully not scanning an item,” said Dominick Haar, 20, a recent newly former Walmart employee who worked self-checkout in a store in Southern Illinois.
“I think it created a lot more stress for the employees, not to mention customers that just want one-on-one personal conversation when they go to the store,” Leroy told Insider, referring to the self-checkout machines.
The original article contains 923 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
You force me to check out my own groceries. Fine.
But don’t get pissed when I have a lot of groceries and have to move my bags because you gave me one square foot of space to bag everything. That’s often my biggest frustration. The robot thinks I’m trying to do some shady stuff, and I’m not.
The ‘robot’ isn’t the problem. This design is intentional and human made. Here in the Netherlands self checkout is the norm, even in very small grocery stores. However, it’s super easy and not frustrating at all, because the stores TRUST their customers. The self checkout is super simple, you scan a product and put it on your bag, or backpack or whatever you have. No need to weigh the scanned products or anything. Nothing overcomplicated.
Now there are some control measures, but they are designed in a way to not be too intrusive or create unnecessary frustration: First, most places have a gate at the exit that only lets you leave by scamming your receipt (or if you go paperless, you scan your membership card on your phone). Also, some places do random inspection. But that’s frustration free too - a worker comes up to you with a hand scanner, scans like four or five random items of yours and leaves. Boom, done.
Walmart customers
A third of these are people who are either disabled or in medical crisis. They’re marked “funny”. And this is where you go for entertainment? Well, when people tell you who they are, believe them.
Yeah, you can’t trust Americans. They’ll steal your own land out from under you and Rob your grandma and call it good business sense. Saying this as an American.
Don’t drink the water. There’s blood in the water.
And probably some forever chemicals, but we’ve made that everyone’s problem
Don’t forget microplastics.
Comes with the blood.
Where isn’t there, the Antarctic?
No, that’s all oil
And penguins
The penguins are coated in the oil.
DID SOMEONE SAY THEY NEED SOME FREEDOM?!? F16s fly overhead, teens getting tossed ARs
WE WILL SAVE YOU
and your resourcesOne week in NL and I’m wondering what we’re even doing over here.
We’re accepting white the Nordic countries are fiercely xenophobic. It changes the game quite a bit.
NL is neither a Nordic country nor ethnically homogeneous. Just like all countries with a history of colonizing other people, many of those people are now in NL. Stop blaming everything on diversity
Nice try, but no.
lol, I’ve been at the Albert Heijn near my hotel 3 times and 3 times I had to have my items rescanned. Maybe it’s because I’m not blond and tall?
That would be unlawful detention here. Also, what about people that go in and decide they don’t actually want to buy anything after all?
Fun fact: You can ignore the receipt checkers at wal-mart in the states. They have no legal authority to require you to stop. Costco, on the other hand, since it’s a membership club, can.
Costco can stop you from leaving either. They can however revoke your membership for breaking the terms. But if you not longer care about you membership you ignore them like the Walmart checkers
It’s not like you’re trapped… you can just walk out if you want, but doing so without paying and carrying full bags may raise an eyebrow with employees. Although I think I could easily get away with that in my small village supermarket during quiet hours when nobody is paying attention.
I did that last time I went to Walmart for something. Long line of people waiting to show their receipts and I just walked out.
Yeah, I’m gonna disagree with that. They’ve recently ramped up those checks because of increased theft due to inflation. They also scan more items now. After having been checked 4 times in a row and them completely emptying my bag each time, I no longer use the self checkout.
Jeez where do you live?
NL as well. Maybe it’s because it’s a big city, poor neighbourhood, more theft, I don’t know, but I’m done with it.
Sounds frustrating, sorry to hear that
Thanks, it really was. I had happily used the self-checkouts for years before that, so it’s a real shame.
Honestly, those weight systems are so easily defeated, I don’t even get the point. Anything that is measured by unit vs weight can easily be stolen.
This isn’t about the weight sensors, it’s using “computer vision” to detect you didn’t scan something and forces employees to get involved.
All the Walmarts I’ve been to have the bagging area weight sensors turned off. It seems the local grocery store finally turned theirs off because using a reusable bag used to set it off.
Yeah, I got pinged twice, in one visit because I moved shit around, trying to organize.
Way more false positives, in my opinions.
Maybe it’s just Colorado but the only store I’ve been to that had weight verification was a King Soopers (Kroger in other states)
I use reusable bags. I have to be very slow and deliberate getting the bag ready in the bagging area or it’ll flag me.
Same for me.
I use reusable bags too, I first scan and rest the products on the weighting area, and after paying quickly introduce all the products into my bag. It takes a bit longer but it’s way less problems for the workers and me, and it’s still faster than going through the regular checkout.
.
It’s funny, my local Walmart ditched the weight checking part of the self checkout so it’s quick and easy, yet every time I go at least one person has managed to fuck up badly enough to need to call help over
Meanwhile I’m getting a decent discount on my purchase, which is nice
You’re stealing?
Unexpected item in bagging area?
Fuck you buggy robot, keep up. I’m moving on to the next one.
Didn’t get scanned? The store is getting the quality of checkout that it paid for.
Ah so stealing. Got it.
I refuse to do the unpaid labor of fixing their shitty robot.
If bad business decisions cause accidental shrinkage, oh well.
Lot of mental hoops your jumping through to justify stealing.
The store is stealing labor from you.
I’ll go there. Robot fucks up, I’m stealing.
I tried to pay. Fuck em.
Why are u defending a corporation that’s making you do a job for free that people used to get paid to do.
Because we live in a society where stealing is wrong. Sorry you don’t like self checkouts, but that doesn’t give you the right to steal. I don’t like speed limits, but I still follow them.
Here’s an idea; if you don’t like self checkouts, don’t use them.
Lol no we don’t, we abandoned our dedication to rights 20+ years ago largely thanks to conservatives like yourself.
Now we live in a dystopian hellhole where the working class are herded like cattle and you complain when they demonstrate a modicum of their humanity by rebelling against the regime that cages them.
Fucking 🤡👞
I’m a conservative because I won’t steal?
Wow you’re a moron
I mean here’s the thing, I’m not going to bend over and cry about people stealing things when companies want to get free labor out of you. I don’t use self checkout unless I know the machines aren’t bitches to use, like HAVING to wait after every scan to be told to then place it in the bag etc. I absolutely will not use those.
The issue comes when the stores have all the empty manned registers that can be used but they have 1 or 2 open IF they even have those open. They are trying to force free labor out of customers and Lotta ppl don’t like it. I get it. Still not a reason to steal BUT again I am not g9nna cry about them losing money if people do nor will I condone people stealing.
Stealing from Walmart is a community service.
It’s simply the customer getting paid for the labor of being a cashier. If someone does labor for a company, the company pays them.
Morally maybe, but legally no. Theft requires criminal intent. If the person is honestly attempting to pay for the goods and errors in the payment method cause an over or underpayment, that’s not theft.
It’s theft if you know that the item didn’t scan and you just bag it anyway. You can ask for help. But no keep stealing and trying to justify it.
It’s not theft if it’s from Walmart 😉
It’s not theft if there’s no criminal intent. If the lack of scanning was caused by equipment malfunction then there’s no reason to think that they intended to steal.
Maybe they should keep some non-self check registers open then. I was a grocery store cashier in high school and college and I got $20/hour for doing it (adjusted for inflation). Right now if I see a store only has self-check open I will walk out, what I want to do is start tracking my time then mailing in a 1099 and an invoice for my time.
