Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
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.
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.
We call them “Entrepreneurs” lol
Boosters are public servants doing God’s work and I won’t hear a word said against them
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
Just curious, do you get anything if you tell on them?
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).
During Walmart employee onboarding they literally have training on how to apply for government benefits. This is not hyperbole, it is fact. They pay their workers so little that the US taxpayers are forced to subsidize their business model through societal safety nets designed for true emergencies and need, not just corporate greed. But Walmart has managed to monetize that too.
So fuck Walmart. See THAT theft first.
In our society people are acknowledged human 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.
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?
Stealing is morally wrong no matter what.
🤡
Unless they’re stealing guns or ammo.
You know what, I’ll make that exception.
The employees can potentially get fired.
This is the way.
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.
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?
Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC
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
How about this. If self check out is a problem go back to paying cashiers.
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 100+ employees to retire and live off of for the rest of their lives, and they’ll just pocket it all. Fuck 'em.
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.
Hostile to the point of attacking the employees?
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.
U
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.
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.
The “bad” grocery store near me has taken to posting security cam pictures of people they catch stealing which is a terrible, awfully, extrajudicial thing to do, but I would be lying if I said it does not make for some hilarious pictures.
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.
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’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.
People like reinventing the wheel.
I see what you did there.
I always try and smash my cart into the gates extra hard every time I go through
I’ve had too many incidents with spoiled or opened food to ever use curbside pickup.
Hackers messing with those anti-theft wheels: invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=fBICDODmCPI
Some loss is the expected result of replacing workers with employees. 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.
These incidents were mistakes.
Let’s stop that from happening, and make it deliberate.
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
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.
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
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.
They even used to bring your groceries out to your car, put them in your trunk, and return the cart for you.
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.
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.
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.
Have they choked out all other options in the vicinity?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It really is stupid cause literally every business accepts NFC payments now. Even gas pumps. But not Walmart.
I left my cart in the checkout lane once because of this. They are actively refusing to implement tap to pay in order to drive people to their app. Not happening.
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.
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.
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.
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…
customers should get a discount for using an SCO.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
When their AI is well trained on social behaviours, they’ll start sending Minority reports
This post has reminded me that I should go steal from Walmart soon.
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.
Seems like i have a complete different experience of self checkout here in Germany. But why? Are our devices newer?
garretble@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
IrrerPolterer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
shiroininja@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
db2@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Walmart customers
Damage@feddit.it 1 year ago
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?
SebKra@feddit.de 1 year ago
One week in NL and I’m wondering what we’re even doing over here.
elbrar@pawb.social 1 year ago
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?
Thymos@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
SmashingSquid@notyour.rodeo 1 year ago
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.
sartalon@futurology.today 1 year ago
Yeah, I got pinged twice, in one visit because I moved shit around, trying to organize.
Way more false positives, in my opinions.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Stabbitha@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
garretble@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Same for me.
fushuan@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
Hyggyldy@sffa.community 1 year ago
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)