I must be a rube, because I've never stolen from one of those things. When it makes a mistake I call the attendant to correct it. Mainly because I support the idea of automation and want it to work well. Maybe it's just the reliability engineer in me that wants to call out the bugs and have them fixed. Or maybe it's the former security engineer in me who got paid to find the flaws in these systems and my ethics demand I don't exploit them for personal gain.
Honestly though I hope they don't go away just because everyone abuses them. I really like the self checkout machines and being in control of how long the transaction takes instead of up to the whims of which cashier I've chosen (although if the markets would just do a little research on queuing theory and make us all like up in one single line for the human cashiers, that wouldn't be a problem).
The self-checkout at Costco is a godsend. I usually buy 2-5 items at Costco, and the self-checkout allows me to avoid standing in line behind people with overflowing shopping carts. I can pay in about 30 seconds and get out of there.
Funny, my impression of Costco is that they have literally the worst self-checkouts anywhere. I've never made it through without needing assistance and it takes forever to get assistance because, as best as I can tell, no other customer is more successful at it than me and there's never more than one person working there.
Meanwhile, the staffed checkouts always seem to have another person assisting the cashier to get those overflowing carts through quickly.
I find it very annoying to use the self checkout in Costco especially if you are buying bulky items. They force you to place scanned items on a scale which isn't always feasible.
I don't know what it looks like in the US, but here in Europe it is often faster / more convenient to use the self-checkout. The lines are shorter, it's easier to bag everything, and it's easier to keep an eye on all the prices.
Plus there are random inspections every now and then, and usually cameras on each machine. To top it off, they don't take cash, only debit cards, so it's very easy to find any wrongdoers. I wonder if the anonymity of cash is part of the 'problem' here.
>I really like the self checkout machines and being in control of how long the transaction takes instead of up to the whims of which cashier I've chosen
But if there's a line for the self checkout machines, you're not at the whim of a cashier, you're at the whim of some customers who many not know how to operate the checkout machines well.
Very true. Luckily in every place I've ever been, they seem to follow proper queuing and have a single line for all the self checkout, so the wait usually isn't very long.
Luckily, most places have 6 or more self-checkouts, so you would have to get 6 customers. 1 customer here or there doesn't slow you down significantly because 5 others are moving.
> I must be a rube, because I've never stolen from one of those things. When it makes a mistake I call the attendant to correct it.
That you know of - there are plenty of errors that are entirely innocent.
It wasn't even self-checkout but in college I went to Walmart to buy a new microwave for my sorority and it was so big we left it in the cart with the barcode up instead of putting it on the conveyor belt. I just assumed the cashier scanned it and since we were buying so much stuff the price didn't seem off. Well when I went to submit the microwave receipt for reimbursement I realized there was no microwave on the receipt. I had "stolen" it. (Though I'm not sure you can call it stealing when you lack intent.) But if I hadn't needed to look at the receipt to get reimbursed I never would have known I needed to go back and pay for it.
There are countless people in this thread (which concerns me because I generally think of HN as a pretty highly educated and moral group) who see errors like that at the register and walk away thinking they won a prize.
I’ve had this happen with a case of noodles checking out via cashier. It had a barcode on it, which was scanned, but later realized that it was a copy of the code on the individual boxes so ended up getting 24 for the price of one. Self checkout might have prevented that one as the weight sensor would have tripped.
The best interaction I had with one of these machines went like this.
It said 'Press button to start'. I did. It stated 'now giving back change' and proceeded to dispense 17,xx€. I was then able to scan my items (2 jars of jam) and pay for them (~4€) (and got my change back too). Fantastic interaction, really.
I gave the wrong change back to the cashier in the other lane though. I'm not sure how often that happens, I could have taken the money and just left, easy.
I'm a sucker, too. I tell the DMV how much I actually paid for the car. I had to go out of my way to ensure Garmin understood they sent me a second $600 watch, and be extra clear that when I returned it, they needed to make sure they didn't send me another in the RMA process.
I could say I sleep better at night. But I don't know. I'd get over selling the extra watch on eBay. I'm sure I've understated vehicle value in the past to save a few bucks on taxes. I apparently regret it so little that I can't even remember for sure. I've DEFINITELY bought things from out of state to avoid tax. shrug
None of us are perfect or perfectly moral, but I think starting out by not considering yourself a sucker for doing the logically correct thing (without bringing morals into it) is a good start.
I think there is a growning distinction between being honest in face to face dealings, and being honest with a machine built by people for the expressed sole purpose of profit.
It already has, in Singapore. There are Starbucks which close at night simply by drawing a plastic chain across the storefront and emptying the cash registers. I think they still lock the Frappuccino fridge, but no one knows for sure because we don't go test it.
I think that may have happened to me accidentally once: a couple years ago I was sick and unable to sleep, so I went to a grocery store at about 1 AM to buy decongestants so I could maybe get some sleep. Most of the lights were off inside and I didn't see another person there, it was sort of creepy actually, but I figured, meh, 1 AM. I bought my pills with the self checkout and left.
