The camera could go away instead of the whole system. I don't know how much a problem theft is on the other side of the pond, but we have self-checkout on a product weight basis in Austria and it works just fine.
Self-checkout, when implemented in a sensible way, is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant.
The article is describing a bad implementation that apparently uses some "AI" nonsense to insinuate that a customer (and probably most customers) is attempting to steal. It sounds even worse than the weight sensors that many earlier self-checkout have used, which, besides being error prone, made it impossible to put groceries into any kind of re-usable bag or backpack until after first finishing scanning and paying for everything while attempting to balance the entire load of groceries onto a tiny platform/scale like some reverse jenga tower game.
At least in California and Europe, most self checkouts I have seen either have a button to note that you've put your own bag on the scale, or just ignore weight put on the scale before you start scanning. Are there self checkouts that don't do this?
My experience of those buttons (Sainsburys in the UK) is that they fail at lesat 50% of the time and require someone to come over to verify the bag before you can continue scanning.
"Self-checkout, when implemented in a sensible way, is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant."
As stated, the quoted sentence above says nothing; it has no content because of the caveat. Let's simplify on the way to dragging reality back in:
"Self-checkout is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant."
I have never ever seen an implementation that makes bulk goods checkout, as is required for say vegetables/fruits/grains etc., "fast, efficient, painless, and generally pleasant." How could it be? You have to look up each item on a stupid touch screen, weigh it, and bag it. Lots of potential for callous mistakes that are annoying as hell to fix, so I never fix them, and now I'm a criminal.
Ok, so now they're bagging up the bulk goods so they can barcode the batch, and... I get to buy 3lbs of zuccini, with a bad one visibly lurking in there, or nothing.
Maybe I do not buy enough different vegetables in a single trip to feel at all inconvenienced by the weighing vegetable problem. I also understand that some people will always prefer employee/human checkout for various reasons.
I would expect that AI could help to identify what vegetable is being weighed, but it will probably never know whether or not that zucchini is "organic"/"bio".
As a fairly low tech (but maybe too costly) solution, I could imagine a system where the vegetables at the store live on a scale that spits out a bar code value based on the weight of what a customer removes, which the customer would then take to scan at checkout.
At Wegmans you weigh the produce & print the labels in the produce department, before you ever get to the checkouts. At checkout you scan the barcode that got printed. Fast, efficient, and painless.
Of course that's one regional grocery chain, and typically a more "high end" one than Walmart. But that furthers the point, self checkout can be nice, it just depends on the implementation.
The camera and screen seem to be there as a deterrent. I hate them too but they're easy to avoid by not shopping at locations with them. My guess is their existence is based on the "shrinkage" rate at each store. Of course, this choice becomes more difficult if you don't have the means to travel further, something much more likely for those who live in an area with high shrinkage rates.
Besides anger being used as a standard deflection tactic against rule enforcement, I imagine people who have been successfully stealing from these for a while feel entitled to do it and get angry when contradicted.
Many of these stores have completely eliminated human cashiers and gone 100% self checkout. Which, as others have noted, is really difficult with large items or very full shopping carts. On other forums people have told stories of abandoning full shopping carts when confronted with 30-45 minute waits to check out. Turns out that those human cashiers were pretty fast.
So some of this anger is directed at the store not being able to staff cashiers, but having plenty of staff around to confront customers over inaccurate checkouts.
Self-checkout is fine for a few barcoded items. But a cart of stuff at a grocery store/Walmart? Even if you're fast at scanning, the space is just not setup to process half a cart's worth of goods.
Self-checkout has generally improved but some stores have basically eliminated too many human cashiers.
Some UK stores have a "scan as you go" system: scan with a handheld or even your phone each item as it goes in, then just self-check the whole lot in one go with (usually) no further checks. Although this has been broken at my local store for a while, and I wonder if that's more widespread and/or a reaction to shoplifting.
A grocery chain in Chicago (Jewel/Osco) tried that about 20 years ago. My local store was a test site. You got a wireless Cisco barcode reader that undocked when you entered the store and scanned your shopper card. Then you scanned the card again at the self-checkout and the entire order rang up. A random % of people were spot-checked as they were leaving.
The project was abandoned about a year later. Manager said the shrinkage (theft) rate got way too high. And this was in a pretty affluent town.