Ever since the pandemic, curbside pickup has been the norm at our house for groceries.
We use Kroger, not Walmart, but I had a recent experience relevant to share.
I was out running an errand and my spouse asked me to go grab a couple items from Kroger since it was nearby.
I hadn’t been inside the store in like a year, so I was surprised to see gates at the door that opened and closed upon approach and walking away.
Also, while shopping, at some point suddenly the wheels on the cart locked up, causing me to bang the ever loving shit out of my shins on the cart frame. That’s when I got to learn about the new “anti-theft” wheel lock tech being used on all carts now.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I wanted to flip the goddamn cart over and kick the absolute shit out of it… but I knew that wouldn’t help.
…But if I read a story about someone going and drilling holes in every single one of those cart wheels, or setting fire to them all, or breaking the gates, I would laugh.
I imagine as soon as someone gets something worse than bruised shins and brings a lawsuit against these stupid companies, we will see these stupid things go away… but until then, I’m not fucking stepping foot inside any store that has that bullshit.
I always try and smash my cart into the gates extra hard every time I go through
I’m surprised it locked up like that. About 15 years ago I was a frequent customer in a store that had these and I never encountered any problem with it, nor did I hear of anyone else encountering a malfunction while using them.
That store implemented those locks because they were the closest supermarket to a college campus. Some students were taking the carts back to their dorms and chaining them up to a tree with bicycle chains. They would also use those carts to go shopping in a nearby supermarket of another store chain.
Different continent though, so it’s probably not entirely the same technology. People like reinventing the wheel.
I see what you did there.
The grocery store in my city became straight dystopian. It was always a sort of sketchy area but nothing that bad. After the pandemic, they added a second armed, vested private security in black, one-way turnstiles going in and out, increased cameras with screens on every aisle that showed you with the words “RECORDING IN PROGRESS”. They even added locks to the frozen section, so you had to get an employee to help you buy ice cream. The police and security would tackle clearly unwell people who were shoplifting food, face pushed into the concrete type of thing.
Jesus Christ that all sounded (unfortunately) normal until the locked freezers. That’s a step too far. I mean, all of it is, but that’s actually a ridiculous concept lmao
I wonder if that’s a response to that stupid internet trend of opening ice cream containers to lick it and then put it back.
The WHAT NOW?
Luckily it’s not trending anymore, but that was a thing.
It’s pretty funny to think, living in the US, nothing is odd about a privately employed person with a gun guarding groceries or people being violently arrested when they steal said groceries out of necessity.
The “bad” grocery store near me has taken to posting security cam pictures of people they catch stealing which is a terrible, awful, extrajudicial thing to do, but I would be lying if I said it does not make for some hilarious pictures. It’s a big wall of shame right as you enter the store.
The police and security would tackle clearly unwell people who were shoplifting food, face pushed into the concrete type of thing.Cops can generally get away with that. Store security guards assaulting customers open the store up to a lawsuit.
True, the store security usually didn’t actually do anything, the police would be doing that while the security talks to them, but on two occasions I did see the security tackle a person.
My wife’s creepy racist incel uncle had a fit once when we went into a store and he saw himself on the security camera. He said he doesn’t like seeing himself. My sister had the same reaction to seeing herself pre transition and apparently it’s a common theme among trans people who haven’t realized it yet.
I know it’s a bit of a tangent, but he’s rabidly transphobic up to the point just short of being blatantly hateful. He’s obsessed with my sister and other trans people and made a lot of obsessive and creepy jokes about dating them.
This post triggered my PTSD.
Yikes, I hope you don’t have to deal with him anymore.
That’s more a body dysmorphia thing than specifically a trans thing. For instance, I hate seeing myself too, and I’m just fat, not trans. I disapprove of the appearance I have, and dislike being reminded of that. Yes, I’m working on it.
He’s a completely out of shape incel, so that’s a possibility. Considering everything else, he seems deep in the closet. He started mentioning trans stuff all the time before he found out that my sister is trans, which caused him to have an existential crisis, because he was obsessed with her and trying to get her to date him. He also has a creepy latent obsession with Russian women. He constantly talked about other trans women and joked about dating them and went through an entire hypothetical situation of introducing a specific trans woman he was obsessed with to his family.
I’ve had too many incidents with spoiled or opened food to ever use curbside pickup.
My wife once ordered some dried basil or similar herb, they said they were out of stock and substituted it with an actual live potted basil plant. We both thought it was hilarious, but also annoying.
Hackers messing with those anti-theft wheels: invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=fBICDODmCPI
I don’t understand people that get upset and hostile at employees in these situations. When I go through self checkout I go in with expectations already set that it’s very likely that at some point during the checkout process the machine is going to trigger an alarm and an employee will need to come over and override the alarm. It doesn’t happen too often, but when it does my first reaction isn’t to get all pissy and throw things at the cashier.
If you have no patience for this sort of thing, then go through the regular checkout. See if it takes longer going that route.
What regular checkout? Around here they are all closed down and only self checkout is available.
Take all your shit to customer service and check out there.
It’s an asshole move everyone should use until they stop understaffing checkout.
What customer service? That shit’s closed too.
I might uniroically start doing this. Or I would if I thought for a second it’d do anything other than inconvenience the employees…
The store has chosen to save money by pushing work onto customers via a buggy robot overlord.
Employees are the only person you can complain to.
Just more billionaires making things shitty for everyone.
Yeah I do agree that complaining to employees is useless, but it’s also a really frustrating situation and it’s not like you can get the CEO on the phone to complain. I wouldn’t personally complain at an employee, but I do get how someone might in the midst of such frustration.
As a consumer, what’s your other option?
Pretty much nothing, hence why I said I get it 🤷🏼♂️
Shop elsewhere.
Where? Idk about your area, but in mine all the options are big corporate chains
And even in areas where family owned retail stores still survive, a lot of people can’t afford to shop at them, because they’ll always have higher prices than the big chains, and with the price gouging that’s gone on since 2020, many families are struggling to make ends meet as it is.
Yeah, it sucks for sure. I personally choose to spend a bit more and buy a bit less to go to somewhere that doesn’t suck horribly, but that’s a lot of effort and a privilege that others may not have. I’ll never condemn a person for shopping at walshart, due to that. Still though, shop elsewhere when you can, buy minimal when you can’t. That’s about the only legal recourse we have as consumers.
The only viable legal option is to vote with your wallet. I know elsewhere you said that’s not an option in your area, and that sucks. Still, do what you can to shop at other places, even if you can’t nix walshart entirely.
Edit that was another guy who said that, my bad. Statement still standa tho
I could justify it if even a fraction of a percent of the savings were actually passed on, or hell, even distributed to the few employees they still have. But no, it lines the fat cats pockets.
That’s the worst part. It has gotten so miserable for both employees and customers and none of the profits made from these changes has gone back to those most affected by them.
I think a lot of it has to do with that last part of your comment. The amount of times I’ve gone to the grocery store to find there’s no register open other than the self checks or that there’s 1-2 open at a huge grocery store with a 6-8 people in line for them and no self check line… People are being forced into self checking when they don’t want to. These people are obviously going to be more easily upset by issues with the self check machines. Walmart in my limited experience (try to never buy anything there if I can avoid it) is the worst offender I’ve seen.