About a week later I was at the same store and saw a sign on the door that said they close at 11...
I’ve seen a few luxury condo buildings in Canada with a 24/7 convenience store and self-checkout, though with an entrance that only tenants can access (and I guess surveillance).
So this is starting to happen already, but proliferation really depends on expanding the social contracts that can enable this. The above convenience store wouldn’t last in an apartment building where the tenants weren’t exceedingly well-off as the world is now.
It think it will go that way but not because level of honesty increase but because the survielance tech becoming so advance that it can quicky identify you if you stole something
> make us all like up in one single line for the human cashiers
I have encountered these at Decathlon and Carrefour (in Europe). It feels fairer, but standing in longer line feels worse, even when that doesn’t make any sense.
The trader Joe’s on 4th and market in SF does this, seems to work pretty well! They have too much traffic to handle though—the line snaked through 3 aisles the last time I went on a weekday after work.
I wanted to checkout at a Home Depot but there were no employees to be seen and only self-checkout lanes open. I had some items I wanted help with and in frustration asked the customer next to me, "does anybody work here?"
He said "I guess we do."
I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.
> it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.
One argument against that is that if people are willing to provide that labor freely, it's worth nothing.
Another argument: before supermarkets, you'd ask the clerk to get a list of things from the shelves (which customers couldn't access). Now this labor is done by customers. Self-checkout is just another change like that.
Extending this: there are services that will deliver your groceries to your house. If we go to a store and take things home ourselves, are we working for free?
There’s no correct balance between customer labor and employee labor. Choose what suits you. If your chose store forces you into an arrangement you don’t like, choose a different one.
The super market chain "Piggly Wiggly" was the first grocery store that gave customers baskets and let them wander around the aisles grabbing items off the shelves themselves.
>Before Clarence Saunders opened his shop, anyone who needed groceries would hand their shopping list over to a clerk who would pluck the groceries off the shelves and hand shoppers a bag full of their items. Piggly Wiggly turned that model on its head. Shoppers were invited into the store, handed a shopping basket, and left to wander the aisles of the grocery store, filling their cart with whatever products caught their eye. It’s hard to imagine now, but no one had ever thought of self-service grocery shopping before. According to TIME, who dug into Piggly Wiggly for the store’s centennial, Piggly Wiggly was the original grocery store, who not only introduced grocery carts, but also “price-marked items, employees in uniform, and the supermarket franchise model.”
Officially, the mysterious story behind the name is:
>According to the Piggly Wiggly website, the name's origin is truly a mystery. Saunders never fully explained where he got the idea that naming a supermarket after a squirmy porker was a good idea. Instead, he let stories circulate and, like a politician, neither confirmed nor denied them. One story claims that he came up with the name during a train ride where he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence. That made him think of the rhyme “piggly wiggly” and that apparently sounded like a good name for a grocery store. Another original story floating around is that when people asked Saunders why he gave his grocery store such a funny little name, he’s reported to have said, "So people will ask that very question." It seems to have worked, because here we are over 100 years later asking still asking the question. One thing for sure, though: It’s memorable.
But my mom, who grew up in the south, told me it was common knowledge that it was called "Piggly Wiggly" because the frantically shopping customers acted like pigs wiggling around all over the store in a mad feeding frenzy!
If that's the real reason, that they named their chain after how their customers behaved, then maybe Clarence Saunders and the Piggly Wiggly Office of Public Relations were so coy and mysterious because they didn't want people to know they thought of their customers as wiggly piggies.
I believe it's called lower prices – at least in theory.
(My apologies for coming across as pedantic.) Physical stores use them to remain competitive in pricing. The lower price is your incentive for doing it yourself (again in theory.)
Home depot always has at least 3 people available to check you out no matter how late or dead it is.
A service desk associate. A cashier at the self check. A cashier at the exit opposite the service desk.
You ignored the actual cashier 30 seconds walk down towards either exit and didn't incline your head sufficiency to see the gal 30 feet away probably cleaning an adjacent checkout or stocking the adjacent cooler.
The labor cost of the 2 minutes scanning items is between 26c and 40c
Would you like that deducted from your bill?
You aren't paid to check yourself out because your labor isn't in service of the businesses needs its servicing your own needs to check out quicker rather than walk slightly further down.
What really irritates me about shoplifting is that the honest among us subsidize the criminals. Inevitably, retailers and grocers raise prices due to increased theft, encouraging more theft, in a vicious spiral (I don't have proof of this; rather, it's an intuition). Also reminds me of drug use in sports.
Well it doesn’t spiral out of control. It’ll reach an equilibrium where the grocer prices their goods to make an optimal profit given the rate of theft (which you’ve aptly pointed out increases with the price they choose).
We in fact do: executives of companies with poor service, little innovation, and lots of fraud against consumers and employees. They take millions to tens of millions... typically goes up... despite others doing most of their work whose own income is minimized wherever possible. There's also thieves that make three to four digits a year taking some percentage of company earnings for themselves, too. I can't stand them either.
