548
Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
548 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
59322 readers
5220 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In Sweden we usually have a self-checkout alternative where you acquire a wireless scanner when walking in, scanning when picking from shelves and put it directly in shopping bags.
At checkout, you just pay and walk out. There is random controls, where an employee will check like 5 randomly chosen things from the bags. This is seldom though, like once every three/four months or something.
Makes for very quick checkout.
I would guess this wouldn't work in many countries with a more prevalent stealing culture (among which mine, France).
I don't say that out of nowhere, it shocked me when I went to Sweden and I saw people alone leaving their bags at their place while they go to the bathroom / getting their orders, or just leaving their bike unattached - even for five minutes I would guess it would be quickly stolen in France.
We have it as well. I call it the anti-boomer queue (so no queue)
So basically the boomer queue ensures that cashiers have a job, and it ensures that I don't have to be treated like a criminal because the cashiers are bagging the groceries and I won't be subjected to "random controls". I'm not seeing the negative.
Meh. I can literally leave my house and be back in 10 minutes counted if I miss a couple of ingredients. I got randomly checked like 15 times and they found one time that I beeped two times the same packet of soap instead of beeping one and one (different aroma, same price) and one time they found I was stealing like a 1€ packet of chips that I forgot to scan. They said no problem and didn't complain at all and made me pay for the chips. For me it's totally worth it and I don't see many issues. I agree that the prices are higher and they have less fix costs which make me angry as well but yeah...