I would LOVE to go through a regular check out! If only we still actually had more than 2 open in a full supermarket. It’s not about time taken, though, it’s about the sheer level of inconvenience that it’s become. It’s an active pain in the ass to have to do the job that used to be done by employees, with shitty machines that yell at you every few minutes, while actively being recorded and treated like a criminal, and have to go through another checkpoint where they’re going to once again actively treat you like a criminal and look through your receipt. Or I can spend like, 30 minutes in line at one of the two open cashiers.
So what you just said is you could but don’t want to. I feel that deflates the point.
I got new for ya. There were rarely more than than 2 checkstands open before self checkouts were commonplace, too. If you remember differently, you must have been in a different part of the country than me. Either way, you are choosing the self checkout because it’s more convenient, not because of a lack of choice.
We all make decisions like that daily. Just because I’m choosing one slightly more convenient shitty thing over another doesn’t mean the one I’m choosing is good. It just has a utility. It also only has that utility because the other option is being actively neglected.
It also wasn’t too long ago that I worked retail, at Walmart no less. Even after self checkout became popular, we’d have 4-10 cashiers depending on the traffic at any given time. They’d even call employees who worked completely different sections, like myself, to run registers if they got backed up.
I’d never think to harass the poor employee who has nothing to do with the store managenent’s decisions…
However, when I’m pissed or tired I’ll sometimes be rough or sloppy with the machine, and I get pissed if they have too few manned checkouts for how crowded a store is. Banging items against the scanner glass, tap selections on the touch screen forcefully with my ring etc.
To keep the self-checkout machines company, I’ll act like a machine too. If I unsuccessfully attempt to scan something, after 5 tries I “timeout” and move onto the next item.
I give 60 seconds for someone to come fix the self checkout when it fucks up. If no one is available, I’m taking my shit and leaving. I tried to pay, fuck you I don’t have time for this.
Lol, uh huh. Whatever you gotta tell yourself to justify stealing that bag of doritos, dude.
Sucks to suck. Fix your machines.
Grocery stores raise their prices, cut staffing, and shift more labor to their customers so they don’t have to pay for it. Refusing to do that labor, especially when it’s made unnecessarily difficult, is based.
I’m not gonna cry for a corporation that doesn’t give a fuck if you eat or not. Why are you?
I’m not “crying” for any corporations. I’m laughing at that jackass for their asinine rationalization for shoplifting. If you don’t understand the difference, I don’t know what to tell you.
You’re not crying for them, you’re licking their boots
You’re free to do so, of course, and we’re free to laugh at your dumb ass paying full price for $20 steaks that were only half as much three years ago.
Lemmy sure attracts some fucking characters. The guy simply pointed out that stealing isn’t justified by a 60-second wait. And you are jumping in here ranting about the price of steak for some reason. You’re not Robin Hood. You’re just a dumbass with a keyboard.
Tell us you’re not listening without telling us you’re not listening
This dumbass with a keyboard knows their worth and knows it is rarely if ever worth it to pay full price for stuff. Especially expensive necessities, for example meat, for which the prices skyrocketed thanks to the lockdowns and aren’t going back down because of the horrifyingly astounding greed of big corps like Walmart who largely control the market.
Hence, stealing stuff like that from Walmart is justified.
Hell, it’s justified simply because it is Walmart, but that is the more detailed justification.
It doesn’t matter either way, though, because people are going to keep doing it regardless of what you think.
So carry on, dumbass keyboard warrior. The only one you’re hurting is you. 😎
It’s unethical and I personally wouldn’t do that…
…but in your situation practically speaking, if no one’s going to come and fix the machine in that amount of time, then who would be there to stop you just walking out with your goods?
Sureee you will.
No, you’ll stand there and look around annoyed like everyone else, all yourre saying is youre gonna be a dick to whoever has the misfortune of helping you.
I’ve done it several times lol
One time I’ve gotten a “hey you can’t do that” but in my area the guards aren’t allowed to stop you. Which imo is a dumb rule but it allows me to do this.
Remember everyone. If you see someone shoplifting from Walmart, no you didn’t.
As long as it’s just “shoplifting”. Where I’m at, people will come in on a bike with a trash bag, load it up, roll out, and go to the next town over and sell the stuff on the street in the ghetto.
Since you kids are so sheltered you don’t believe anything like this happens, here it is on video: m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8JLIWxxya4
Also ktvu.com/…/where-is-sfs-boosted-merchandise-being…
Tell your moms I said hi, suburb kids
That’s quite a story.
It’s pretty common here. A lot of stores have been hiring private security, but if the security intervenes then the thief can sue them.
I used to be in security. I couldn’t imagine getting paid a little over minimum wage and giving a shit about theft. The only ones that would were people who took it too goddamn seriously and we called them “tac heads” because they purchased all this tactical gear like the maglights like a fucking billy club and were looking for an excuse to throw down.
Matter of fact that describes some cops too. Damn is there a serious problem with how we staff enforcement jobs.
Boosters are public servants doing God’s work and I won’t hear a word said against them
We call them “Entrepreneurs” lol
Just curious, do you get anything if you tell on them?
Tell what? All of it’s happening out in the open, the cops just refuse to do anything about it. It’s not like if you tell a cop they’ll be like “oh shit I had no idea, let me go run over there and do my job for once, thank you citizen!”
To be fair to cops, they’re understaffed and they don’t want to do their jobs for fear of activists suing them. But all of those suits are paid for with tax dollars, so idk why they care, just do your job and if they sue you, they sue you.
I think it boils down to laziness but with the excuse of being sued.
Tell on people who are shoplifting.
Then what did you mean by:
To me, it seems like you were saying that if you saw people “on a bike with a trash bag, load it up, roll out” then you would snitch, since this comment chain is about not telling on people who are stealing from corporations.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
There’s no one to snitch to. The cops are already well aware.
Cool story bro.
Let me guess, you live in a safe, lily-white suburb😂
Poverty breeds crime, but not all crime is of desperation.
You’re getting ripped off even with a stolen Walmart bike.
I work at a shop and people call us snobs because we won’t work on those deathtraps
What would even be wrong with someone doing that? 🤔
makes the shopping experience shittier for the rest of us (locked merchandise)
the syndicates fencing these goods use the money to support actual harmful crimes
the people doing the thieving often get violent themselves
raises prices and causes store closures
people don’t want to work in shitty stores, so the workers they have do the bare minimum (again, worse shopping experience for the rest of us)
The bazaars where people sell the stolen goods also cause lots of problems.
NGL I genuinely prefer the bazaars and street markets over the big box stores.
I take your point with the thieves getting violent. The others, ehh. The big box stores really ought not to be there in the first place and be replaced with little specialized mom and pop joints owned by locals the way life used to be.
Okay so then we have mom and pops, who can’t absorb the loss, getting their shit stolen. Don’t see how that helps.
Then we could have this talk. Then we could debate the morality of it.
Until that time, stealing from Walmart will always be the ethical thing to do.
Oh for the love of
I’ve been taking to a literal child.
You’ve been talking to yourself, yes
The employees can potentially get fired.
I feel like it depends. Stealing is morally wrong no matter what. But I’d probably act as if I saw nothing if someone just stole a sandwich or similar. I’m not sure I’ll act the same if I see a teenage girl of a family that is obviously very well off steal things like makeup (that one literally bragged about it in front of her parents during a dinner where I was invited).
In our society people are acknowledged as human beings through consumption, and that need is hammered onto our heads by ads and beauty norms everywhere.
Belonging is a human need. Sometimes some cheap makeup is all it takes.