> Shopping can be quite boring because it’s such a routine, and this is a way to make the routine more interesting.
Maybe there is an opportunity here to somehow make shopping or self-checkout more thrilling and thus reduce shoplifting. Maybe add some features from a slot machine and give random discount or free items. Gamify the checkout experience so people want to buy more.
That's a really good idea. A carrot instead of a stick.
I've heard of a few "sticks" in the last few months that don't seem nearly as fun/customer friendly as yours: facial recognition to identify/charge thieves after the fact and AI that analyzes body language and identifies shoplifters through their (supposedly) suspicious behavior in-store.
I'd also be curious whether the "honesty eyes" concept[1] would put a meaningful dent in self-checkout shrinkage.
Convenience stores here in Japan do that a lot - they'll have a campaign period where for every $10 you spend or so you get to pull a raffle ticket and might win a chocolate bar or can of beer on the spot. Not related to self-checkouts though (those haven't reached convenience stores yet, at least not outside of one or two enterprising franchisees)
Certain brands of vending machines will also do a slot machine routine - the price LED display will spin numbers and if you get 4 in a row you win a second drink (I've never won)
This idea seems absurd to me, I already sick of companies getting in my way and annoying me with 'buy more stuff!' just let me do my thing and leave me alone.
My guess is that expected payout would be too low to keep opportunistic shoplifters from doing their thing since most self-checkouters who aren't stealing would also get the discount. Otherwise this is a great idea.
Lotto disagrees. In fact super rare wins make them perceived as so much more valuable (and so much more an object of envy if it happens so that your friend wins at the self checkout).
Precise measurements are needed, this would be a cool psychology project to work on in some big chain.
In all stores I know, there are randomized inspection of say every 30 customers. Missed something tiny and you might be reprimanded and you’ll get tighter inspections for many months to come (until you had several inspections without issue). If you are found to have made some kind of fraud that is obviously a mistake then you’ll be stripped of the “privilege” of self-checkout as well as probably reported to police and likely other stores.
To ensure self checkout is a “privilege” stores must ensure there are rebates available only to self checkout customers, and that lines at the traditional checkout are long enough to make self checkout significantly faster.
Yes.
The article mentions various “fraud detection” schemes in place (weight etc) but I don’t get why random checks aren’t just used instead, or in addition?
You register with your store bonus card to get access to self checkout, then use the same card each time. Getting the card required ID so it’s effectively an ID by proxy.
>> “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”
I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extreme persecution complex.
Yes- it is possible to make this connection: that because you are scanning your own shopping you are being charged to work at the store. However, you are not being charged to scan your items. You are charged to buy the items you scan. There is no extra charge for using the self-checkout (not anywhere I know of anyway). Indeed, the store may be making an extra profit by not having to pay as many cashiers. But, stores are always finding ways to make extra profit, for example by offering you a discount on certain items, on certain days, etc. Are you more morally justified than usual to shoplift because a store has a discount on Swiss cheese this week? They are making you pick up the swiss cheese and take it to the till (automated or not). Are they charging you to move items around the store?
Like I say- this makes no sense. It is quintessential procrustean logic: stretching and reducing the meaning of words until they fit your preconceived reasoning.
P.S. I spent so much time on this crap instead of dismissing it shallowly because dang gets sad when people don't show intellectual cuiriosity.
Obviously they’d rather the company hire more workers and charge them s little extra.
At least in some parts of the countryside it’s nice to see farmers’ stands with produce and a pay jar where people “self checkout”.
I ack that companies take advantage of people but that does not grant people a right to be dishonest themselves and become that which they bemoan. If you think they’re ripping you off, go to the the market that offers full service.
> Obviously they’d rather the company hire more workers and charge them s little extra.
It's happened the other way around - self checkout didn't exist, and when it was introduced prices didn't drop even though employment expenses are now lower. There isn't even an incentivising discount for using the self-checkout.
I've seen people have no end of problems with self-checkout systems, and would rather I have an experienced and 'expert' human dealing with the scanning and check-out part that I can also interact with.
> They are making you pick up the swiss cheese and take it to the till (automated or not). Are they charging you to move items around the store?
Until the Piggly Wiggly supermarket introduced the self-serve concept in 1916, you would go up to a counter and tell a clerk what food items you wanted, and they would get them for you. So your analogy really is the 1920's version of the self-checkout!
I didn't know this, thanks! However it reminds me of something similar that happened ~25 years ago in a UK town where I lived.
We had a long power cut that went on for many days. The supermarkets shut at first because, why not. As things went on they had customers to serve so they had to sell, I remember that tesco set up a table at the store entrance with the shop manager and a few assistants. You told them what you wanted, the assistants got it. They took cash only [0]. It worked.
Tangential to the article, what would happen today? People are carrying much(?) less cash, card only point of sales terminals are blooming, I just 2 days ago went to top up a spare mobile phone and the vodaphone store told me they'd no longer take cash.