Are there really stores with zero cashiers? I've definitely been in a Kroger before where the cashiers angrily directed me to the self-checkout because they were busy with other tasks place upon them like restocking the impulse items at the checkout, but I don't believe I've been to a store with absolutely no ability to have a cashier ring up the order. In the case of Wal-Mart, I've come to prefer self-checkout because there are several items I purchase frequently that the cashiers have trouble ringing up but I find quickly on the self-checkout (for those curious, these are Primo water refills and Anaheim peppers).
It can vary depending on the time of day - I've certainly been to stores early or late in the day and where all the checkouts have been closed and there's just one member of staff near the self checkouts.
At the Walmarts I go to there is usually only one person manning a checkout line, and it’s the same line you go though to buy tobacco. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a store with all registers completely unmanned, but only one person working a register is pretty common.
Maybe not zero, but I’ve definitely noticed grocery stores pushing customers to self checkout. For example, having two of the 10 regular checkout lines open is pretty much the same as having none open.
Maybe the typical price discovery tactic of increasing prices until sales drop off is not telling the whole story. Maybe when people start stealing more and more, it means that prices are too high.
Alternatively, the COL of skyrocketing and people can't keep up anymore. This infinite growth economic structure is unsustainable.
I think the sense of injustice may sometimes be to blame. Let me elaborate.
There have been times at Whole Foods when item after item isnt scanned, now you have to wait for an attendant. Usually they have 1 attendant for 10 machines, so now you've queued up to be helped.
Except there are times where attendants just go randomly help people, or help people who are loud or pull them in. If you have 3 or 4 people waiting for help, unable to proceed, the attendant should help in the order they needed help. You shouldnt see new people suddenly being helped if you've been waiting.
In any case, this has been so infuriating sometimes that I literally just walked away. I left everything, including frozen goods right at the checkout counter. I didnt know what to do to be helped on a fair basis.
Loved this reply! The engineer in me demands mechanical fairness from an unfair human world.
At the same time WF is owned by Amazon and i'm thinking, why isnt there a FIFO Queue number on the screen flashing for the attendant. A Product Enhancement ticket I wish I could submit.
Heck, once this is implemented, they could even have a rating for attendants who arent following the flashing number queue.
I’ve had significant issues with some particular models of self-checkout. They have some sort of weight check after scanning an item, to see if I’ve placed it in the basket. I assume they’re matching up the items known weight, with the change in the weight in my bag.
However, it’s implemented poorly, with frequent false positives. Furthermore, there’s a race condition between scanning the item, the machine saying “place it in the bag”, and the actual weight check. If I move too fast, the item is in my bag before the check starts, and I have to wait for assistance.
Maybe folks are frustrated that their theft is being caught, but high frustration seems to be the base case here.
The weight check is the worst. Most stores I go to have it disabled and it makes the process go smoother.
Not perfect though, it occasionally flags me for some kind of miss scan and I have to wait for an employee to clear it.
Most of them are chagrined at delaying my checkout. I try not to be rude, but I often want to get on with my day.
More recently they don't give us bags anymore, and it seems like a lot of the theft detection has just gone out the window because of the current environmental push that's got all the processes messed up and need to be re calibrated.
So far I just don't remember to bring my own bags and if I have a smaller number of items I just grab the gun and scan them all in the cart because it is a hassle to pull them out and put them all back. I've never been flagged when using the gun.
I got accustomed to pausing whenever the machine was speaking, to avoid the race condition I mentioned above. I went with a friend to a different store, in a new city, and she was very confused by the weird set of behaviors I had learned to keep the original machines happy.
The article seems to be based on the assumption that the anti-theft technology is perfect, and that if it flags then that always means that customer has not scanned an item (intentionally or otherwise).
But given how many issues you get with every other aspect of the self checkout process (items failing to scan properly, machines being broken, "unexpected item in bagging area", etc) that seems to be a very generous assumption.
And when someone has had to wait in a queue to use on of the working self checkout machines, has to go through scanning all of their own shopping (which is stores have managed to get customers to do for free so that they can make more money), has to wait for someone to come over to "assist" them when the machine complains about something, and is then (directly or indirectly) accused of trying to steal from the store because of a faulty self-checkout machine, it's not a huge surprise when they get pissed off about that.
Near me they adjust them from time to time, so I never know whether this week is going to be full of “you moved too quickly, call an attendant to look through your bags” or if it’ll wave you through.