But also, the rich people are stealing from us in so much worse ways. A rich teen stealing from a rich corporation is kind of karmaeic, and really, even if she was caught, nothing significant would happen, whilst a poor girl doing the same would suffer a lot more.
Ergo, if you see something, no you didn’t.
This guy gets it.
deleted by creator
🤡
I don’t know that stealing is morally wrong no matter what. My rabbi taught that if a man steals to survive, the crime is not his, but of his community because they did not save him from poverty. That teaching really stuck with me. Yes, stealing indicates something is seriously wrong in the world, but there’s a big difference in where the evil lies— is it in the thief, or in the society?
Unless they’re stealing guns or ammo.
You know what, I’ll make that exception.
.
I’d get hostile too. This wastes literally everyone’s time, employee and customer. Walmart and other companies already write off all their losses as tax write offs. It would actually be more cost efficient to do literally nothing. But it’s not about preventing theft. It’s about proving a point: that corporations control you.
I’m sorry but I don’t think that makes very much sense.
Retail theft is a real problem for a company’s bottom line. Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC. And self-checkout is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.
Why would a corporation frantically seeking quarter over quarter growth spend money to “prove a point” about control?
How about this. If self check out is a problem go back to paying cashiers.
No way. I don’t need someone to frantically scan my items while I barely manage to bag them in time.
Then they need to rehire baggers, too.
businessinsider.com/target-closing-stores-due-to-…
ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. They’re blaming theft, but that’s not it. Theft might be a part of it, but the stats nearby contradict that. We don’t have access to their internal theft metrics, but the city data doesn’t pan out. When there are stores (mission district) that have higher theft and are staying open, then is it really theft?
Or is it poor retail performance since WFH is the new king and people live in the suburbs more than in the city. When continue to order online more and more instead of shop at a physical store.
Theft is an easy way to blame other people without providing evidence. It’s not the CEO’s failure to adapt to changing market conditions, it’s the poors! It’s their fault! /s
This.
Both Walmarts in Portland OR closed a few months ago. Good fucking riddance
.
I’ll never understand why people like you care about a mega corporation’s bottom line. The executives are still making billions, while keeping their employees as poor as they can get away with.
Target will survive without San Francisco. Even if they fail, the top dogs will just liquidate and take a fat paycheck home, enough for a 1000+ employees to retire and live off of for the rest of their lives, and they’ll just pocket it all. Fuck 'em.
I don’t give a flying fuck about a megacorporation’s bottom line. Fuck Walmart. Fuck Target. I don’t disagree with a single thing you just said.
I just didn’t think it made any sense to say that they made an expensive change to their self-checkout just to “prove a point” about controlling people.
But apparently no one knows how to read. And once some of you saw downvotes you knew everything you needed to know about what I think.
So is CEO greed though. And they could choose to use that money to balance their budget, not ruin my experience of being out and about.
Yes, they absolutely could and should. That wasn’t my point. I just don’t think it makes any sense to say that they made the change to their self checkout to “prove a point” about controlling people.
Hostile to the point of attacking the employees?
I’ll call for their manager and attack the manager specifically. Is there a term for that yet?
Not at walmart, but one of our supermarkets in town has two self-checkouts. I tried them a few times, and they were so f-ed up that I gave up on them. One time, the machine did not accept any cash, but was stuck in the menu choice “pay by cash” without a “back” button. So I took my stuff to the normal checkout, which had the problem that my steaks had already been scanned. Solution: leave a bag of 20+ Euro meat at the checkout, and get a new one from the butchers shop.
Lol, that meat had a serial number.
Meat heist is unironically a real thing
We hang cattle rustlers round here…
Yes, if I get if from the butcher inside the supermarket, it has a “local” EAN13 barcode that “costs” the total of all parts I got.
Sounds like a badly configured system IMO. It shouldn’t take things out of stock or prevent rescanning until the sale was actually made (the customer paid).
Dang, from one ‘local’ establishment to the next.
And I bet you’re paying more, too.
I don’t blame them
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Eh. Shop wherever you get the best deal.
Getting screwed over by someone locally isn’t better than getting screwed over by someone miles away unless you’re a tool.
You understand why Walmart is able to charge so little for shit? Their workers are paid garbage (a lot have to supplement their wages with food stamps), they buy in such crazy volume that they can undercut mom and pop places with impossible margins and they drive local businesses under. I hope the deals are worth it
Amusingly the 2 Walmarts in my city closed due to crazy shoplifting. I’m not sad to see them go, but they left a massive crater in the shopping center where NOTHING needs that much space and I can’t see anybody moving in anytime soon. Sadly they’ve chased smaller places out of the area already so shopping options are limited
Walmart workers are paid comparably to workers at Kroger and Target.
Walmart is able to charge low prices because they make up for it in volume. They make up for it in volume because they charge the lowest prices.
It is. If mom and pop stores want to stay in business, they can take a hit to their paychecks so customers have a better deal. If they aren’t willing to do that, then they shouldn’t get to stay in business. It is business, after all. I’m not getting ripped off just to be nice to someone local, lol.
Bragging about being equivalent to Kroger pay is… sheesh…
Yeah I don’t think they get that countered their own point. All of em are corporate places that are cheap and pay shit.
The one corporate retail chain I’d give a pass to is Costco. They show that it is completely possible for all of these larger chains to compensate their employees fairly.
The best deal is always free. So, I’d rather inconvenience the conglomerate haute-booj than the petit-booj, even if it’s only a few dollars.
What are you talking about? Who told you that and why do you spout it as though it’s a law of the universe?
No, the best deal is not ‘always free.’ That’s the kind of soundbite that’s appropriate for republicans.
Some loss is the expected result of replacing workers with customers. Even cashiers who are paid and trained to check out customers have a failure rate of about 1%. Walmart treating their customers like criminals for things that routinely happen to even their own trained and incentived employees is ridiculous.
Why do people get hostile when they are showed a video of themselves moving items to the bag without scanning the item? Why not just accept your fate at this point and pay or give the goods back?
This leads me to think about how Walmart’s focus on cheap low quality goods with stores placed in areas where finances are often tight has created this “I want it but can’t afford it” despair.
You walk into this soul-less, hyper efficient box store and it’s easy to notice they have a lot of stuff but not a lot of staff. And the staff are not exactly motivated to care about theft.
It’s not a long shot to start to think it would be easy to get away with grabbing something, because perhaps Walmart is an easy target. But the efficiency of the place is where that mistake falls short.
The truth is, there are very few businesses with as sophisticated an anti-theft system. Walmart is dealing with petty theft on a global scale and understands exactly how much it costs them, especially if they are perceived as an easy target.
Walmart has the technology to wait until the number of thefts from a single person exceeds the local felony levels and only then press charges. It’s a trap, and ripping off Walmart is a lot less profitable than it might seem.
I caught someone stealing a felony amount of alcohol by using their young children(<5) and they acted like I was the wrong one in the situation.
You got caught, accept the consequences of your actions. Nope, I am the bad guy because I recognozed someone who stole a felony amount of an unnecessary product the other week, watched them on the cameras, and called the police station next door to wait in the lot for them.
They also didn’t show in court and got a warrant for it.
I don’t understand that level of incredulous lack of accountability for your own actions.
The key is to be subtle about it, understand the local laws and keep the thefts under the felony limit.
I don’t shoplift because I’m fairly fortunate to be able to work a job that pays a living wage. Yet every single time I use a self-checkout (not just at Walmart), it flags an employee for something; maybe I left a prescription in the cart (you have to pay for those in the pharmacy). Maybe I’m shopping with my wife and her purse is in the cart. Once it thought I was stealing my own kid.