Notes & coins don't need electricity to be acceptable. We may be creating a very fragile alternative because things like comms and power look increasingly reliable so why lean on them ever harder, but they will go down someday, that I guarantee, and the harder we lean on these things, they harder they will drop us when they vanish.
And we may have short power cuts due to human nature but there are things like solar storms. We know they are coming but aren't prepared for them. So what then?
[0] which they must have got from somewhere. I don't remember how the banks were operating.
> It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extreme persecution complex
I really don't see the relation between delusional thinking and consuming narcotics. Can you explain what you mean? I've seen people high on narcotics; they seem loopy and sleepy, but not particularly susceptible to fallacious reasoning.
My experience with people on drugs is that their ability to make a correct judgement in any situation diminishes drastically.
For example, many of my friends would see cops everywhere after smoking weed (edit: secret cops, in civilian clothes. See how well they hide among us?). Another friend would always misplace her stuff, then start suspecting whoever was with her of stealing them (e.g. she would think I stole her baccy, though I don't smoke, etc).
A friend of mine who was a heroin addict (and died of it at the ripe old age of 34) used to tell me how heroine makes you sociable and friendly, but my experience was that when he shot, he would just fall asleep and then be too smashed to be anything like sociable. But in his head he was the soul of the party.
I've also known a fair few people who developed some kind of paranoid delusion most likely as a result of doing too many drugs. For example, I had a friend who thought one of his pals' brother was a hitman sent by the secret services to kill him. When he was sober, he was OK, most of the time, but when he was under- you couldn't make sense of him.
I mean, let's face it. You don't take drugs because they make you smarter.
Sounds like a comment from the Shoplifting reddit which was full of people proudly showing the things they stole and posting excuses why them being a thief is someone else’s fault. It’s since been closed.
I don't shoplift, but I'm appalled at the double standards that are often applied to consumers and workers compared with large companies.
Amazon is selling counterfeit products to unwitting shoppers across the United States. Large firms like this do not subject themselves to any code of ethics like we do; there is only the risk of getting penalized. Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically. It is one big scam that preys on human decency, so I really don't blame someone for taking extra fruit at the self-checkout after doing a cost-benefit analysis and making the profitable choice.
>> Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically.
The way I understand it, every structure in an organised society relies on people acting ethically, or in any case not going out of their way to harm each other without a very good reason.
For example. If I go to the doctor I trust that she won't suggest treatments I don't need because she wants to take my money. That sort of thing.
For me anyway at least one practical purpose served by morality is that it ensures a society remains functional and does not degenerate into chaos.
> I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say.
You don't know what to say because saying shoplifting is moral (under some conditions) goes against the central belief you were raised with all your life: private property.
But following an ethics based on social equality, you realize that in many situations self-discouting (autoréduction) is the just thing to do.
We live in a world of money and private property. These ever-invasive tools of injustice are actually based on institutionalized theft. The land you work you don't "own". The house you live in you don't "own". The programs/websites you build you don't "own". So usage-based property (the oldest and only "natural" form of property) is out of the equation because society's belief in a piece of paper (a property title) dispossessed you from what you need/use.
So in this equation, we realize what we need (that has no price) was taken away from us by private property. When we take a look at the production/supply chain, we can follow the money to see who benefits from this worldwide scam. Take food: food costs little-to-nothing to grow (unless you do it with chemicals, which you should never), so it's a good sample of how a capitalist system behaves.
Food you find in supermarkets is grown by farmers. Their production is bought by logistics giants who will take it to supermarkets, or to logistics hubs run by supermarket chains. For supermarket chains (not small shops), it is rare to have more intermediates than this.
Yet, even with so few middlepersons, retail prices can be 5 times or even 10 times what the farmer was paid for the product. Here in France, we typically pay 2-6€/kg of vegetables in supermarkets (farmers markets are cheaper), while the farm gets paid typically less than a euro (with some exceptions for luxury produce).
So where does the money go? The middlepersons are an obvious answer. But supermarket owners are also responsible for the high prices of food.
So in the end, supermarkets are just the place where common people come to spend all their money to survive, while the person making the food can't pay their bills and is pushed slowly towards suicide (very common among farmers working for the industry). Can we call this "moral"? To me it sounds a lot like any other definition of slavery: working a lot to just earn your right to live and help other people be exploited.
Coming from this economic analysis, i believe anything you need you should steal from the rich and the powerful. We need to dismantle these people and their systems of oppression before they complete the destruction of our planet (they will never stop until then).
That's not to say that stealing is a moral way of life under every circumstance. But before i steal something, i ask myself these two questions:
- Is it a necessity or a nicety? (niceties-stealing is just another form of consumptionism)
- Am i stealing from a rich person or from a poor/working person? (in a supermarket, you're stealing from rich shareholders; in a smallshop, you're stealing from your neighbor's work, who themselves get ripped off by surrounding capitalist structures)
I know many people among you will not understand or approve my way of thinking. I'm not here to try and convince you. But you should understand that commerce and private property are not inherent aspects of humanity and that stealing is most times a necessity. Therefore stealing from the rich does not come from a delusion, but from the realization that the rules of the game are rigged and we need direct action to bring justice to the table.