Im glad that you had a good experience but forgiving for you may be an accusation of theft for another, based on some cues that could very well be wrong. I personally dislike this trend of skimping on cashiers and having people do their own checkout. If they had both it wouldn’t be a problem though…
Labor shortage? You realize it’s just the low pay that causes this impression. On such a low salary people can’t make rent even if they worked 12 hours per day. There’s a breaking point where nobody signs up for those jobs but as soon as you up the salary the shortage dissapears. I feel it’s more of a maximizing profit problem after all…
Retailers compete with each other on low single digit profit margins. If they increase their payroll, they would have to increase their prices.
Of course, knowing exactly what level of service people are willing to pay for is not an exact science, so the pendulum can swing a bit too far, but I assume the business managers are best positioned to bet on what people are willing to pay before they choose to shop somewhere else.
Not to mention that brick and mortar retail always has to worry about online retail nipping at their heels. It's hard to compete on price with an Amazon warehouse in a cheap-rent area, staffed with robots and overworked staff when you have to maintain a building in a retail area, keep it clean/nice enough that people aren't totally appalled, and then staff it with people that are able to do their job and interact with customers.
The original b&m retail game was to keep the big ticket items comparable in price, but to add high margins on the ancellary items like HDMI cables. Now, however, everyone knows the game and things like Prime shipping can get it to you fast enough to avoid impulse buying in a retail store.
Walmarts will literally have 25 checkout lanes and it will be one of the busiest shopping days of the year like December 23rd and they'll only have 3 checkout lanes open.
I'll take 25 self checkouts please.
Plus the people they hire as cashiers couldn't possibly be slower at their jobs. I'd rather have zero humans involved in my checkouts. They only waste my time.
In the other hand we have businesses like Best Buy which has a "scan and checkout from the app" feature that doesn't work and the employees know nothing about it. I tried to use it in front of them and we followed the steps on the signage and it just orders an item for pickup, which you can't take with you even if you have it in your hand, because they need someone from the back of the store to receive the order and pick it for you...
Meanwhile I can walk into an Apple Store, never make eye contact with any humans if I don't want to, walk to the shelf, scan an item and pay on the spot, and leave without any friction.
You seem to
be implying that self check lines don’t get stuck and don’t need any intervention. In practice they could be slower than cashiers lines, at least that’s the case in my experience. I don’t mind having the option for both but having 3 cashier lines open and 10 crowded self check out lines is disrespectful for customers, there were ocasions where I abandoned my cart because it would add another half hour to my wait.
This absolutely does happen, but part of the issue is due to the design of the self checkouts. The good ones are a forked conveyor belt design so you send all your items down, pay, walk down to the end and bag your groceries while the next person starts their checkout and has their groceries sent down the other side. No congestion unless the issue is related to scanning the items or payment.
My grocery store's self checkout is 1 line for 8 registers, so in that case even if several registers are stuck the line doesn't stop moving. It's great not ever having to worry about picking the wrong lane.
> In the other hand we have businesses like Best Buy which has a "scan and checkout from the app" feature that doesn't work and the employees know nothing about it.
Walmart also has that, except the checkout is still at the self-serve checkout terminals, it works great, and it is only available to Walmart+ subscribers.
For checkout you hit the checkout button in the app, verify that the item count it has is correct, scan a QR code at an idle checkout terminal, and then hit the pay button and it charges your on-file card.
I like the way target does it. No scale, no obnoxious cameras, they just have a limited amount of self checkouts and usually have security visibly posted near them.
I have yet to witness somebody not scanning things and stealing them from there, the only “success” I’ve seen is sprinting out a fire door.
In my experience when a customer acts angrily they are often intentionally trying to do something wrong. In the case of innocent mistakes they are typically cordial.
Not in my experience. I pumped gas, worked at Dunkin Donuts, scooped ice cream, worked in a retail chain pharmacy, and managed a massive high performance computing facility. Sometimes the nicest people are the ones robbing you.
I'm in the same boat. I rarely lose my shit. I'm the person in others lives that they come to when they need a calm, collected perspective, I calm my children easily, I enjoy letting people talk to me about their problems and I don't profer up unsolicited advice, etc.
The exception to the rule is when technology goes fucking sideways on me. Of course, in our world that means that I'm losing my shit over some misbehaving piece of technology on an ever increasing basis.