If you don’t trust me to do a thing, don’t let me do a thing. It feels like harassment.
This post has reminded me that I should go steal from Walmart soon.
I get this is was said playfully. However, you really should not. They always press charges and will advocate for jail time. In some states, that’s a month of jail over something as small as a candy bar.
Lol nah, if you get caught you were making it look too obvious. There’s a fine and subtle art to stealing from Walmart.
Have fun getting arrested 3 years later with the facial recognition technology
Not if you keep it under the felony limit, or just have the common sense to not piss off the employees.
Not true. I have unfortunately met people who were arrested for candy bars, a snickers specifically. Now with AI, they will track your face, find your address, and issue a warrant automatically. It doesn’t take any effort, because once the software is written, it just runs. I’m not anti-shoplifting. I am pro being informed before doing things.
Yeah no, that’s not happening at any Walmart anywhere, your claim is entirely baseless and without evidence.
Your friend probably did something to piss off the workers and it wasn’t stealing. It possibly could have been racism. Maybe even bad luck. But it is an exception that proves the rule.
Walmart doesn’t have or use AI like that. No one has been arrested for stealing from Walmart on the order of an AI. Unless you have evidence, this claim is dismissed.
I’ve personally witnessed it but fuck me right
Security is a cat and mouse game. There’s always a way to steal from anyone, especially a convenience-oriented business.
i’m not saying it’s impossible. Just saying that they make a big deal out of it even if the item is small, and it’s important to know your risk if you’re going to do something risky.
Of course. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Often times it’s an honest mistake that a cashier themselves may have made. And now WalMart is treating you, a paying customer like a criminal.
Based on nothing but the people I have seen at Walmart, I would assume there are more people with a convicted criminal history shopping at Walmart than Target.
A key to success in business is knowing your customer base.
They do sell crowbars no?
I don’t know about you, but I get annoyed that I still can’t use NFC at checkout. It’s 2023, tap to pay has been around in the US since 2016 and much longer in Europe.
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It really is stupid cause literally every business accepts NFC payments now. Even gas pumps. But not Walmart.
From an employee I talked to it’s because they have a specific contract with the payment processor and it requires using specific payment devices that are covered in the contract and they don’t want off it for as long as possible because it gives them preferential fees.
So until the cost of business lost is enough to cover increased payment processing fees, don’t expect to see tap to pay.
It definitely cost them my business at least twice when I forgot my wallet and remembered they don’t take NFC so I went across the street to target.
Why don’t you just go to Target first? You can get all your crap ahead of time and just pickup the order. Their prices are super low to compete with Walmart and they price match. Right now it’s basically Walmart with better customers.
The main* reason why people go to Target is because they’re willing to spend a bit more to not have to shop at Walmart. Not everyone can afford that luxury.
I left my cart in the checkout lane once because of this. I forgot my wallet, but had my phone with my wallet app. They are actively refusing to implement tap to pay in order to drive people to their app. Not happening.
They want you to use Walmart Pay in the Walmart app. That’s the only contactless way you can pay there. It’s not horrible but you need have an Internet connection to use it.
Do the stores not have free WiFi? I’ve never been in a Walmart, but all bigger stores here in Europe have WiFi.
They do have WiFi.
Normalize leaving your groceries in the cart and leaving the store, and finding another store that doesnt make you bend over backwards to pay for your shit.
Not so easy in a small town where the big box stores have killed local business.
The only real outcome from that is to make underpaid employees have to put all your shit back.
Walmart and their customers deserve each other.
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The last few times I’ve walked into a Walmart, the place has been a disaster.
Shelves empty and in disarray, no evidence that they ever did carry the product I was after, the building in an increasing state of disrepair.
I’m done with this company.
Have they choked out all other options in the vicinity?
Not really; we’re pretty flush for retail.
The Walmart here is pretty good, but this is a small city/large town where most of the local businesses have gone, so we have to rely on the Walmart a lot of the time. They keep it clean and well-stocked. They even usually have a couple of checkout lanes open.
But Walmarts are generally awful from what I understand.
Yeah hopefully ours goes out of business soon.
Ohh man i fucking hate self checkouts with a passion the soulless passive agress voice. The voice annoynecemnts to scan rewards card to take groceries to take recipt the 3 different “would u like to dobate to x” that constantly swap wheres the yes and no button is. Then sometimes it just fucking freezes and cos the bloody product isnt heavy enough to detect and it wont give me the ability to scan something till the other thing has been put down. I have no multiply button so if im buying 30 of something then i have to get a godamn employee to go into the employee section and hit the multiply button or my inabiloty to remove something once scanned. It all pisses me ofd so much. I do however have to say aldi has figured it out and i hope they dont go down the route of everyone else.
It almost pisses me off as much as ordering food via a qrcode and then being asked for a fucking tip. Im in australia we dont tip cos we have a fucking decebt minimum wage. But why does the fucking robot need a tip it disnt have exemplary service its a fucking machine.
I’m thankful my grocery stores have a mute button for self checkout. It makes for a much less stressful experience, I don’t know why they have it narrate so much junk.
As for your issues with the inability to remove things, I do know the trick. (I can’t speak for non-us self check out kiosks) As someone who worked as an attendant for the kiosks, the main cause of setting off the thing is picking your bag up before the scale has settled. The scale isn’t just checking that the weight has increased by a certain amount, it’s also waiting to make sure the weight is balanced. The issue with that, is the intuitive thing to do when your bag is full is immediately put it in your cart to make space. So the best thing to do is put your item in, wait a few seconds then you’re set to move the bag. With the small things not registering, could be uncalibrated scales. I have never ran into the multiply issue, as the ones I’ve all been to have scan guns and you can just shoot the barcode a bunch.
Damn wish i cpuld shoot the barcode a bunch thr ines im forced to use make u put down every item before u can scan another so no double scanning to count 2 items
Huh, I’ll have to look for a mute button, thanks for the hint. Mine keeps yelling at me to finish unloading then churns out a nonsense marketing phrase. Utterly annoying.
Not all of them have mute buttons. My local grocery store used to allow you to mute the register but they disabled the function, I am assuming on the basis of reducing theft. When you’re typing in a PLU for a given produce item, they want the machine to announce what it is so the self checkout monitor can hear if you rang your asparagus in as (much cheaper by weight) bananas. It also announces the price of whatever you just scanned in, which to me seems excessive.
This is just one store, though. There’s another local grocery chain with better self-checkout registers that you can mute, but by default they don’t even do all of the announcing that the other one does anyways. I try to support the store with the worse self checkout when I can because it is a union shop whereas the other is non-union, but it is frustrating as a customer when the non-union store is just a better experience most of the time.
I don’t think that’s the case. It’s impossible to hear those things when busy. Maybe that was corporate thinking. My best guess is for old people thh
If it was for old people, I can’t imagine why they would have taken away the ability to just mute it if you don’t need it. When the transaction finishes, it unmutes by default for the next person.
I just don’t think it being audible is for the attendant as you can’t hear them with so many sounds, and you have a screen already that shows everything. For old people seems to be the most obvious, but why would they remove the mute of that is the case. In all reality it’s likely some corporate decision, that in their testings made them more money with no mute button vs with mute button. When I worked at a huge national grocery store chain (ahold) it seemed like every decision was made by people who’ve never worked in a grocery store. So wouldn’t surprise me if the reason was some nonsense.