P.S. I spent so much time on this crap instead of dismissing it shallowly because dang gets sad when people don't show intellectual cuiriosity ;)
Although I disagree with it, I do understand the logic behind it. The companies doing this are usually capitalist, not virtue-driven. They don't care about morals, laws, etc. They screw over their customers in any way they can get away with. They also do things that cause their customers problems but lie to them about the reasons. Self-checkouts make the customer experience worse for most (not all) customers. When they add them, they usually do a staff cut followed by telling self-checkout workers to push customers to check themselves out. Nothing is given in return for the extra hardship. It's just a middle finger to the customers that made them the money to buy the machines (or invest in better customer experience) in the first place.
So, some are following that "do whatever I can get away with that's in my self interest" mentality giving them the middle finger back. Funny enough, in my area, most of these companies with poor security in their self-checkouts are nickle and diming the people that run them on top of increasing the number of machines they watch or side jobs they have to do on top of self-checkout. I had to wait a few minutes earlier today for my self-checkout clerk to stop bagging at a register to fix a problem on my self-checkout. Needless to say, that kind of crap just adds to opportunities for people stealing or just walking out to buy their stuff somewhere with fast-moving people at registers. I've done the latter many times since a trip to convenience store was faster than the lines at similar prices.
I'd be more outraged if it was someone ripping off Publix, Costco, or Aldi.
Alternatively, it's revealing a deeper truth that had been obscured by a long chain of seemingly logical justifications. Corporations tend to abuse abstractions until they break, and self-checkout is basically at that breaking point.
I for one could never stand the things for their slow and obtuse programming. I cannot get how people just accept slowly following a machine in lockstep, rather than the machine being designed to accommodate a natural human workflow. Back when the things were new, they would give out freebies by deciding to flip out and void the last few items, without the conveyor actually bringing them all back. I certainly wasn't going to go out of my way to correct its error, setting myself back even further.
At this point I just skip the frustrating things out of personal policy, and outright avoid stores that punish customers for doing so (Walmart being the worst offender). If I can't stand an extra 5 minutes in line for the professional cashier, I should order online or simply stock up and visit less.
I don't share the thinking behind that comedy bit at all. For me, self-service checkouts offer such added utility -- no tiresome social interaction with the cashier, no awkward moments when shopping in a country where you don't speak the language -- that it more than makes up for the burden of ringing up my purchases.
So you admit openly to stealing, just to put it plainly. You chose to shop somewhere, you chose to use a self checkout, you knew there was an error, and proceeded to leave with things you didn’t pay for. No matter how you justify it to yourself, you’re a thief.
If you can justify that you can justify stealing from your employer (hey I’ve been under paid for a while, taking this unsecured device is like making up for a bit of my salary), etc.
Most criminals think they are geniuses because they figured out how to outsmart the system. They are not. This is a trait highly correlated with low IQ. Real brilliant people don’t constantly seek the ego boost of exploitation.
False positives and the human reaction to being accused of theft will kill these. Honestly a sticker that says "automated theft detection system in operation" will be more effective
Readit News
Honestly though I hope they don't go away just because everyone abuses them. I really like the self checkout machines and being in control of how long the transaction takes instead of up to the whims of which cashier I've chosen (although if the markets would just do a little research on queuing theory and make us all like up in one single line for the human cashiers, that wouldn't be a problem).
Meanwhile, the staffed checkouts always seem to have another person assisting the cashier to get those overflowing carts through quickly.
I must be missing something. Where is the automation? It's just the customer doing all the work instead of an employee.
Plus there are random inspections every now and then, and usually cameras on each machine. To top it off, they don't take cash, only debit cards, so it's very easy to find any wrongdoers. I wonder if the anonymity of cash is part of the 'problem' here.
But if there's a line for the self checkout machines, you're not at the whim of a cashier, you're at the whim of some customers who many not know how to operate the checkout machines well.
That you know of - there are plenty of errors that are entirely innocent.
It wasn't even self-checkout but in college I went to Walmart to buy a new microwave for my sorority and it was so big we left it in the cart with the barcode up instead of putting it on the conveyor belt. I just assumed the cashier scanned it and since we were buying so much stuff the price didn't seem off. Well when I went to submit the microwave receipt for reimbursement I realized there was no microwave on the receipt. I had "stolen" it. (Though I'm not sure you can call it stealing when you lack intent.) But if I hadn't needed to look at the receipt to get reimbursed I never would have known I needed to go back and pay for it.
It said 'Press button to start'. I did. It stated 'now giving back change' and proceeded to dispense 17,xx€. I was then able to scan my items (2 jars of jam) and pay for them (~4€) (and got my change back too). Fantastic interaction, really.
I gave the wrong change back to the cashier in the other lane though. I'm not sure how often that happens, I could have taken the money and just left, easy.
