Well I get one freebie as a little treat every time I do self checkout and nobody has ever caused a fuss over it.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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You mean you can’t just fire all of your checkout staff and replace them with shitty machines and then make me do extra work while you pocket the difference?
Shocked, I’m shocked.
It’s taken them like two decades to figure this out? Same thing goes with AI, but the damage will be a lot worse.
So a few years ago Kohls fired most of their LP staff. Their thinking was "We still have theft, so let's save money by firing all LP and it will pay the difference of theft" SUPRISE! Theft went up 5x and now they can't hire the people back because they got new jobs. I'm sure they have the CEO a raise for that brilliant idea.
I feel like being a CEO is the easiest job on the planet. You can fail and make the dumbest decisions possible yet still be grossly overpaid with little to no consequences
You think the decision is dumb. But for them the decision to reduce staff headcount probably improved the company's bottom line at a crucial moment when their performance-related bonus was being calculated. And it also opens the door to sideways promotion.
e.g. Twatty McBallbag Ltd:
profit with loss prevention staff = 10 million
profit the first month after all loss prevention staff were fired = 12 million
profit the sixth month after all loss prevention staff were fired = 6 million
After the first month, they claim responsibility for the increased profit of 2 million (as a result of reducing staff costs) and get their performance related bonus. They also get to write "While CEO at Twatty McBallbag Ltd, I increased profit by 20%", on their CV and move on to a new, bigger company with profits in the 100s of millions.
You're assuming new companies don't do due diligence and still hire these CEOs who hollow out their companies; but the reality is “line go up” is all anyone cares about in late stage capitalism.
In a true buisness sense its stupid because they stress short term make stock number go up instead of long term sustainable growth. That being said it seems with both agree that CEOs operate on fuck everyone but me
I've worked with some of these guys and it's absolutely all about them, their targets, their bonuses.
One of the Goldman Sachs bosses once came up with the term 'long term greedy', and had his staff apply it as a principle. Basically it means 'do the right thing by your clients and don't screw them over'. Better to have a 20 million dollar a year client for 10 years than to screw them out of 50 million in the first year and lose them. That sounds great, but then he could afford to think that way because he knew he'd still be there, with his stock/share options, in 10 years, profiting from that long term greed.
The younger guys are absolutely, 100% motivated to make as much as possible on day one and not give a shit about the long term view. How else are they going to afford the Porsche, Rolex, summer house in the Hamptons, etc. So they're much more interested in screwing a client over for a fast buck, or shitting on the company's long term well-being for this year's bonus.
I've been thinking about this for quite some time. Short-term thinking is the one big bad effect of modern turbo capitalism. Since we cannot have nice things, and are stuck with the current shitty system, could we at least come up with a way to make people in positions of power interested in the long term? Like, monthly payment in stocks that they are forced to hold for ten years or so? You can get a credit against those stocks, but at the end of the day, you would need to care that the company still exists and has worth in ten years.
Shifting the bonus compensation to long-term performance instead of "this year or even this quarter" is surprisingly very difficult. People are trained to game the system. It's how sales forces operate in most companies.
It doesn't matter what system you implement, somebody is constantly attempting to figure out how to maximize their profit at the cost of everyone else.
The more money involved, the more convoluted the games are.
I once shoplifted pepper once. Purely accidentally.
Yeah that one's on the store's fault
I have done on purpose. It is fun and easy.
Go to home depot (I hate that place anyway). Get the type of cart that has the big metal tube that runs around the top. Meant for atacking sheets of material flat.
Buy a sheet of something cheap. Thin plywood, foam board, whatever. Lay it across the top. Get a smaller one and stand it up vertically so you have a top and side facing shield.
Get a nice cordless power tool and put it down at the bottom.
Go through self checkout and pay for the sheets (make sure barcode faces up).
The cameras from the top and register can't see the power tool. Just be cool and leave. Never go back.
It really does take a village.
Uh huh, they for sure didn't see you taking that tool in the first place.
Actually try it and let us know...
The theft will continue until service improves.
Yet another way for the wealthy to steal productivity.
I get some of you like it and that’s fine but I hate it on principle.
Here we call them the "inflation compensation check-out"
"Oh this is a PS5? I thought it was bananas."