I never hear the voices from the machines, because I always have my headphones on. Fuck hearing people in the shops.
Probably the best solution ngl
I bought jelly and the age restriction went off. The clerk came and I had my ID out to check. We both had a laugh
Seems like i have a complete different experience of self checkout here in Germany. But why? Are our devices newer?
No we just care less about theft. The German ones are build to maximace speed and therefore usability. This theoretically makes it rather easy to steal.
If this would become to much of a problem they would also reduce comfort to increase security
In Finland, we’ve been getting handheld scanners in a few shops where you scan and pack while you shop, and then pay everything at once. The “theft prevention” is very infrequent random checks where they ask to rescan three items to see if you paid for them.
It feels like stealing would become really common, but it’s been a few years and they are just installing more of em, so I guess not.
The supermarket I use here in the UK has an app that uses my phone’s camera to scan the barcodes on items. Same as the handset, but I don’t have to pick up a handset that’s been handled by another disgusting human.
As a rule, it’ll only trigger a “Quality Check” if a couple of products don’t scan first time. Then it’ll trigger a check for the next couple of shopping trips. Assuming I didn’t miss anything, after that it’ll settle down and almost never require any verification unless I’ve bought age restricted items.
If I’m doing any weekly shopping, I will always use the app, because it’s SO MUCH QUICKER.
We are talking about Earth, not about Finland. We are still lightyears apart.
The U.S. has these as well.
The experience in the US sounds entirely different than even in Canada.
I think it’s an indication of the state of the US. People don’t steal for fun. Maybe some do, but not in quantities that put an armoured security guard at checkout.
Is it really? I imagine, paying a Person for every checkout must be way more expensive than some higher theft rate.
No, in Germany sellers truly want SCOs, while Wal-mart just doesn’t want to pay employees.
Some machines use scales to measure the weight of items, scan one item, put it in the “bagging area” (scale), repeat. Many stores have disabled scales because they’re buggy and don’t catch thieves, who learn that to steal, don’t put items on the scale. Now, stores have employees watch and offer “technical support”. “Oh, ma’am, I think this item may have been missed. Let’s check. Do you need help with how to scan items?” I don’t try to steal, so don’t find the machines to be a problem.
Same Czech Republic and Slovakia. All the stores have now majority of sell checkout registers. People prefer them. No issues with them.
There is usually one person assigned to 6-8 of these that is watching and making the corrections.
It cut the waiting time significantly.
When their AI is well trained on social behaviours, they’ll start sending Minority reports
One time I went to wal-mart and at self-checkout there was a security guy (with a bulletproof vest…) with the employee. I don’t know if he was there to look intimidating to potential thieves or to protect the employee from violent customers, but I did not like the feeling of him watching me scanning my items. Am I a customer or a potential profit-loss theft for wal-mart? I fucking hate that company…
If you hate it so much, show it with your wallet. Shop elsewhere.
That’s pretty hard to do if you live in an area that only has the one store near, and even then; would the multi-billion dollar company really care if it gets like $1200 less per year from a single customer?
As for your first point, you’re right. If the local business scene is non-existent, then there’s little one can do.
As for your second point, well, that’s not the point. If OP says he hates Walmart so much, and he has a choice, then shopping elsewhere would be good for him.
Plus even if $1200 won’t break Walmart, well, at least that’s $1200 OP isn’t willingly and reluctantly giving to them.
It’s not the system that bugs me. It’s the amount of time it takes for the employees to actually come and get the shit going smoothly again. Even when it’s pretty dead in the store, it can take an extraordinary long time before one of the employees watching the area actually comes over when the light is flashing red and I’m trying to get their attention.
Yeah in most places I’ve shopped they don’t even have staff covering the self checkouts so they obviously don’t care that much.
I ran 8 of the damn things a decade or so ago and I was damn fast. I feel really let down every time I check out with one both with how none of the problems have been resolved and also with how the operators seem to be sleeping with their eyes open.
customers should get a discount for using an SCO.
I need to know the reasoning the person who downvoted you uses…
“Raise the price for everyone who doesn’t use self-checkout? Sure thing!”
They have to pay an employee to scan and bag your items. By using self checkout they are saving money. It makes sense to charge less for a service that costs them less.
This is essentially “trickle down theory” and also explains why businesses and rich fuckers don’t do it. You already used to paying the price, so what reason they’re in? Do they have to lower the price? None
If we shop at chain grocery stores we’re self-checking (and destroying local businesses). If we buy from Amazon we’re supporting billionaires and destroying local businesses. If we shop at mom&pop stores we’re paying too much for less in an age of inflation. Good luck getting everything you need from side-of-the-road vegetable stands (who skirt tax and have no liability). We can’t win.
All the retail shops that were built 20+ years ago have a ton of un-peopled check-out stands. My local grocery store. My bank branches. The hardware store.
Companies have reduced their staffing to two or three checkers and a self-checkout line.
We’re doing the work for them. They’re hoarding the profits. It’s a mess.
My local BofA branch has twelve or thirteen checker stations and I’ve never seen more than two people at the counter. I don’t know when the branch was built, but it was clearly at a time when the semblance of customer service existed. Now, long lines and poor service are normalized and the idea that you’d shop around for a better experience is non-existent.
They were never intended to have 100% of the teller/check stands open.
It’s for surge and holidays, if you go in on Black Friday or other super busy times, you’ll see a vast majority opened.
It also makes counting easier, if 1 person uses a drawer and it’s off, it’s easier to hold a person accountable, rather than if 5 people used it
As someone who used to have to fix tills, this is both true and not right.
Yes most larger retailers have more tills then they plan on having open outside of say Xmas, and also to allow for some to be down and not effect over all sales. But also no (started years ago) that you will see even on the most busy days of the year most of the lanes open.
I would say about 10 years ago with express and self checkout the big retailers gave up on hiring enough people to use all the forward tills and I think moved to the idea that people will wait on those busy days. I watched stores be built with less and less lane capacity and have less and less dedicated cashiers. Like a lot of companies retail giants see payroll a tempting place to make cuts on and after covid they have learned (hopefully incorrectly) that people will put up with a lot more BS then was expected years ago.
Abolish the minimum wage laws.
Computers are cheaper than employees, so this is where we have come.
I’ve had a problem at self check out recently when I was buying a birthday card. I scanned the card, and placed the card and envelope it comes with in the area where scanned items go.
The kiosk, correctly, thought I put an unscanned item in the area. It was just the envelope the card comes in, so no need to scan it. But an employee had to come over and verify themselves before I could continue.
I don’t see the anti theft measures as being an issue, you need to protect your merchandise from theft to run a successful business. But, it should be made a little smarter, to know that if you scan a card, there is very likely an envelope that comes with it.
The definition is wrong. There’s nothing “self” about them if an employee has to hold your hand throughout the entire process.
Perhaps they should be paying the customer with savings since they’re saving so much money not paying a full-time checkout attendant per register. The customer is now the employee.
Meh, I don’t mind using self-checkout when it’s actually self-checkout. I hate standing in lines and my anxiety doesn’t do me any favors so I’m all in favor if the system actually works.
It’s gone further here… we have shops with scanners so you scan the goods as you go around… in theory speeding up checkout but…
Given the chronic understaffing meaning you’re basically in a queue for attention, it frequently takes longer to get through the ‘rapid’ checkouts than it would if I simply queued up and got someone else to do it. But as far as the supermarket thinks they’re winning as they pay fewer people.
