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Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech
(www.businessinsider.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
They were never intended to have 100% of the teller/check stands open.
It’s for surge and holidays, if you go in on Black Friday or other super busy times, you’ll see a vast majority opened.
It also makes counting easier, if 1 person uses a drawer and it’s off, it’s easier to hold a person accountable, rather than if 5 people used it
As someone who used to have to fix tills, this is both true and not right.
Yes most larger retailers have more tills then they plan on having open outside of say Xmas, and also to allow for some to be down and not effect over all sales. But also no (started years ago) that you will see even on the most busy days of the year most of the lanes open.
I would say about 10 years ago with express and self checkout the big retailers gave up on hiring enough people to use all the forward tills and I think moved to the idea that people will wait on those busy days. I watched stores be built with less and less lane capacity and have less and less dedicated cashiers. Like a lot of companies retail giants see payroll a tempting place to make cuts on and after covid they have learned (hopefully incorrectly) that people will put up with a lot more BS then was expected years ago.