The home depot near me has only self checkout .... I guess it was such a problem that they now have a team of workers standing next to each station to 'assist' with checkout.
The Lowes near me does the same. Their only job seems to be trying to sell a shitty credit card, and I guess making sure nobody steals shit?
But yeah, it feels like they put in self checkout to save money on labor, then lost money to theft, so now they pay people to just watch you do self checkout instead of having them do the checkout like they were doing in the first place.
Well one person can (in their eyes) look at 5+ self checkouts.
They can still physically do checkout on only one register.
And the entire point of these supervisors isn't (just) to make sure people don't take something without checking it out.
It's to have someone to blame.
Because if the company can't find out who did it (the customer), yoi can bet they'll know which of the supervisors is "responsible". The company'll pay out that way instead.
Some "smarter" store managers might double-dip and pocket the costs. Definitely a logical personal finance move for some morally challenged.
Capitalism breeds innovation
I like the self-checkout because it feels like I'm wasting less time at the checkout. I scan everything while walking through the store so when I get to the self-checkout I just have to pay and I'm out.
The only store where I like the regular checkout is Aldi because those cashiers are fast and the belt is long.
The worst checkout system we have is in a store called Colruyt. The cashiers have to load everything from your cart to an empty cart while they scan it. It was already a slow system and it got worse since they installed 'smart' cameras above the checkout to scan the codes instead of using the handscanner.
I've shoplifted at a self-checkout once, because the bag of chips i was trying to scan kept bugging out the machine
Organic bananas are just bananas in my book
“Aren’t all bananas organic, officer? I have never seen a synthetic one”
I never have but damn have I thought about it a few times
I occasionally "steal" a bag because I forget about it up until the point I have to start bagging, but I can no longer add new items
that's crazy, here everyone is installing them and they seem to be paying for themselves many times over.
In theory they can save a bunch on labor costs by having 1 person look over the lot and being ready for help vs having an army of clerks.
NGL I dig self checkout
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i mean... alls soda cans weight the same.. why buy the expensive monsters wen you can pass a cheap one instead
How do you do that though.. you have to scan every barcode and if you get chosen for a random check the shop employee will scan all codes again and you face the risk of being reported to the police for shoplifting.
Or does the US have some different system?
I have, in the US, never seen a person "randomly selected" for a grocery rescan. I imagine the first store to try it would get sued for discrimination within short order. I have seen many kinds of shoplifting done multiple times though:
- scan a different UPC
- lie about which kind of fruit it is
- scan one, bag 2 (for light items)
- scan one cheap thing multiple times while bagging other stuff
- just straight up "forget" to scan a big item and walk out with it
- walk in with old receipt, skip checkout entirely
Some stores do a receipt check but they almost always just do a count and don't have time for detailed looks. Supposedly several US stores (Amazon-owned Whole Foods is notorious for it) will save up security footage of chronic shoplifters to wait until they've stolen enough to bring federal charges.
There are cameras all over self-checkout but it's easy enough to palm things or slip expensive items into your bags without it being obvious. Maybe with AI they can start scanning every video for signals but it seems to me that only the really bold and overt thieves get caught.
Well then you should come shopping with me because I get "randomly selected", I would guess, 20% of the time.
It's very frustrating because I use the store hand scanner and bag while I shop. Every time I get "audited" I have to wait for someone to take stuff out of my very neatly bagged cart just to rescan it again.
Kind of defeats the purpose of the hand scanner.
Ah ok, so that's likely the difference then. Here the display at the self scan machine randomly decides to halt and wait for an employee at the moment you want to pay. And the employee has to rescan everything in that case. If you clearly shoplift you are reported to the police and you will receive a fine of several hundred euros. I don't see how this can be seen as discrimination though, the machine doesn't have eyes or ears, it only knows the products you have scanned.
im not in the us.
Took me longer than I'm proud of to realise that 500g of pasta weighs the same as 500g of beef
Please don't make me go to the checker who can't stop sharing about their super boring life! The machines only beep.
I like learning about other people
It helps distract me from my boring life lol
Yeah, it's the training, definitely not anything else.
Self checkout works just fine in Sweden, the only people with an issue are dementia-ridden elderly (but they can't make sense of how to pay with a debit card either).
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