Live data from Hacker News

Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

github.com

161–170 of 356 posts

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business is not wrong for choosing to use automation. Everyone does it every day, and it is not considered "wrong".

Self-checkouts aren’t automation. They just change who does the work (to someone not being paid for it).

I've heard this argument, and I just don't get it. I've never heard anyone complain about having to push their own shopping carts. No one pays you to push the cart. Should they? If you want the cart pushed, you push the cart. If you want to check out, you check out. If either one of those is a hardship for you, go elsewhere.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crazy. But coming from someone who wrote a book on retail fraud and worked as a retail fraud analyst for several years... you could have just walked straight out with those items. Transacting was your way of leaving a calling card for the investigators/analysts to find you... You stole regardless of how you did it.

The visual risk of walking out without paying is much greater than the risk that anyone actually investigates AND tries to track him down for it. Back when I was a kid it was common to still just have simple price tag stickers on every single item. We’d pull off a cheap sticker and put it on an expensive item. If they noticed, we’d just shrug and say “oh Nevermind then” when they found the right price. The only probl…

A year or two ago I had a cashier ring up my zucchini as cucumbers because he apparently couldn't tell the difference. Young guy, looked barely 18. I have no idea if he overcharged or undercharged me as a result, but I didn't care enough to point it out because he seemed like the type who would have needed 20 minutes to figure out how to change it (or would have needed to call down a manager for help) and I didn't want to waste any more of my time (or his).

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand Walmart has been getting rid of self checkout because they're not actually effective.

That's really surprising. In my experience its so much faster than traditional cashier.

They're not effective at reducing/preventing shrink. Unsure what the time situation is at scale for the stores. To be sure I'm faster and better at bagging but holy crap some people are not.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad the store owners introduced a way to give customers more control over how merchandise exits their store.

Not just that, getting unpaid labor. Self-checkouts aren’t automating anything, they’re just making the shopper do work for the store. I hope they’re losing money over it.

Nah, I like organizing and packing my own bags to unpack into my refrigerator and pantry. And I appreciate the reprieve from small talk to the cashier or feeling the person behind me being inconvenienced by my slowness putting bags in the cart. Plus it helps me get a secondary feedback on relative costs of items in my cart. I’m all for self checkout as an awkward dude that appreciates some quiet time when shopping.

I go to wholefoods (self checkout) and trader joes (cashier) and other local branded stores with cashiers. I feel the least amount of rushed at wholefoods and the most at trader joes.

Edit - I hate the self checkout at home depot in my area where they show the facial recognition bounding boxes on the screen. Like I know that’s happening behind the scenes but home depot makes the whole experience so blatantly loss-prevention and customer profiling motivated vs a good transparent customer experience that I’ve made a point to go to smaller branded hardware stores.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#165
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that, getting unpaid labor. Self-checkouts aren’t automating anything, they’re just making the shopper do work for the store. I hope they’re losing money over it.

They are automating quite a lot, since the wait times are much much lower. I choose the self-checkout counters >95% of the time.

Please explain to me which part they are automating.

A person scans the goods. A person handles keying in codes when necessary. A person tells the system the scanning is done and to accept payment. A person bags the groceries.

I guess if you’re paying cash it automates taking the money slightly more than the standard cash register does.

Mine have lower wait times because people with lots of stuff can’t fit that shit on the tiny scale-tables, and likely don’t feel like doing all that work themselves, so they go to the regular checkout line (there is usually only one, maybe two if it’s busy), plus the five or six stations share a line so it feels faster.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why we'd defend a megacorporation. Both the corporation and the shoplifter can be wrong.

The business is not wrong for choosing to use automation. Everyone does it every day, and it is not considered "wrong".

"Everyone does it every day"

That makes it okay?

"It is not considered wrong"

By WHOM? I go out of my way to avoid self-checkout when I can, because I consider it 'wrong.'

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad the store owners introduced a way to give customers more control over how merchandise exits their store.

The "too bad" is most people lacking the understanding that you don't steal from a store, you steal from honest shoppers who keep the store open for you to steal from. Stores just pass on the losses from theft into the price of everything else. You're not robbing a rounding error amount from a faceless billionaire, you're robbing a rounding error amount from the "sucker" paying full price next to you.

And where do you account for the absolutely countable number of lost jobs in this equation?

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-checkouts aren’t automation. They just change who does the work (to someone not being paid for it).

I've heard this argument, and I just don't get it. I've never heard anyone complain about having to push their own shopping carts. No one pays you to push the cart. Should they? If you want the cart pushed, you push the cart. If you want to check out, you check out. If either one of those is a hardship for you, go elsewhere.

This was an actual thing (complaining about this) when super-markets started to take over from general stores and butcher shops et c. Having to go get your bag of sugar off the warehouse shelf yourself rather than a clerk fetching it for you is unpaid labor on the part of the shopper (and is also not automation).
Post reply on HN