Companies only want to shift to self checkout because they think they’ll make more money.
It’s all about profit.
I was fooled, I thought it was going to be better for me. And it was for awhile, because I can check myself out faster than the average employee.
However, the average customer sucks at checking themselves out. So the line for self checkout sucks. Stores use scales to make sure you’re scanning the right number of things, but that means that I have to put everything down on a tray, and then put it back in my cart after.
Worst of all, I check out so fast that I regularly get stopped because I guess I look like a thief. No, I didn’t steal anything, I just don’t want to waste any more of my precious time in this depressing fluorescent establishment.
You can tell who’s never worked as a cashier because they take fucking forever to check out
My local grocery market solved the problem of customers sucking by just adding more self checkout and it worked I think. I don’t know I go even when it’s super busy and never have to wait and if I do it’s for like 20 seconds. Wegmans for what it’s worth . Overall the quality of Wegmans has gone down though the past few years.
This is the store policy making the experience suck.
Random checks at Kaufland (European supermarket chain) only require the employee to visually inspect your cart to see if you scanned everything and they only need to rescan like four items, to verify the employee actually took the time to check instead of just waving you through, so it’s all very fast.
Also, all employees can clear restricted items, so that’s fast too. My only gripe is that alcohol-free beer also triggers the age verification, but that’s a minor issue.
I love the hand scanners since thanks to them wonky scales and weight limits are a thing of the past. They really make checkout faster, as long as the store isn’t using them in a boneheaded way.
Non-alcoholic beer still has a little alcohol in it
Fucking Kroger’s (grocery store in the US) self checkouts yell at you if you have more than like 6 to 8 items, so you have to wave down an employee to continue scanning.
Then it complains for more than 15 and you have to wait for the employee again.
What’s the point? How often do people go to a grocery store to get less than 15 things? It’s just frustrating.
They also have random items that will ALLWAYS trigger the “You need to get an employee” alarm.
Like goddamn, I just want some fucking oatmilk.
Bitch! You aren’t old enough for that oatmilk!!!
I’ve only seen that pop up when I go to pay. Never when just scanning. What’s weird is it’s not consistent, even at the store I frequent. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don’t. Last time they had canned soup on sale I bought like 30 and didn’t get any messages.
That has to be a location specific thing, because I’ve gone to dozens of different Krogers and I’ve never had that issue with the self checkouts. The worst that happens to me is the scales will get twitchy sometimes and think I doubled up on something, and won’t let me continue scanning till an employee resets it. But even that’s a pretty rare occurrence.
They’ve just recently replaced all their self checkout stations with new ones that do that, so maybe the ones near you are still the old ones.
They actually just installed a bunch of new stations in the Kroger closest to me, so I’m reasonably certain they aren’t old. The ones they installed don’t do what you’re talking about though.
Is this an American thing? We had these things in Europe for years, and I never heard of anyone having problems.
Older people still prefer regular checkout, scary computers and that sort of deal.
Yes. The technology options for self checkout in the US are terrible, so the user experience is terrible. All the horror stories in this thread are true. The stores are terrified of theft but refuse to hire checkers. There’s also way too many grocery stores, so there’s little money to put into technology upgrades and appropriate levels of staffing. For example, I am less than 5 minutes drive from 9 grocery stores. Extend that to 10 minutes and I’ve got over 20. Silly.
That’s crazy. We have a designated checker for each self checkout.
We have about 1 employee per 12 self checkout stations.
Kinda what I meant, too.
In more modern places, they have little machines that they can solve any issue without having to stand up.
In older places, they have to walk around, and they are assigned to like 6-10 machines.
In my nearest supermarket (europe) it is a pain. You go through self checkout cause it should be faster, but it works like shit, and you have to wait a lot until someone comes to fix the problem. We are civilized, though, we don’t cause problems to the shopkeepers. Still a pain, though
I’m in europe and the issues I’ve had are getting an alert that an employee needs to come to check and sometimes that can take awhile.
One store also has a scanner so you self scan as you go BUT the paying part is at an actual employee instead of a machine. Every damn time they are alerted to randomly pick some items from your cart to check if any weren’t scanned. And every damn time they pick the items at the bottom of my basket and damage stuff because of it. Or sometimes there is no one at the checkout so i stand there with my basket/cart and scanner like an idiot for 3-5 minutes for an employee to show up. That might not seem like a long time but it sure feels like it…
Yep this is exactly why I refuse to do the scan as you go, it ends up seriously frustrating. Self scan at checkout is fine if you don’t have paracetamol or alcohol, otherwise you’re waiting ages for assistance.
It’s definitely an overall worse experience
Kinda funny how much faster Europe has adopted retail tech lately. Last time I was there 7 years ago they were still mostly using cash for transactions, but now the cashiers get a little buttmad if I don’t tap my phone to the scanner immediately. I hardly see anyone using phone payments in the US and I don’t understand why it hasn’t caught on. At least not where I live. It’s about as fast and convenient as it gets.
Or maybe it’s just because I’m in a major city right now and kit everywhere in Europe is like this.
Pretty much in any major town in my tiny country, this is the case also.
Hey remember when they gave you free bags, bagged it for you, and rang you up? That was kinda nice. Now the price is three times as high and all that service stuff is gone. The day before Thanksgiving is going to be hell this year at my supermarket
I can’t remember the last time I let someone ring me up at Walmart. Self checkout was always faster because most of the attended registers were closed. Most of my adult life I’ve bagged myself and idk if I’d want to go back tbh. The tech is annoying to deal with though
Trust me it was nice. Value adds keep going down and prices keep going up. Keep hearing how everyone is unemployed and how CEO pay keeps rising. Biggest shareholder of Walmart has a mega yacht, maybe could have spent some of that money hiring people at the register.
Whatever, enshitification continues. Now if you excuse me I want to watch a fifteen second yt vid and will have to watch a 30 second ad first from some alt-right “news” service that hates trans people.
Ahh yes the value of getting something for free for almost 2 decades goes down the moment they actually want people to watch the ads or ask people to pay.
I can’t even count the number of Epoch Times ads I have gotten telling me how the media invented trans people. I keep blocking them but they keep coming back. Do you support that ad as well? How about the Prague-U ones where a woman explains how the Southern Strategy is a myth? This morning I got one about the Turtle Twins, the author explained how slavery wasn’t really all that bad.
Those free plastic bags deteriorate into toxic materials that are presently all over the inside of your body. You had to wait in a slow line for people to bag the wrong things together and sometimes scan the same thing twice. Now I have my own canvas bags that last forever, I never scan my things twice, and my shit is bagged with the right things together based on where they go in my home.
My body is fine but thank you for your “sincere” concern.
I went on the fast lines, maybe you need help with this. The trick is to look for lines that are shorter not longer. Easy mistake to make.
I never had an issue with the cashier making a mistake and I have never been so freaken insane that I need to have the items in my bag in the reverse order of removal. Maybe they made so many mistakes scanning you because they were distracted by your fugly bag and advice on what order to put things in. You don’t want to waste a single half second of your life putting groceries away. That could add up over an entire lifetime to a whole minute or so!
I agree with the top level comment but this one reeks of toxicity, so unnecessary
Like a lot of the crap in your body that is hurting you its not obvious until you get a health issue or cancer later and then noticeable statistically not individually EG you look at two populations and one had more folks with a much higher incidence of cancer or auto immune diseases or what have you. The fact that its not obvious doesn’t make it any less real. Those free bags were closer to free cigarettes.
