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The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

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Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#161

Post by michaelmrose »

provolone wrote: post #125

To avoid false accusations of theft, avoid self-checkout. YMMV. I understand that people are abusing the system. I can accept that the store has an interest in loss prevention. But I'll never feel comfortable with being checked up on. As a stubborn person, I'll have to start shopping somewhere else when this happens. This means a less convenient location. Where's the time savings in that? Many here bring their politi…

Are you also one of those who get annoyed when people look in containers you purchase or count the goods you present for purchase?

Paying attention is the only way to insure accurate transactions.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#162

Post by kalleboo »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #26

>> “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.” I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extrem…

> They are making you pick up the swiss cheese and take it to the till (automated or not). Are they charging you to move items around the store?

Until the Piggly Wiggly supermarket introduced the self-serve concept in 1916, you would go up to a counter and tell a clerk what food items you wanted, and they would get them for you. So your analogy really is the 1920's version of the self-checkout!

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#163

Post by provolone »

michaelmrose wrote: post #161
provolone wrote: post #125

To avoid false accusations of theft, avoid self-checkout. YMMV. I understand that people are abusing the system. I can accept that the store has an interest in loss prevention. But I'll never feel comfortable with being checked up on. As a stubborn person, I'll have to start shopping somewhere else when this happens. This means a less convenient location. Where's the time savings in that? Many here bring their politi…

Are you also one of those who get annoyed when people look in containers you purchase or count the goods you present for purchase? Paying attention is the only way to insure accurate transactions.

no

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#164

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

sfthrower89 wrote: post #142
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #26

>> “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.” I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extrem…

> I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extreme persecution complex. I'm curious how something that is entirely a flamewar gets so many upvotes? Where's @dang with their admonishments?

I can see your point. After all, the original comment has BLOCK CAPITALS screaming- always a tell-tale sign of a rant on the internets. Maybe I should have refrained from commenting on it at all.

But, I'm actually really interested in the ways that we delude ourselves, particularly on issues of morality (but not only). It's an itch I can only resist scratching with great difficulty. If I ever manage to get my PhD I might even throw some papers at the problem (of figuring out when we are taking bad decisions based on bad reasoning).

Sorry if all this makes you unhappy.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#165

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

kalleboo wrote: post #162
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #26

>> “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.” I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extrem…

> They are making you pick up the swiss cheese and take it to the till (automated or not). Are they charging you to move items around the store? Until the Piggly Wiggly supermarket introduced the self-serve concept in 1916, you would go up to a counter and tell a clerk what food items you wanted, and they would get them for you. So your analogy really is the 1920's version of the self-checkout!

Thanks- I had no idea. Another comment under this post made a similar point and I was wondering about it.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#166

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

lozenge wrote: post #148
mb_72 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously they’d rather the company hire more workers and charge them s little extra. It's happened the other way around - self checkout didn't exist, and when it was introduced prices didn't drop even though employment expenses are now lower. There isn't even an incentivising discount for using the self-checkout. I've seen people have no end of problems with self-checkout systems, and would rather I have an experi…

Groceries are the most low margin retail business at 1-2 percent. So the cost savings have definitely been passed on to the customer, unless you can find figures to the contrary.

By "the cost savings have been passed on to the customer", do you mean that a) self-checkout has caused the customer to pay more for groceries, or that b) the cost of groceries has remained the same (or decreased), but now the store makes extra profits from it because they don't have to pay as many clerks?

If b) then we're back to where I started: you might as well complain about the discount on Swiss cheese. You don't pay more for youg goods, you may even pay less- but the store is making more money anyway.

I won't say "where is the harm in that" because there is certainly harm to the clerks- but that is a separate issue from the extreme stretching of reason to justify shoplifting in the passage I commented on.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#167

Post by tomhoward »

1000units wrote: post #155
tomhoward wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole point hinges on the claim that Amazon routinely and deliberately acts fraudulently and is never held to account. But Amazon and companies like them are absolutely held accountable for legal breaches all the time. Here's just one recent example: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2017/05/... Companies are under constant scrutiny by various bodies and agents including regulators, consumer pr…

Your example is comical. By my reading, Amazon stole (and was ordered to return) $70 million from Americans by offering their children fake playmoney for their real money. Where are the punitive damages? $70 million is piss to Amazon. Here's another comical example from recent: Facebook is fined $5B for privacy violations. Their stock goes up for the day.

Nowhere did I say the conduct of the big tech companies is anything resembling perfect, nor that the regulation of them is perfect.

The point was that none of this justifies property theft from other big companies, and that we all learned this as children.

But sure, petty theft can be a powerful form of protest I guess, so if that's important to you, knock yourself out.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#168

Post by gambiting »

ricardobeat wrote: post #75
choward wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mainly because I support the idea of automation and want it to work well. I must be missing something. Where is the automation? It's just the customer doing all the work instead of an employee.

I don't know what it looks like in the US, but here in Europe it is often faster / more convenient to use the self-checkout. The lines are shorter, it's easier to bag everything, and it's easier to keep an eye on all the prices. Plus there are random inspections every now and then, and usually cameras on each machine. To top it off, they don't take cash, only debit cards, so it's very easy to find any wrongdoers. I w…

I don't know which part of Europe you're referring to, but I've used self checkout machines in both Poland and the UK and pretty much all of them always accept cash. There's no issue with anonymous purchases using self checkout machines at all.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#169

Post by gambiting »

xauronx wrote: post #146
elliekelly wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I must be a rube, because I've never stolen from one of those things. When it makes a mistake I call the attendant to correct it. That you know of - there are plenty of errors that are entirely innocent. It wasn't even self-checkout but in college I went to Walmart to buy a new microwave for my sorority and it was so big we left it in the cart with the barcode up instead of putting it on the conveyor belt. I just a…

There are countless people in this thread (which concerns me because I generally think of HN as a pretty highly educated and moral group) who see errors like that at the register and walk away thinking they won a prize.

Yeah. I've noticed errors on my receipt after coming back home and I would always go back to the store to pay for the items that slipped through.

Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018)

#170

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

kranner wrote: post #115
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #26

>> “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.” I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extrem…

> It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extreme persecution complex I really don't see the relation between delusional thinking and consuming narcotics. Can you explain what you mean? I've seen people high on narcotics; they seem loopy and sleepy, but not particularly susceptible to…

My experience with people on drugs is that their ability to make a correct judgement in any situation diminishes drastically.

For example, many of my friends would see cops everywhere after smoking weed (edit: secret cops, in civilian clothes. See how well they hide among us?). Another friend would always misplace her stuff, then start suspecting whoever was with her of stealing them (e.g. she would think I stole her baccy, though I don't smoke, etc).

A friend of mine who was a heroin addict (and died of it at the ripe old age of 34) used to tell me how heroine makes you sociable and friendly, but my experience was that when he shot, he would just fall asleep and then be too smashed to be anything like sociable. But in his head he was the soul of the party.

I've also known a fair few people who developed some kind of paranoid delusion most likely as a result of doing too many drugs. For example, I had a friend who thought one of his pals' brother was a hitman sent by the secret services to kill him. When he was sober, he was OK, most of the time, but when he was under- you couldn't make sense of him.

I mean, let's face it. You don't take drugs because they make you smarter.

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