31–40 of 231 posts
Maybe there is an opportunity here to somehow make shopping or self-checkout more thrilling and thus reduce shoplifting. Maybe add some features from a slot machine and give random discount or free items. Gamify the checkout experience so people want to buy more.
In all stores I know, there are randomized inspection of say every 30 customers. Missed something tiny and you might be reprimanded and you’ll get tighter inspections for many months to come (until you had several inspections without issue). If you are found to have made some kind of fraud that is obviously a mistake then you’ll be stripped of the “privilege” of self-checkout as well as probably reported to police an…
Do you happen to live in Europe? I've only ever seen the inspections in Europe.
I wanted to checkout at a Home Depot but there were no employees to be seen and only self-checkout lanes open. I had some items I wanted help with and in frustration asked the customer next to me, "does anybody work here?" He said "I guess we do." I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.
> it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier. One argument against that is that if people are willing to provide that labor freely, it's worth nothing. Another argument: before supermarkets, you'd ask the clerk to get a list of things from the shelves (which customers couldn't access). Now this labor is done by customers. Self-checkout is just another change like that.
There’s no correct balance between customer labor and employee labor. Choose what suits you. If your chose store forces you into an arrangement you don’t like, choose a different one.
I did once abuse the self-checkout myself, but I felt justified: The tag on the shelf said the crackers were buy-one-get-one-free. But when I rang them both up, it charged for both. Instead of calling an attendant, I just voided one of them but walked out with it. I'm basically a criminal mastermind.
Sorry, what does "rang them up" mean here? :)
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. Mainly because I support the idea of automation and want it to work well. Maybe it's just the reliability engineer in me that wants to call out the bugs and have them fixed. Or maybe it's the former security engineer in me who got paid to find the flaws in these systems and my ethics deman…
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 assumed the cashier scanned it and since we were buying so much stuff the price didn't seem off. Well when I went to submit the microwave receipt for reimbursement I realized there was no microwave on the receipt. I had "stolen" it. (Though I'm not sure you can call it stealing when you lack intent.) But if I hadn't needed to look at the receipt to get reimbursed I never would have known I needed to go back and pay for it.
I wanted to checkout at a Home Depot but there were no employees to be seen and only self-checkout lanes open. I had some items I wanted help with and in frustration asked the customer next to me, "does anybody work here?" He said "I guess we do." I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.
> it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier. One argument against that is that if people are willing to provide that labor freely, it's worth nothing. Another argument: before supermarkets, you'd ask the clerk to get a list of things from the shelves (which customers couldn't access). Now this labor is done by customers. Self-checkout is just another change like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly
https://www.southernliving.com/culture/piggly-wiggly-history
>Before Clarence Saunders opened his shop, anyone who needed groceries would hand their shopping list over to a clerk who would pluck the groceries off the shelves and hand shoppers a bag full of their items. Piggly Wiggly turned that model on its head. Shoppers were invited into the store, handed a shopping basket, and left to wander the aisles of the grocery store, filling their cart with whatever products caught their eye. It’s hard to imagine now, but no one had ever thought of self-service grocery shopping before. According to TIME, who dug into Piggly Wiggly for the store’s centennial, Piggly Wiggly was the original grocery store, who not only introduced grocery carts, but also “price-marked items, employees in uniform, and the supermarket franchise model.”
Officially, the mysterious story behind the name is:
>According to the Piggly Wiggly website, the name's origin is truly a mystery. Saunders never fully explained where he got the idea that naming a supermarket after a squirmy porker was a good idea. Instead, he let stories circulate and, like a politician, neither confirmed nor denied them. One story claims that he came up with the name during a train ride where he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence. That made him think of the rhyme “piggly wiggly” and that apparently sounded like a good name for a grocery store. Another original story floating around is that when people asked Saunders why he gave his grocery store such a funny little name, he’s reported to have said, "So people will ask that very question." It seems to have worked, because here we are over 100 years later asking still asking the question. One thing for sure, though: It’s memorable.
But my mom, who grew up in the south, told me it was common knowledge that it was called "Piggly Wiggly" because the frantically shopping customers acted like pigs wiggling around all over the store in a mad feeding frenzy!
If that's the real reason, that they named their chain after how their customers behaved, then maybe Clarence Saunders and the Piggly Wiggly Office of Public Relations were so coy and mysterious because they didn't want people to know they thought of their customers as wiggly piggies.
>> “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…
Alternatively, it's revealing a deeper truth that had been obscured by a long chain of seemingly logical justifications. Corporations tend to abuse abstractions until they break, and self-checkout is basically at that breaking point. Comedy is especially good at deflating bullshit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w I for one could never stand the things for their slow and obtuse programming. I can…
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. Mainly because I support the idea of automation and want it to work well. Maybe it's just the reliability engineer in me that wants to call out the bugs and have them fixed. Or maybe it's the former security engineer in me who got paid to find the flaws in these systems and my ethics deman…
I must be missing something. Where is the automation? It's just the customer doing all the work instead of an employee.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, it's revealing a deeper truth that had been obscured by a long chain of seemingly logical justifications. Corporations tend to abuse abstractions until they break, and self-checkout is basically at that breaking point. Comedy is especially good at deflating bullshit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w I for one could never stand the things for their slow and obtuse programming. I can…
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.