I could say I sleep better at night. But I don't know. I'd get over selling the extra watch on eBay. I'm sure I've understated vehicle value in the past to save a few bucks on taxes. I apparently regret it so little that I can't even remember for sure. I've DEFINITELY bought things from out of state to avoid tax. shrug
None of us are perfect or perfectly moral, but I think starting out by not considering yourself a sucker for doing the logically correct thing (without bringing morals into it) is a good start.
About a week later I was at the same store and saw a sign on the door that said they close at 11...
So this is starting to happen already, but proliferation really depends on expanding the social contracts that can enable this. The above convenience store wouldn’t last in an apartment building where the tenants weren’t exceedingly well-off as the world is now.
https://youtu.be/mc8htuhSyWE
https://youtu.be/0QKrHi-G9WQ
I have encountered these at Decathlon and Carrefour (in Europe). It feels fairer, but standing in longer line feels worse, even when that doesn’t make any sense.
He said "I guess we do."
I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.
One argument against that is that if people are willing to provide that labor freely, it's worth nothing.
Another argument: before supermarkets, you'd ask the clerk to get a list of things from the shelves (which customers couldn't access). Now this labor is done by customers. Self-checkout is just another change like that.
There’s no correct balance between customer labor and employee labor. Choose what suits you. If your chose store forces you into an arrangement you don’t like, choose a different one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly
https://www.southernliving.com/culture/piggly-wiggly-history
>Before Clarence Saunders opened his shop, anyone who needed groceries would hand their shopping list over to a clerk who would pluck the groceries off the shelves and hand shoppers a bag full of their items. Piggly Wiggly turned that model on its head. Shoppers were invited into the store, handed a shopping basket, and left to wander the aisles of the grocery store, filling their cart with whatever products caught their eye. It’s hard to imagine now, but no one had ever thought of self-service grocery shopping before. According to TIME, who dug into Piggly Wiggly for the store’s centennial, Piggly Wiggly was the original grocery store, who not only introduced grocery carts, but also “price-marked items, employees in uniform, and the supermarket franchise model.”
Officially, the mysterious story behind the name is:
>According to the Piggly Wiggly website, the name's origin is truly a mystery. Saunders never fully explained where he got the idea that naming a supermarket after a squirmy porker was a good idea. Instead, he let stories circulate and, like a politician, neither confirmed nor denied them. One story claims that he came up with the name during a train ride where he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence. That made him think of the rhyme “piggly wiggly” and that apparently sounded like a good name for a grocery store. Another original story floating around is that when people asked Saunders why he gave his grocery store such a funny little name, he’s reported to have said, "So people will ask that very question." It seems to have worked, because here we are over 100 years later asking still asking the question. One thing for sure, though: It’s memorable.
But my mom, who grew up in the south, told me it was common knowledge that it was called "Piggly Wiggly" because the frantically shopping customers acted like pigs wiggling around all over the store in a mad feeding frenzy!
If that's the real reason, that they named their chain after how their customers behaved, then maybe Clarence Saunders and the Piggly Wiggly Office of Public Relations were so coy and mysterious because they didn't want people to know they thought of their customers as wiggly piggies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmzP49KU75U
(My apologies for coming across as pedantic.) Physical stores use them to remain competitive in pricing. The lower price is your incentive for doing it yourself (again in theory.)
Price is set by market. Two stores should charge the same for equivalent goods, all told.
Lower cost structure means greater profits at the same price.
If it's reasonable, there's nothing stopping anyone from asking the store if they'd like to make that deal.
I suspect they don't offer a discount for self-checkout because those lanes would be overwhelmed.
A service desk associate. A cashier at the self check. A cashier at the exit opposite the service desk.
You ignored the actual cashier 30 seconds walk down towards either exit and didn't incline your head sufficiency to see the gal 30 feet away probably cleaning an adjacent checkout or stocking the adjacent cooler.
The labor cost of the 2 minutes scanning items is between 26c and 40c
Would you like that deducted from your bill?
You aren't paid to check yourself out because your labor isn't in service of the businesses needs its servicing your own needs to check out quicker rather than walk slightly further down.
We in fact do: executives of companies with poor service, little innovation, and lots of fraud against consumers and employees. They take millions to tens of millions... typically goes up... despite others doing most of their work whose own income is minimized wherever possible. There's also thieves that make three to four digits a year taking some percentage of company earnings for themselves, too. I can't stand them either.
they seem to be mostly as a result of lack of demand, not lack of supply.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/po...
Maybe there is an opportunity here to somehow make shopping or self-checkout more thrilling and thus reduce shoplifting. Maybe add some features from a slot machine and give random discount or free items. Gamify the checkout experience so people want to buy more.
I've heard of a few "sticks" in the last few months that don't seem nearly as fun/customer friendly as yours: facial recognition to identify/charge thieves after the fact and AI that analyzes body language and identifies shoplifters through their (supposedly) suspicious behavior in-store.