I used to manage cashiers and handled 10 of thousands of transactions and observed more. Like any human beings they do occasionally make mistakes. If you haven’t noticed anyone EVER making a mistake ringing you up it means you don’t pay attention.
I don’t tell cashiers how they should bag things because that’s obnoxious but I do know that I do a better job of not putting fresh things with meat or things that are liable to be squished with canned food or all the non-food items together.
If you avoid 4 minutes waiting once per week and 2 minutes putting away things over your life you will save over 300 hours. You aren’t liable to be awake for much more than 100 hours a week so that is like 3 weeks of your life.
We are just lying now I see.
Could you just not follow the math. Do you not believe I was an illustrious supervisor of cashiers, or do you just not believe microplastics are bad for you?
Switching from single use plastic to multi-use plastic has greatly increased carbon emissions of production. You also have to reuse the new plastic bags over 100 times for them to break even, emissions wise. (…columbia.edu/…/plastic-paper-cotton-bags/)
I agree with you that canvas bags are better overall, but IMO we should move back to paper. It’s WAY easier to reuse paper products, gardeners love the paper bags, and they break down quickly even if they are littered somewhere. There are some tradeoffs, such as transportation costs being higher because they are thicker than single use bags, but if you compare paper to multi-use bags, it’s a fairly moot point.
Also, I’d still rather someone bag my shit for me. I’ve had so many things broken or otherwise damaged by the cashier haphazardly tossing my stuff into the cart just so I can walk 5 foot and take 10 minutes to pack my own stuff. Personal preference, but it should be given as an option imo.
Multi use plastic bags are a moronic half measure agreed. What some places are doing is using paper for disposable bags and selling actually long term re-usable bags for a little more like a 2-5 bucks a bag mostly.
Yeah the idea that people buying a dozen polyester bags made of substantially more plastic that still gets thrown away by people on average is not great. Our fast scramble approach to solving issues is often awful like that though. Look at the waste that the turn from plastic straws caused all because of a school report about turtles.
Don’t get me started on fucking paper straws…
I don’t understand. You’ve had cashiers break your shit, and therefore you prefer they do the bagging?
Bring your own bags => cashiers toss stuff into cart and break things, because you have to bag your own stuff.
Cashiers bag stuff => less things break, because stuff is bagged then put in the cart.
Here, everything goes out on a belt where you have to bag it yourself. The cashier never touches your cart or items apart from scanning them.
Costco recently came to my country and it feels so incredibly weird to wait for someone to first unpack your stuff and for someone else to scan it, and then someone else packs it again.
I am not sure how to put it, but I almost feel humiliating in a way.
It’s also pretty common in grocery stores to walk around with a handheld scanner which you dock when done so you can pay. The great thing about this is that you bag your stuff while shopping and when you pay, it’s already bagged.
Yeah. Piling stuff on another belt so we can bag it ourselves is the norm here as well. I find it fascinating that I will simply pile everything into a haphazard pile on my side of the cashier, but when the cashier scans it, he/she usually piles it up into a very nice and tidy organized group.
What country is this if you don’t mind me asking. If uncomfortable with answering , no pronlem. Also, they have hand scanners for everyone?
Yes, anyone that is a (free) store Member can use the scanners.
Note that not every store has those, only bigger grocery stores do.
I see, that explains the confusion.
I’m in the states, but I still kind of feel weird having them do this. That said, they’re much faster at it than me and lines are always huge, so they probably prefer it this way.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. In the olden times, a bagger (or the cashier) nicely packed the stuff into bags making sure not to break shit. All the stores around me now just yeet shit back into the cart after scanning it with no regard to what it lands on or if it breaks.
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
The irony is that the plastic bags became the norm over the paper bags because they were thought to be more environmentally friendly, over the infinitely recyclable paper that literally grows on trees.
Paper is not infinitely recyclable.
Wow…
I remember when plastic bags became a thing. We were encouraged to use a plastic bag to save a tree.
The manufacture of plastic bags produces much less carbon emissions than paper bags. Consider the costs of logging, transportation of wood, the manufacture process which uses a ton of water, the transportation of paper which is heavier than plastic which means higher fuel costs, etc. And also consider that most trees we cut down from paper come directly from farms which often require irrigation or items like fertilizer (which have carbon costs). Although not every tree farm uses that, some are more “natural growth”
Plastic bags tend to be more durable and re-usable than paper bags. Unfortunately most people don’t re-use either.
Of course, the main issue is the fact that they take hundreds of years to decompose and end up everywhere. Also, plastics come directly from petrochemicals which are a finite resource. There are ways to create plastic from renewable oils, although that raises the carbon emissions significantly.
I think this is an excellent example to give people to illustrate that a lot of times, the choices we make as a society about simple things can be counter-intuitive. Often times, we’re making decisions about what bad thing we want less. Do we want plastic building up in landfills and oceans, or do we want the global temperature to stop rising?
Of course, these aren’t the only two options and it’s not a 1 to 1 linear relationship. But it’s an interesting example.
If you are going to go on the day before, I’d recommend doing your shopping at 5:00am and be done by 06:00 am. That’s when the day shift comes in. I wouldn’t bring a cartful of groceries to the check stands before that time though, nite crew will be stressing out.
Notes and thanks
They even used to bring your groceries out to your car, put them in your trunk, and return the cart for you.
LET ME AT LEAST MUTE IT
I’m cool with checking myself out I actually prefer to but the anti theft nonsense is to much. Nearly everyone triggers it and last time I had to wait an extra five minutes for an employee to clear it and then they had to count 20+ small items all because I waved my arms over the machine fixing the cuff of my shirt… I don’t blame the employees that’s their job
It’s not “anti-theft”.
It’s just dumb **** criminals who can’t handle being herded and being RIGHTLY LABLED as useless C***S
Until you get caught in a similar predicament without having stolen anything. Then you’ll waste 10 minutes being humiliated by having your entire cart rechecked, all the while catching looks from everyone else checking out. Then you will be frustrated and might say something about it. But yes, they are all dumb criminals. You’ll be the only innocent one who was ever humiliated in this way…
Grow up
In Sweden we usually have a self-checkout alternative where you acquire a wireless scanner when walking in, scanning when picking from shelves and put it directly in shopping bags.
At checkout, you just pay and walk out. There is random controls, where an employee will check like 5 randomly chosen things from the bags. This is seldom though, like once every three/four months or something.
Makes for very quick checkout.
We have it as well. I call it the anti-boomer queue (so no queue)
So basically the boomer queue ensures that cashiers have a job, and it ensures that I don’t have to be treated like a criminal because the cashiers are bagging the groceries and I won’t be subjected to “random controls”. I’m not seeing the negative.
Meh. I can literally leave my house and be back in 10 minutes counted if I miss a couple of ingredients. I got randomly checked like 15 times and they found one time that I beeped two times the same packet of soap instead of beeping one and one (different aroma, same price) and one time they found I was stealing like a 1€ packet of chips that I forgot to scan. They said no problem and didn’t complain at all and made me pay for the chips. For me it’s totally worth it and I don’t see many issues. I agree that the prices are higher and they have less fix costs which make me angry as well but yeah…
I would guess this wouldn’t work in many countries with a more prevalent stealing culture (among which mine, France).
I don’t say that out of nowhere, it shocked me when I went to Sweden and I saw people alone leaving their bags at their place while they go to the bathroom / getting their orders, or just leaving their bike unattached - even for five minutes I would guess it would be quickly stolen in France.