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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31395 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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And that sense of being a chump grates on me over time, until eventually I start stealing things.

I don't experience this feeling myself, but I kind of agree that Self-Checkouts exist in an unusual 'middle-trust' zone where they are giving you some benefit of the doubt and yet still making you go through the motions to 'prove' your honesty by scanning everything and in theory if they find out that you took something without paying they could drag you back in and prove that you knowingly failed to scan an item with the intent to steal it. They won't because evidently the losses to such incidents are not worth hiring somebody to man a checkout counter, much less pushing the prosecution of a <$50 shoplifting case.

The real 'high trust' option is Honesty Boxes and that's surely not an option for any large corporation.

And it isn't like they're watching you to reward honest behavior! You don't get a prize for "100 items scanned at self-checkout without incident" or a badge that says "Certified Honest Customer". They just expect to make more money off you than they lose over the course of your patronage, and they are trying to zero in on the minimum level of surveillance needed to get you to follow the rules.

Me, I like the option of self-checkout because most of the time I'm picking up very few things at one time and if the self-checkout can shave 2-5 minutes off waiting in line I'm happy to do the work myself.

yet still making you go through the motions to 'prove' your honesty by scanning everything

As opposed to what? Tallying everything in my head? "Oh, how much was this carrot again? Let me go back to the carrots to check."

Barcodes are a labor saving device, not a compliance mechanism. It's absolutely trivial to circumvent.

Yes, and if YOU have to scan everything, rather than a cashier, that is also a labor-saving device... for the store that doesn't have to pay the cashier.

They're adding in an extra step for YOU, the customer to undertake mostly for the store's convenience. And they expect you to be honest while you do it, while still implementing anti-theft measures.

If you want an alternative, Sam's Club does Scan and Go where you can use your phone to scan your stuff as you shop, pay online, then mosy on past the checkout counter to the friendly staffer at the door who briefly checks if you've paid for all the items you said you bought.

Yes, we live in an era where every single person has a bar-code reader in their possession at all times.

THAT would be one hell of an alternative. Scan everything you're buying, and pay digitally (or pay at some automated kiosk), and then walk out the door.

Amazon Fresh had the best model for this, Just Walk Out. Cameras watch everything you do, associate you with the items you pick up and walk out of the store with, and charge you.

Unfortunately a few weeks back the store near me abandoned this. Now they've got a regular self checkout and "dash carts" that are basically a mobile self checkout, where you still have to scan items. According to Amazon customers didn't like it, which is baffling to me. Here's the press release: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-just-walk-out-dash-cart-grocery-shopping-checkout-stores

The accuracy was perfect in my experience. To use Just Walk Out you'd have to scan your Amazon app when you entered and exited. Maybe folks figured out a great way to defeat the tech and theft was too great? But if not then they'd be much harder to defeat than regular self check out.

From what I recall, Amazon Fresh was the one where they needed to outsource the recognition to Indians for double-checking?

That was the media lying about RLHF.

Seems petty to me to complain about scanning your own items when it's a miniscule additional task compared to visiting the store in person, carrying items from the shelves to the exit and (gasp!) bagging your own items.

I also don't see how using your own phone to scan the things and using your own phone to pay makes it easier. What if I have a 10 year old brick that takes a minute to open anything?

We can quibble about who benefits the most from self checkout. The point I'm making is that the reason you scan stuff at self checkout is not to prove that you are honest, it's because that's the simplest way to implement self checkout.

Now, the guy at Sam's club who checks your cart and your receipt - that's obviously a compliance mechanism. It's probably not feasible to stop and frisk every shopper in a normal store, especially since in normal stores you bag your groceries and at Sam's club you don't.

They won't because evidently the losses to such incidents are not worth hiring somebody to man a checkout counter, much less pushing the prosecution of a <$50 shoplifting case.

The places around me that have kept their self-check out counters almost always have some staff at hand that man multiple counters at once, both to supervise and help out if there are any issues. Perhaps 1 staff member per 5+ counters.

And that person is always busy, either helping someone who can't figure something out, or verifying ID for alcohol sales, or taking an item off for a customer who accidentally scanned it twice, or...

And they're always needed, because at some places they'll refuse to accept those shitty mandated-by-law cloth bags are empty when you start.

Pro tip: Don't put the bag down until it already has a heavy item in it (Canned/Frozen food). The scale is more forgiving with heavy items.

Right, there's probably some benefit to honesty by having a real human present, I'd bet on the margins it makes people less likely to cheat.

But that staffer isn't going to catch someone failing to scan a $10 item or scanning something as a different item unless they're aggressively looking for it.

And in the hypothetical where I scan the ham twice and miss the prosciutto, or scan the cheap lightswitch ten times and throw the heavy duty switches in the bag, and they catch me, "Oh man, lucky you noticed! Long day at work, I screwed up, let me fix it quick." No one is getting arrested, no consequences.

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