The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

SantalBlush wrote: post #80

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 don't shoplift, but I'm appalled at the double standards that are often applied to consumers and workers compared with large companies. Amazon is selling counterfeit products to unwitting shoppers across the United States. Large firms like this do not subject themselves to any code of ethics like we do; there is only the risk of getting penalized. Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically. It is…

>> Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically.

The way I understand it, every structure in an organised society relies on people acting ethically, or in any case not going out of their way to harm each other without a very good reason.

For example. If I go to the doctor I trust that she won't suggest treatments I don't need because she wants to take my money. That sort of thing.

For me anyway at least one practical purpose served by morality is that it ensures a society remains functional and does not degenerate into chaos.

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

#172

Post by 1000units » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 10:31 AM UTC

tomhoward wrote: post #167

1000units wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The claim was big corporations get to rip off and exploit little people virtually at will, and your refutation was that they are punished (or at least get slapped in the wrist as evidenced), everything is at balance in the moral realm, and a hostile personal orientation against them is unwarranted.

You've now updated your argument to Big Tech may be evil but that doesn't mean we should assume Big Grocery is too. That could be right, but if we look closely I'm sure we could find some tremendously nasty things happening there too. The incentives are making Big Money, not doing good. This is an issue of our (Post-)Industrial society.

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

#173

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 10:38 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #39

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't share the thinking behind that comedy bit at all. For me, self-service checkouts offer such added utility -- no tiresome social interaction with the cashier, no awkward moments when shopping in a country where you don't speak the language -- that it more than makes up for the burden of ringing up my purchases.

I'm glad you get personal utility from the new method, but the rant is coming from a place where people are forced to use self checkouts and would rather not - eg stores where they shut all but one staffed register, creating a huge line.

I'm frustrated with stores that only have self-checkouts also. I don't see how it justifies shoplifting, especially when it's supposed to be an exception to the normal ethics of shoplifting ("it's not OK to shoplift except at self-checkout").

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

#174

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

perakojotgenije wrote: post #126

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more of a problem. In Europe the self-check outs are optional. They're also faster, because there isn't much of a queue and the people with carts all go to cashiers. I don't feel oppressed when I use them because I appreciate the speed. If that advantage disappeared, I'd be less pleased.

No they are not. I was buying in my local Tesco in Hungary the other day and they've removed almost all human cashiers and on that day only self-checkouts were working so I had no choice. And as for speed - I had to call operator three times because of measuring error and after the checkout had to go to another operator to remove that beeper things from the T-shirts I bought. The process was definitely much slower th…

The Marks & Spencer's at London Victoria has a couple of manned tills and about a dozen self-checkout tills. There's always three or four clerks in the self-checkout area yelling "next please" when a self-checkout till empties.

That's their job now, see? Yelling "next please". That's just miserable and pathetic and I fully sympathise with the frustration at self-checkout proliferation (I guess I'm a bit of a neo-Luddite).

But that's not a justification for becoming a jerk oneself.

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

#175

Post by tempguy9999 » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:06 AM UTC

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!

I didn't know this, thanks! However it reminds me of something similar that happened ~25 years ago in a UK town where I lived.

We had a long power cut that went on for many days. The supermarkets shut at first because, why not. As things went on they had customers to serve so they had to sell, I remember that tesco set up a table at the store entrance with the shop manager and a few assistants. You told them what you wanted, the assistants got it. They took cash only [0]. It worked.

Tangential to the article, what would happen today? People are carrying much(?) less cash, card only point of sales terminals are blooming, I just 2 days ago went to top up a spare mobile phone and the vodaphone store told me they'd no longer take cash.

Notes & coins don't need electricity to be acceptable. We may be creating a very fragile alternative because things like comms and power look increasingly reliable so why lean on them ever harder, but they will go down someday, that I guarantee, and the harder we lean on these things, they harder they will drop us when they vanish.

And we may have short power cuts due to human nature but there are things like solar storms. We know they are coming but aren't prepared for them. So what then?

[0] which they must have got from somewhere. I don't remember how the banks were operating.

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

#176

Post by mkl » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:09 AM UTC

_JamesA_ wrote: post #89

chihuahua wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self-checkout at Costco is a godsend. I usually buy 2-5 items at Costco, and the self-checkout allows me to avoid standing in line behind people with overflowing shopping carts. I can pay in about 30 seconds and get out of there.

Sams Club has a self-checkout phone app. Scan as you shop, tap to pay, and show the receipt at the door.

Wow, that takes customer tracking to a whole new level.

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

#177

Post by mkl » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #72

analog31 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas stations are already this way. I've pumped gas at unattended or closed stations. The credit card machine works the same either way.

It’s pretty hard to steal gas from a gas station though. They take the money first and you can’t really take extra gas since it’s all measured.

That's not how it works in a lot of places. I almost always need to fill it up then go inside to pay.

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

#178

Post by gsliepen » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:16 AM UTC

The banana trick works almost equally well when a cashier is checking your product. Mainly because nowadays, they just mindlessly scan all the products on the belt, and do little actual checking. This clip describing shopping at the Dutch Albert Heijn supermarkets isn't far from the truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWB_ev0dK8o

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

#179

Post by 1000units » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #171

SantalBlush wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't shoplift, but I'm appalled at the double standards that are often applied to consumers and workers compared with large companies. Amazon is selling counterfeit products to unwitting shoppers across the United States. Large firms like this do not subject themselves to any code of ethics like we do; there is only the risk of getting penalized. Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically. It is…

>> Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically. The way I understand it, every structure in an organised society relies on people acting ethically, or in any case not going out of their way to harm each other without a very good reason. For example. If I go to the doctor I trust that she won't suggest treatments I don't need because she wants to take my money. That sort of thing. For me anyway at lea…

This is the foundation of his complaint that large firms are not ethical.

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

#180

Post by kranner » Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 11:31 AM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #170

kranner wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thanks for explaining what you meant. However I don't quite see how your examples relate to the kind of fallacious reasoning in the example (that it is OK to steal from self-checkout stores because they're making you do work). This (the example) is not just bad reasoning; it seems to stem from moral deficiency, and one can be morally deficient with or without being a drug addict.

Also, the specific mental issues you list are: a) paranoia and b) amnesia. Neither of these seem to relate well to this example. It only seems old-fashioned generalised disdain for 'junkies'.