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.
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.
normal checkout, which had the problem that my steaks had already been scanned
Lol, that meat had a serial number.
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).
Meat heist is unironically a real thing
We hang cattle rustlers round here…
Dang, from one ‘local’ establishment to the next.
And I bet you’re paying more, too.
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.
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?
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.
Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC
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
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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.
Remember everyone. If you see someone shoplifting from Walmart, no you didn’t.
I wouldn’t say anything. Not because I care about “muh poor people” but because I actively mind my own business. I would behave the same way if I saw someone steal from a small business as well.
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).
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?
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Stealing is morally wrong no matter what.
🤡
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.
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: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8JLIWxxya4
Tell your moms I said hi, suburb kids
We call them “Entrepreneurs” lol
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.
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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? 🤔
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makes the shopping experience shittier for the rest of us (locked merchandise)
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the syndicates fencing these goods use the money to support actual harmful crimes
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the people doing the thieving often get violent themselves
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raises prices and causes store closures
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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.
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Cool story bro.
Let me guess, you live in a safe, lily-white suburb😂
Poverty breeds crime, but not all crime is of desperation.
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 what?
Tell on people who are shoplifting.
All of it’s happening out in the open
Then what did you mean by:
As long as it’s just “shoplifting”
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.
Unless they’re stealing guns or ammo.
You know what, I’ll make that exception.
The employees can potentially get fired.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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…
- 25% of the time you end up selected for ‘random check’ so an employee has to come and rescan everything anyway
- If there are any ‘restricted’ items a like painkillers, a different employee has to come over and allow them.
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.
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
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.
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.
You can tell who’s never worked as a cashier because they take fucking forever to check out
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
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.
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.
They even used to bring your groceries out to your car, put them in your trunk, and return the cart for you.
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!
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?
I agree with the top level comment but this one reeks of toxicity, so unnecessary
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.
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. (https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/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.
I don’t understand. You’ve had cashiers break your shit, and therefore you prefer they do the bagging?
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
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.
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
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
LET ME AT LEAST MUTE IT
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.
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.
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.
It’s not “anti-theft”.
It’s just dumb **** criminals who can’t handle being herded and being RIGHTLY LABLED as useless C***S
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.
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.