"I force myself to be cordial with the attendant since it is not their fault"
Exactly, it isn't that the situation isn't irritating it's that an honest person will initially be cordial about it. The ones that are trying to pull something go straight to overt anger because they, mistakenly, think employees are trained to give an "angry" customer what they want.
> In my experience when a customer acts angrily they are often intentionally trying to do something wrong.
The article claims this too. I’ll be honest: it doesn’t match up with my experience. Self check kiosks are frustrating, even for people with the patience of a saint (which also should not be a requirement to buy things).
I was “detained” by CVS recently - was buying a reward for my kids, and after scanning the two items and paying by credit card, the checkout machine locked down. It took over 15 minutes for anyone to come help. When they did they immediately accused me of stealing which caused my children to think I was going to jail and freak out.
The woman put her code in and my PAID receipt spit out.
I should have left, but I had promised my kids whatever crap it was.
Even worse is when a product has a bad barcode and the employee at the self checkout tells you to go across the store and find a different one instead of just fucking doing their job.
Some locations of Target (US supermarket) have started disabling self-checkout at 8pm, and also limiting self checkout to 10 items or less. So they are literally de-automating their process. Not sure but it seems to do with theft - they have also started locking up or electronically tagging certain items as well.
I think this is probably because the "Target philosophy" is they dont want customers to go through the trauma of the Walmart experience, nor others around them to have to witness it. Target never checked receipts, I've heard they just silently record everything on video (they have dozens of cameras all over the store) and ban you once you've stolen X amount of stuff. I guess that wasn't quite cutting it so they have moved back to cashier checkout.
It’s slower (even without the errors), all the errors are infuriating making it even slower, and I should receive a discount for the labor I employed doing someone else’s job. This is on top of being annoyed that I’m in the self-checkout to begin with because they have 10% of the regular lanes open… if someone then stopped me and accused me of stealing I’d just ask for a full refund…
My Target mini-store downtown has no checkers at all. It's self-check or nothing (or steal I guess).
I hate self-check. Always buying that fruit or piece of lumber or whatever that won't scan or has no sticker or whatnot, then having to navigate the touchscreen to find it among their 1M items.
Fortunately this store ignores the scale (so no 'put item in bagging area' nag) and even though it shows you on a screen from a surveillance camera, those signals go no further than the station. No bandwidth in Target's in-store network for all that video; no storage for it either.
And the mini-store is made items, not a lot of produce for instance, meant for students and loft-residents to buy readymade lunch or whatever. So everything is coded.
I’ve read of multiple instances where Target specifically saves recordings of customers at self checkout to wait until a customer steals enough to get to felony theft at which time loss prevention sets in. I am apt to believe target stores all their self checkout video, or simply has other cameras not connected to the kiosk that record individual customers actions at self checkout.
My contact in their data center, responsible for those kiosk's software, says otherwise about the kiosk cameras.
There are other cameras at portals; I know they can 'look' at those remotely. My sons used to finger their friend in Minneapolis as they entered then text him a location/timestamp so he could look it up and enjoy their greeting.
I frequently encounter issues at self-checkout where I scan an item, hear a beep, assume it's added to my total, but the previous item hasn't registered on the scale yet, so it doesn't add the item.
These systems are often rigid, hard to use, and differ between stores. Sometimes, customers are blamed for theft, but it's not always intentional. Many struggle with these systems. Why can't they make self-checkout user-friendly?
Sacrificing customer comfort and customer goodwill is the new forefront of business optimization, and it is reaching levels where every interaction with every company always leave a bitter aftertaste for the customer. It all started with the famous tale of the airline that saved millions by giving passengers one less olive each, and it became a race to the bottom with companies continuously trying to find the crappiest experience that customers will still tolerate. The self checkout theft prevention measures are just the latest example, where they purposefully make the machines a bit hostile to everyone, making everyone's experience feel bit worse in order to prevent a percentage of thefts. It burns customer goodwill, but at the end of the day they decided that too much goodwill won't bring profit, so they might as well burn that goodwill to try and extract something from it.
I don't see how more people don't understand self-checkout to be the uncompensated labor that it is. You're not getting paid, you're not getting any discount (certainly nothing meaningful). It's jobs lost for your local community and pure profit filling the pockets of distant fat cats.
