I've never seen a shoplifter in my entire life.
I have, however, seen entrepreneurial individuals dedicated to mitigating the wealth-disparity of multi-location retailers via reallocating in-store inventory directly to end users.
Once again not getting credit for how much stealing I do as a millennial
You are too good at it and don’t get caught. The best thief receives no accolades.
Boomers go to the checkout person so they can have someone to get pissed off at when the item doesn't ring up right and they go "heh, guess it's free then!"
Okay that’s a dumb boomer joke that drives me crazy but also I do ultimately believe that’s exactly how it should work
Any problems processing payment means it’s free. I believe this on a fundamental “we live in a society” level. As a business, the social contract you fulfill is to 1. provide goods and services, and 2. in exchange for doing so we allow you to collect money. Whether you are able to do part 2 is really not our problem, and you have to do part 1 regardless.
If a Walmart has its credit card readers go down you should be allowed to take anything you’d like
Ugh. God damn, that is so fucking true. Every single accusation is a confession.
I'd welcome them taking self-checkouts away and paying more a decent wage.
It's also less obnoxious when a cashier rings up something and goes "oh I love these, they're so tasty" as a product endorsement instead of a fucking advertisement.
first they replaced workers with automated checkouts depriving themselves of the other 20 jobs a "mere" checkout operator had to do; what'll happen next is now they'll pair every self-checkout with a checkout operator anyway so you'll just have someone who's job is to breathe down your neck to make sure you're not walking out with one of those 5 in 1, 1 gallon shampoo bottles
Don't forget tho, you pay that second worker less because there's no skill left in the labor.
naturally, otherwise we'll replace their job with more automation, again!
That's always the argument, but there is no such thing as unskilled labor. I've seen the variety of weird shit those machines do, and the people.
"Hi, I'll be your self-checkout specialist today. Can I interest you in a premium reusable tote? It's only $0.75 more and hides 30% more items from the Loss Prevention Officer."
working a shift helping people steal shit and then walking out the back with a cartload of "returns"
They are literally already doing this. A couple weeks back at Costco, the self checkout lanes had an employee at every one of them checking your ID against your member card. They then would scan your stuff. They still had someone at the exit checking your receipt.
The labor spend on preventing you from sharing your member card and then STILL verifying your receipt against their own employees seems like a massive waste.
Not to mention the untold amount of money wasted on extra camera surveillance and all kinds of algorithmic gait analysis and tracking shit.
The price of cameras and gait analysis is well under the cost of even one year of a full time employee, which is why they are doing it. If they can hire even one less employee it is a win for them.
as a geriatric millenial, self-checkout and self-serve kiosks are hilarious. the first ones i remember seeing were at the movie theater like 20 damn years ago. took less than a day for word to spread that "the move" was to buy a senior, child, or student ticket and use that. as someone who used to have the "tear your ticket" job, i never gave a fuck. i just looked at the number of the theater and pointed toward it. if they went somewhere else, i also didn't give a fuck. i also never policed outside food. i would usually smile and nod at people willing to bring in crazy shit without hiding it. like a full blown boston market rotisserie chicken or a big ass fast food bag with a giant drink. fuckin' kings.
my employer uses self-checkout shit at this giant cafeteria. the cafeteria workers routinely give us barcode stickers for the wrong item at super cheap (like a $1.50 side instead of an $8 entree) and load up the portions/extras. and when a barcode reads as invalid? that means it's free! nobody gives a shit so long as you don't draw attention to yourself and pantomime like you're ringing it all up normally and paying.
all it really takes to get free shit in this world sometimes is being friendly to the workers, not stacking up on someone when they are busy with others, and being easy with a laugh, smile and a knowing glance. and not trying to press your luck when some overseer is making their rounds. always make everybody look like they are crushing it at their job while delivering outstanding customer service and, together, we can rob the motherfuckers blind.
Watch: This is the same bullshit as the "retail shoplifting scare" that turned out completely fabricated.
It will be drummed up for the public while they enact harsher penalties for stealing food
Meanwhile, they will end up dumping 20% of all their food in stock in the dumpster.
I picked up some yoghurt pouches from the supermarket for my kids because they were discounted to $1.20. Then I went to the fruit and vegetable store and saw THE SAME pouches for 49c.
I was going to get angry but then I remembered I didn't pay for them.
My grocery store has added an automated narc cam that plays back a video of you putting the item into the bag when it thinks you didn't scan it.
haven't seen that, can you hide items behind bigger items tho ?
From what I can tell it seems pretty hit or miss and it doesn't actually do anything with the information - no one tried to check my receipt when I triggered it.
Wal Mart near me has this
But they have a scan gun I just use on 'everything', then bag up after
Seems a bit self defeating lmao
When do they play this video? While you are in the middle of scanning items through the self-checkout or when you complete it? Is it accompanied by a frowny face or some other sign of disapproval to shame you?
After you bag the offending item. The video plays and a loud voice passive-aggressively reminds you to make sure you've scanned everything before bagging.
It does this if you go too fast too. Even if you're not stealing.
If you arbitrarily raise prices without there being any scarcity, you don't get to complain about stealing. If they must be charged, it should be for vigilante justice, not theft.
I’m stealing more in solidarity with gen z. This is the kind of generational politics we need.
I'm old and tired enough to absolutely hate self checkout. I mean it's good for a few items and stealing, but when I'm coming home from a long day at work and have a full cart of groceries and they close all the human-run checkout ailes to force everyone through self checkout, I'll just abandon the cart and leave. I assume then someone has to go around the store and restock all the products I was about to buy... or it just sits there for too long and they have to loss out all the cold items. Very efficient, capitalism. Well done.
capitalists never fail to market-optimize themselves into stepping on the rake that crushes their nose
Shit, they caught on to me putting every item in a brown paper bag that I key in as "lentils" and weigh on the scale.
I accidently shoplifted a portable SSD from Costco some time back. It was wedged between the cart and some paper towels or something. They just never saw it, i checked the recipt sad it wasn't there. I still feel pretty cool 😎.
1tb, it's one of the tiny NVME drives though.