I'd also be curious whether the "honesty eyes" concept[1] would put a meaningful dent in self-checkout shrinkage.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5120662.stm
Certain brands of vending machines will also do a slot machine routine - the price LED display will spin numbers and if you get 4 in a row you win a second drink (I've never won)
Precise measurements are needed, this would be a cool psychology project to work on in some big chain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
To ensure self checkout is a “privilege” stores must ensure there are rebates available only to self checkout customers, and that lines at the traditional checkout are long enough to make self checkout significantly faster.
I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful thinking and delusions, or, again, extreme persecution complex.
Yes- it is possible to make this connection: that because you are scanning your own shopping you are being charged to work at the store. However, you are not being charged to scan your items. You are charged to buy the items you scan. There is no extra charge for using the self-checkout (not anywhere I know of anyway). Indeed, the store may be making an extra profit by not having to pay as many cashiers. But, stores are always finding ways to make extra profit, for example by offering you a discount on certain items, on certain days, etc. Are you more morally justified than usual to shoplift because a store has a discount on Swiss cheese this week? They are making you pick up the swiss cheese and take it to the till (automated or not). Are they charging you to move items around the store?
Like I say- this makes no sense. It is quintessential procrustean logic: stretching and reducing the meaning of words until they fit your preconceived reasoning.
P.S. I spent so much time on this crap instead of dismissing it shallowly because dang gets sad when people don't show intellectual cuiriosity.
At least in some parts of the countryside it’s nice to see farmers’ stands with produce and a pay jar where people “self checkout”.
I ack that companies take advantage of people but that does not grant people a right to be dishonest themselves and become that which they bemoan. If you think they’re ripping you off, go to the the market that offers full service.
It's happened the other way around - self checkout didn't exist, and when it was introduced prices didn't drop even though employment expenses are now lower. There isn't even an incentivising discount for using the self-checkout.
I've seen people have no end of problems with self-checkout systems, and would rather I have an experienced and 'expert' human dealing with the scanning and check-out part that I can also interact with.
Until the Piggly Wiggly supermarket introduced the self-serve concept in 1916, you would go up to a counter and tell a clerk what food items you wanted, and they would get them for you. So your analogy really is the 1920's version of the self-checkout!
We had a long power cut that went on for many days. The supermarkets shut at first because, why not. As things went on they had customers to serve so they had to sell, I remember that tesco set up a table at the store entrance with the shop manager and a few assistants. You told them what you wanted, the assistants got it. They took cash only [0]. It worked.
Tangential to the article, what would happen today? People are carrying much(?) less cash, card only point of sales terminals are blooming, I just 2 days ago went to top up a spare mobile phone and the vodaphone store told me they'd no longer take cash.
Notes & coins don't need electricity to be acceptable. We may be creating a very fragile alternative because things like comms and power look increasingly reliable so why lean on them ever harder, but they will go down someday, that I guarantee, and the harder we lean on these things, they harder they will drop us when they vanish.
And we may have short power cuts due to human nature but there are things like solar storms. We know they are coming but aren't prepared for them. So what then?
[0] which they must have got from somewhere. I don't remember how the banks were operating.
I really don't see the relation between delusional thinking and consuming narcotics. Can you explain what you mean? I've seen people high on narcotics; they seem loopy and sleepy, but not particularly susceptible to fallacious reasoning.
For example, many of my friends would see cops everywhere after smoking weed (edit: secret cops, in civilian clothes. See how well they hide among us?). Another friend would always misplace her stuff, then start suspecting whoever was with her of stealing them (e.g. she would think I stole her baccy, though I don't smoke, etc).
A friend of mine who was a heroin addict (and died of it at the ripe old age of 34) used to tell me how heroine makes you sociable and friendly, but my experience was that when he shot, he would just fall asleep and then be too smashed to be anything like sociable. But in his head he was the soul of the party.
I've also known a fair few people who developed some kind of paranoid delusion most likely as a result of doing too many drugs. For example, I had a friend who thought one of his pals' brother was a hitman sent by the secret services to kill him. When he was sober, he was OK, most of the time, but when he was under- you couldn't make sense of him.
I mean, let's face it. You don't take drugs because they make you smarter.
Amazon is selling counterfeit products to unwitting shoppers across the United States. Large firms like this do not subject themselves to any code of ethics like we do; there is only the risk of getting penalized. Yet their business models are reliant on us acting ethically. It is one big scam that preys on human decency, so I really don't blame someone for taking extra fruit at the self-checkout after doing a cost-benefit analysis and making the profitable choice.
The way I understand it, every structure in an organised society relies on people acting ethically, or in any case not going out of their way to harm each other without a very good reason.
For example. If I go to the doctor I trust that she won't suggest treatments I don't need because she wants to take my money. That sort of thing.
For me anyway at least one practical purpose served by morality is that it ensures a society remains functional and does not degenerate into chaos.
You don't know what to say because saying shoplifting is moral (under some conditions) goes against the central belief you were raised with all your life: private property.
But following an ethics based on social equality, you realize that in many situations self-discouting (autoréduction) is the just thing to do.