On average I have been shopping in a Walmart more than once a week for more than six years. So I saw the rollout of checkout cameras.
There's almost certainly facial recognition and radio frequency thumbprinting involved in the whole process of shrinkage mitigation because:
1. The first systems I saw had a camera pointed at me and a display showing that image. There are still some of these systems deployed, but the more recent one's don't show a selfie shot...but I am not naive enough to believe my face isn't being captured.
2. I take my phone in the store with me. A big box store has some properties similar to a faraday cage, yet the cellular signal is strong enough to suggest internal hotspots. Walmart would be foolish not to try to negotiate data access with providers. Walmart is not foolish and has the leverage to negotiate such a relationship...I mean they even sell cell phone plans in their stores.
3. I use the Walmart app in the store to find things on my list because all Walmarts are little different. So Walmart has my exact location and ID.
4. All of this data gets validated when I pay by credit card.
5. And of course there are cameras in the parking lot and my van has a license plate.
A privacy nightmare? No more than the rest of the world. This stuff goes on everywhere there is sufficient technology 24/7 for far less reasonable reasons.
It is unsurprising that some customers are growing agitated with self checkouts. Others have mentioned issues with weights and "accusatory" automated voices, but recently I ran afoul of the computer vision technique used to detect theft. A machine flagged me twice for holding produce in my left hand while trying to find the item number on the screen with my right. Both times an employee had to come and override the system.
It's just a machine but when people are being accused of theft while just trying to buy their groceries, frustration will grow. Since then I've gone back to cashier based checkout. I wonder if we will see more people doing that in future.
I had a similar thing happen. I grabbed something four of my cart to scan it, but realized it would be better suited with another, later group of stuff. When I set it back, I got flagged and had to wait.
Mind you, I don’t think I ever took this more than 6 inches away from the cart. I certainly didn’t scan it or even get it near the canner. Just moving it around was enough to get me flagged.
Really put a bad taste in my mouth. That’s something I’ve seen everyone do in order to bag their groceries into logical groups.
82 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadThe article is describing a bad implementation that apparently uses some "AI" nonsense to insinuate that a customer (and probably most customers) is attempting to steal. It sounds even worse than the weight sensors that many earlier self-checkout have used, which, besides being error prone, made it impossible to put groceries into any kind of re-usable bag or backpack until after first finishing scanning and paying for everything while attempting to balance the entire load of groceries onto a tiny platform/scale like some reverse jenga tower game.
As stated, the quoted sentence above says nothing; it has no content because of the caveat. Let's simplify on the way to dragging reality back in:
"Self-checkout is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant."
I have never ever seen an implementation that makes bulk goods checkout, as is required for say vegetables/fruits/grains etc., "fast, efficient, painless, and generally pleasant." How could it be? You have to look up each item on a stupid touch screen, weigh it, and bag it. Lots of potential for callous mistakes that are annoying as hell to fix, so I never fix them, and now I'm a criminal.
Ok, so now they're bagging up the bulk goods so they can barcode the batch, and... I get to buy 3lbs of zuccini, with a bad one visibly lurking in there, or nothing.
Awesome technology thanks bros.
It's pretty easy at Whole Foods. You hit a button for "produce", type "gr" and select "green pepper", confirm and you're done.
I've never had any trouble at all. I can't even imagine what exactly could go wrong?
I would expect that AI could help to identify what vegetable is being weighed, but it will probably never know whether or not that zucchini is "organic"/"bio".
As a fairly low tech (but maybe too costly) solution, I could imagine a system where the vegetables at the store live on a scale that spits out a bar code value based on the weight of what a customer removes, which the customer would then take to scan at checkout.
Of course that's one regional grocery chain, and typically a more "high end" one than Walmart. But that furthers the point, self checkout can be nice, it just depends on the implementation.
Stores are already full of cameras. Things like ATM's all have cameras filming your transaction too.
What's different about a self-checkout one?
So some of this anger is directed at the store not being able to staff cashiers, but having plenty of staff around to confront customers over inaccurate checkouts.
Self-checkout has generally improved but some stores have basically eliminated too many human cashiers.
Which I think is the best of both worlds. The only improvement would be implementing a single queue for the cashiers.
The project was abandoned about a year later. Manager said the shrinkage (theft) rate got way too high. And this was in a pretty affluent town.
