I swear it trips at complete random. I'll just be scanning my groceries and then all of a sudden "HELP IS ON THE WAY" and I have to stop what I'm doing to get a clerk to put in the unlock code. It happens every fucking time.
Decade old machines running some ancient version of windows embedded that needs to measure the precise weights of tens of thousands of products from hundreds of manufacturers who have no standardization or line of communication with the software developers while constantly changing the weight of the products which then also have individual variance for each item, plus the kinks of each individual machine's sensors and the variance of the customers leaning things against walls, adding bags, kids touching scales etc. The clerk's job is ofc to be an outlet for customer's rage to insulate the management which means that the people with all the experience of the machine's problems have by their job's very nature no line of communication to send feedback to the developers or technicians if there even is any technicians working on these things after the point of installation.
I have never had this happen to me. I have shoplifted thousands of dollars in food. I have never purchased alcohol, though, so that may be why.
I also never actually scan anything purchased by weight, like produce. I just steal that shit.
Pass two items over the scanner, miss the scanner, stuff something in your pocket or bag and "forget", basically just make any "mistake" you can make at self checkout, and don't fix it.
I love to walk into the grocery store and pay 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of what I buy. Five finger discount fights inflation.
It's great for shop lifting ironically because they give off so many false positives - they've been training their staff to ignore the warning and just click the button to ignore the warning.
Yeah the check out attendant is just going to hit ignore on the warning, none of them bother to check your bags because why should they, they get paid $11.25 an hour and their boss is a small business tyrant.
It's this. My mom used to work at a grocery store and sometimes she'd have to cover the self checks, the scales are very sensitive.
Thanks, this has been bugging me for a long time. Nice to finally know why it happens.
The old ones were. The new ones seem fine.
brb. looking up industry publications about this.
The trick is to have the clerk fix the machine once for a false error and then you put a bunch of unscanned items in the bagging area and when the clerk has to fix it again they don’t even look at what the issue is.
I didn’t get trained how to use this machine, I’m not being paid to do it right, the clerk approved my use of the machine - it ain’t stealing
putting the bag I intend to bag my groceries into, onto the bagging area: UNDECLARED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA
its because im shoplifting hard as fuck and the clerk doesnt care enough to stop me and just hammers in their password as fast as possible because they arent paid to worry about it
I assume it happens to me because when I buy my bulk items (nuts, coffee, etc) I always select and print out the cheapest sticker to scan that I can instead of what I'm actually filling it with.
the machines are simultaneously too sensitive and not sensitive enough because store managers are greedy fucks
Had an employee one time come over to check it out and actually reviewed the overhead scanned items camera footage. I was shoplifting anything that time, but I was like ok bootlicker
I stopped using them recently because they’ve just gotten ridiculous. They lock up multiple times every time I use them to the point where it’s become just as slow as waiting in line for a human.
It used to be worth the trade off when it was ridiculously easy to steal shit but now the ones near me have all this anti theft tech (which is of course the reason they lock up all the time because the idiot camera in there is too dumb to tell if what I just scanned was a banana or avocado).
I worked as a cashier at a grocery store in college for about a month before I quit.
100% they lost more through me not scanning shit, applying 50-80% coupons for stuff, or punching in everything as the lowest plausible produce item I could, than the self check out stuff. So don't fret.