We live in a world of money and private property. These ever-invasive tools of injustice are actually based on institutionalized theft. The land you work you don't "own". The house you live in you don't "own". The programs/websites you build you don't "own". So usage-based property (the oldest and only "natural" form of property) is out of the equation because society's belief in a piece of paper (a property title) dispossessed you from what you need/use.
So in this equation, we realize what we need (that has no price) was taken away from us by private property. When we take a look at the production/supply chain, we can follow the money to see who benefits from this worldwide scam. Take food: food costs little-to-nothing to grow (unless you do it with chemicals, which you should never), so it's a good sample of how a capitalist system behaves.
Food you find in supermarkets is grown by farmers. Their production is bought by logistics giants who will take it to supermarkets, or to logistics hubs run by supermarket chains. For supermarket chains (not small shops), it is rare to have more intermediates than this.
Yet, even with so few middlepersons, retail prices can be 5 times or even 10 times what the farmer was paid for the product. Here in France, we typically pay 2-6€/kg of vegetables in supermarkets (farmers markets are cheaper), while the farm gets paid typically less than a euro (with some exceptions for luxury produce).
So where does the money go? The middlepersons are an obvious answer. But supermarket owners are also responsible for the high prices of food.
So in the end, supermarkets are just the place where common people come to spend all their money to survive, while the person making the food can't pay their bills and is pushed slowly towards suicide (very common among farmers working for the industry). Can we call this "moral"? To me it sounds a lot like any other definition of slavery: working a lot to just earn your right to live and help other people be exploited.
Coming from this economic analysis, i believe anything you need you should steal from the rich and the powerful. We need to dismantle these people and their systems of oppression before they complete the destruction of our planet (they will never stop until then).
That's not to say that stealing is a moral way of life under every circumstance. But before i steal something, i ask myself these two questions:
- Is it a necessity or a nicety? (niceties-stealing is just another form of consumptionism) - Am i stealing from a rich person or from a poor/working person? (in a supermarket, you're stealing from rich shareholders; in a smallshop, you're stealing from your neighbor's work, who themselves get ripped off by surrounding capitalist structures)
I know many people among you will not understand or approve my way of thinking. I'm not here to try and convince you. But you should understand that commerce and private property are not inherent aspects of humanity and that stealing is most times a necessity. Therefore stealing from the rich does not come from a delusion, but from the realization that the rules of the game are rigged and we need direct action to bring justice to the table.
P.S. I spent so much time on this crap instead of dismissing it shallowly because dang gets sad when people don't show intellectual cuiriosity ;)
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Although I disagree with it, I do understand the logic behind it. The companies doing this are usually capitalist, not virtue-driven. They don't care about morals, laws, etc. They screw over their customers in any way they can get away with. They also do things that cause their customers problems but lie to them about the reasons. Self-checkouts make the customer experience worse for most (not all) customers. When they add them, they usually do a staff cut followed by telling self-checkout workers to push customers to check themselves out. Nothing is given in return for the extra hardship. It's just a middle finger to the customers that made them the money to buy the machines (or invest in better customer experience) in the first place.
So, some are following that "do whatever I can get away with that's in my self interest" mentality giving them the middle finger back. Funny enough, in my area, most of these companies with poor security in their self-checkouts are nickle and diming the people that run them on top of increasing the number of machines they watch or side jobs they have to do on top of self-checkout. I had to wait a few minutes earlier today for my self-checkout clerk to stop bagging at a register to fix a problem on my self-checkout. Needless to say, that kind of crap just adds to opportunities for people stealing or just walking out to buy their stuff somewhere with fast-moving people at registers. I've done the latter many times since a trip to convenience store was faster than the lines at similar prices.
I'd be more outraged if it was someone ripping off Publix, Costco, or Aldi.
Moral is subjective so if they said that then to me there is no issue with the reasoning.
Comedy is especially good at deflating bullshit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w
I for one could never stand the things for their slow and obtuse programming. I cannot get how people just accept slowly following a machine in lockstep, rather than the machine being designed to accommodate a natural human workflow. Back when the things were new, they would give out freebies by deciding to flip out and void the last few items, without the conveyor actually bringing them all back. I certainly wasn't going to go out of my way to correct its error, setting myself back even further.
At this point I just skip the frustrating things out of personal policy, and outright avoid stores that punish customers for doing so (Walmart being the worst offender). If I can't stand an extra 5 minutes in line for the professional cashier, I should order online or simply stock up and visit less.
If you can justify that you can justify stealing from your employer (hey I’ve been under paid for a while, taking this unsecured device is like making up for a bit of my salary), etc.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/mahbod-moghadam/2014/11/how-to-st...
https://web.archive.org/web/20141117023310/https://thoughtca...
* LaneHawk - identifies items in bottom of car [1]
* Everseen - watches object move through a checkout [2] and reports if they are not scanned. In use at Walmart and "5 of the 10 top retailers" now.
* StopLift - also watches checkouts. Recently purchased by NCR.
This problem is on its way to being solved.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYd7CcInZ28 [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/20/18693324/walmart-ai-camer... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VR2z2n5Ec