Alternatively, the COL of skyrocketing and people can't keep up anymore. This infinite growth economic structure is unsustainable.
There have been times at Whole Foods when item after item isnt scanned, now you have to wait for an attendant. Usually they have 1 attendant for 10 machines, so now you've queued up to be helped.
Except there are times where attendants just go randomly help people, or help people who are loud or pull them in. If you have 3 or 4 people waiting for help, unable to proceed, the attendant should help in the order they needed help. You shouldnt see new people suddenly being helped if you've been waiting.
In any case, this has been so infuriating sometimes that I literally just walked away. I left everything, including frozen goods right at the checkout counter. I didnt know what to do to be helped on a fair basis.
At the same time WF is owned by Amazon and i'm thinking, why isnt there a FIFO Queue number on the screen flashing for the attendant. A Product Enhancement ticket I wish I could submit.
Heck, once this is implemented, they could even have a rating for attendants who arent following the flashing number queue.
This won't only be a problem in self checkout.
"Miss, I have been waiting before this gentleman here"
Other people aren't loud, they just aren't a timid church mouse. Stand up for yourself.
However, it’s implemented poorly, with frequent false positives. Furthermore, there’s a race condition between scanning the item, the machine saying “place it in the bag”, and the actual weight check. If I move too fast, the item is in my bag before the check starts, and I have to wait for assistance.
Maybe folks are frustrated that their theft is being caught, but high frustration seems to be the base case here.
Not perfect though, it occasionally flags me for some kind of miss scan and I have to wait for an employee to clear it.
Most of them are chagrined at delaying my checkout. I try not to be rude, but I often want to get on with my day.
More recently they don't give us bags anymore, and it seems like a lot of the theft detection has just gone out the window because of the current environmental push that's got all the processes messed up and need to be re calibrated.
So far I just don't remember to bring my own bags and if I have a smaller number of items I just grab the gun and scan them all in the cart because it is a hassle to pull them out and put them all back. I've never been flagged when using the gun.
But given how many issues you get with every other aspect of the self checkout process (items failing to scan properly, machines being broken, "unexpected item in bagging area", etc) that seems to be a very generous assumption.
And when someone has had to wait in a queue to use on of the working self checkout machines, has to go through scanning all of their own shopping (which is stores have managed to get customers to do for free so that they can make more money), has to wait for someone to come over to "assist" them when the machine complains about something, and is then (directly or indirectly) accused of trying to steal from the store because of a faulty self-checkout machine, it's not a huge surprise when they get pissed off about that.
Maybe stores that experience more theft keep the restrictions tighter?
I suppose we can hope the technology gets better. But given labor shortages, it's hard not to see a future with more automation and self-service.
Of course, knowing exactly what level of service people are willing to pay for is not an exact science, so the pendulum can swing a bit too far, but I assume the business managers are best positioned to bet on what people are willing to pay before they choose to shop somewhere else.
The original b&m retail game was to keep the big ticket items comparable in price, but to add high margins on the ancellary items like HDMI cables. Now, however, everyone knows the game and things like Prime shipping can get it to you fast enough to avoid impulse buying in a retail store.
I don’t think it’s just that, because the unemployment rate is especially low.
I'll take 25 self checkouts please.
Plus the people they hire as cashiers couldn't possibly be slower at their jobs. I'd rather have zero humans involved in my checkouts. They only waste my time.
In the other hand we have businesses like Best Buy which has a "scan and checkout from the app" feature that doesn't work and the employees know nothing about it. I tried to use it in front of them and we followed the steps on the signage and it just orders an item for pickup, which you can't take with you even if you have it in your hand, because they need someone from the back of the store to receive the order and pick it for you...
Meanwhile I can walk into an Apple Store, never make eye contact with any humans if I don't want to, walk to the shelf, scan an item and pay on the spot, and leave without any friction.
Walmart also has that, except the checkout is still at the self-serve checkout terminals, it works great, and it is only available to Walmart+ subscribers.
For checkout you hit the checkout button in the app, verify that the item count it has is correct, scan a QR code at an idle checkout terminal, and then hit the pay button and it charges your on-file card.
I have yet to witness somebody not scanning things and stealing them from there, the only “success” I’ve seen is sprinting out a fire door.
We would need some study to confirm it.
“Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove all unbagged items”
“Please place scanned item in bagging area”
“Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove all unbagged items”
“Please wait, system processing.”
“Please wait, help is on the way.”
[Screen locked, not a soul in sight]
I force myself to be cordial with the attendant since it is not their fault, but I am fully ready to Office Space that goddamn checkout kiosk.
The exception to the rule is when technology goes fucking sideways on me. Of course, in our world that means that I'm losing my shit over some misbehaving piece of technology on an ever increasing basis.
I’m with you on the office space response. I would take sweet pleasure in providing an “unexpected item” right through its guts.
Exactly, it isn't that the situation isn't irritating it's that an honest person will initially be cordial about it. The ones that are trying to pull something go straight to overt anger because they, mistakenly, think employees are trained to give an "angry" customer what they want.
The article claims this too. I’ll be honest: it doesn’t match up with my experience. Self check kiosks are frustrating, even for people with the patience of a saint (which also should not be a requirement to buy things).
The woman put her code in and my PAID receipt spit out.
I should have left, but I had promised my kids whatever crap it was.
… no, I don’t hold a grudge, why do you ask?
I also wonder how close we are to that tipping point.
I think this is probably because the "Target philosophy" is they dont want customers to go through the trauma of the Walmart experience, nor others around them to have to witness it. Target never checked receipts, I've heard they just silently record everything on video (they have dozens of cameras all over the store) and ban you once you've stolen X amount of stuff. I guess that wasn't quite cutting it so they have moved back to cashier checkout.
It’s slower (even without the errors), all the errors are infuriating making it even slower, and I should receive a discount for the labor I employed doing someone else’s job. This is on top of being annoyed that I’m in the self-checkout to begin with because they have 10% of the regular lanes open… if someone then stopped me and accused me of stealing I’d just ask for a full refund…
They also impact my tolerance for reusing my bags, because anti theft video and scales make it very difficult to adjust your bags.
I hate self-check. Always buying that fruit or piece of lumber or whatever that won't scan or has no sticker or whatnot, then having to navigate the touchscreen to find it among their 1M items.
Fortunately this store ignores the scale (so no 'put item in bagging area' nag) and even though it shows you on a screen from a surveillance camera, those signals go no further than the station. No bandwidth in Target's in-store network for all that video; no storage for it either.
And the mini-store is made items, not a lot of produce for instance, meant for students and loft-residents to buy readymade lunch or whatever. So everything is coded.
There are other cameras at portals; I know they can 'look' at those remotely. My sons used to finger their friend in Minneapolis as they entered then text him a location/timestamp so he could look it up and enjoy their greeting.
In Europe these "unexpected items in packing area" errors which require staff to come and clear are taken in stride and became a bit of a meme.
These systems are often rigid, hard to use, and differ between stores. Sometimes, customers are blamed for theft, but it's not always intentional. Many struggle with these systems. Why can't they make self-checkout user-friendly?
There's almost certainly facial recognition and radio frequency thumbprinting involved in the whole process of shrinkage mitigation because:
1. The first systems I saw had a camera pointed at me and a display showing that image. There are still some of these systems deployed, but the more recent one's don't show a selfie shot...but I am not naive enough to believe my face isn't being captured.
2. I take my phone in the store with me. A big box store has some properties similar to a faraday cage, yet the cellular signal is strong enough to suggest internal hotspots. Walmart would be foolish not to try to negotiate data access with providers. Walmart is not foolish and has the leverage to negotiate such a relationship...I mean they even sell cell phone plans in their stores.
3. I use the Walmart app in the store to find things on my list because all Walmarts are little different. So Walmart has my exact location and ID.
4. All of this data gets validated when I pay by credit card.
5. And of course there are cameras in the parking lot and my van has a license plate.
A privacy nightmare? No more than the rest of the world. This stuff goes on everywhere there is sufficient technology 24/7 for far less reasonable reasons.
Though YMMV of course.
It's just a machine but when people are being accused of theft while just trying to buy their groceries, frustration will grow. Since then I've gone back to cashier based checkout. I wonder if we will see more people doing that in future.
Mind you, I don’t think I ever took this more than 6 inches away from the cart. I certainly didn’t scan it or even get it near the canner. Just moving it around was enough to get me flagged.
Really put a bad taste in my mouth. That’s something I’ve seen everyone do in order to bag their groceries into logical groups.