Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout

You force me to check out my own groceries. Fine.

But don’t get pissed when I have a lot of groceries and have to move my bags because you gave me one square foot of space to bag everything. That’s often my biggest frustration. The robot thinks I’m trying to do some shady stuff, and I’m not.

The 'robot' isn't the problem. This design is intentional and human made. Here in the Netherlands self checkout is the norm, even in very small grocery stores. However, it's super easy and not frustrating at all, because the stores TRUST their customers. The self checkout is super simple, you scan a product and put it on your bag, or backpack or whatever you have. No need to weigh the scanned products or anything. Nothing overcomplicated.

Now there are some control measures, but they are designed in a way to not be too intrusive or create unnecessary frustration: First, most places have a gate at the exit that only lets you leave by scamming your receipt (or if you go paperless, you scan your membership card on your phone). Also, some places do random inspection. But that's frustration free too - a worker comes up to you with a hand scanner, scans like four or five random items of yours and leaves. Boom, done.
- Yeah, you can’t trust Americans. They’ll steal your own land out from under you and Rob your grandma and call it good business sense. Saying this as an American.
- However, it’s super easy and not frustrating at all, because the stores TRUST their customers.
  
  lol, I've been at the Albert Heijn near my hotel 3 times and 3 times I had to have my items rescanned. Maybe it's because I'm not blond and tall?
- One week in NL and I'm wondering what we're even doing over here.
- Also, some places do random inspection. But that’s frustration free too
  
  Yeah, I'm gonna disagree with that. They've recently ramped up those checks because of increased theft due to inflation. They also scan more items now. After having been checked 4 times in a row and them completely emptying my bag each time, I no longer use the self checkout.
- However, it's super easy and not frustrating at all, because the stores TRUST their customers.
  
  Walmart customers
- most places have a gate at the exit that only lets you leave by scamming your receipt
  
  That would be unlawful detention here. Also, what about people that go in and decide they don't actually want to buy anything after all?
  
  Fun fact: You can ignore the receipt checkers at wal-mart in the states. They have no legal authority to require you to stop. Costco, on the other hand, since it's a membership club, can.
This isn’t about the weight sensors, it’s using “computer vision” to detect you didn’t scan something and forces employees to get involved.

All the Walmarts I’ve been to have the bagging area weight sensors turned off. It seems the local grocery store finally turned theirs off because using a reusable bag used to set it off.
- Yeah, I got pinged twice, in one visit because I moved shit around, trying to organize.
  
  Way more false positives, in my opinions.
Honestly, those weight systems are so easily defeated, I don't even get the point. Anything that is measured by unit vs weight can easily be stolen.
I use reusable bags. I have to be very slow and deliberate getting the bag ready in the bagging area or it'll flag me.
- Same for me.
- I use reusable bags too, I first scan and rest the products on the weighting area, and after paying quickly introduce all the products into my bag. It takes a bit longer but it's way less problems for the workers and me, and it's still faster than going through the regular checkout.
Maybe it's just Colorado but the only store I've been to that had weight verification was a King Soopers (Kroger in other states)

Remember everyone. If you see someone shoplifting from Walmart, no you didn't.

Unless they're stealing guns or ammo.
- You know what, I'll make that exception.
I wouldn't say anything. Not because I care about "muh poor people" but because I actively mind my own business. I would behave the same way if I saw someone steal from a small business as well.
The employees can potentially get fired.
I feel like it depends. Stealing is morally wrong no matter what. But I'd probably act as if I saw nothing if someone just stole a sandwich or similar. I'm not sure I'll act the same if I see a teenage girl of a family that is obviously very well off steal things like makeup (that one literally bragged about it in front of her parents during a dinner where I was invited).
- deleted by creator
- In our society people are acknowledged as human beings through consumption, and that need is hammered onto our heads by ads and beauty norms everywhere.
  
  Belonging is a human need. Sometimes some cheap makeup is all it takes.
  
  But also, the rich people are stealing from us in so much worse ways. A rich teen stealing from a rich corporation is kind of karmaeic, and really, even if she was caught, nothing significant would happen, whilst a poor girl doing the same would suffer a lot more.
  
  Ergo, if you see something, no you didn't.
- I don’t know that stealing is morally wrong no matter what. My rabbi taught that if a man steals to survive, the crime is not his, but of his community because they did not save him from poverty. That teaching really stuck with me. Yes, stealing indicates something is seriously wrong in the world, but there’s a big difference in where the evil lies— is it in the thief, or in the society?
- Stealing is morally wrong no matter what.
  
  🤡
As long as it's just "shoplifting". Where I'm at, people will come in on a bike with a trash bag, load it up, roll out, and go to the next town over and sell the stuff on the street in the ghetto.

Since you kids are so sheltered you don't believe anything like this happens, here it is on video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8JLIWxxya4

Also https://www.ktvu.com/news/where-is-sfs-boosted-merchandise-being-fenced-police-say-check-your-local-flea-market

Tell your moms I said hi, suburb kids
- That's quite a story.
- We call them "Entrepreneurs" lol
- Cool story bro.
- What would even be wrong with someone doing that? 🤔
- Just curious, do you get anything if you tell on them?
- You're getting ripped off even with a stolen Walmart bike.
  
  I work at a shop and people call us snobs because we won't work on those deathtraps
- Boosters are public servants doing God's work and I won't hear a word said against them

Fuck Walmart

Ever since the pandemic, curbside pickup has been the norm at our house for groceries.

We use Kroger, not Walmart, but I had a recent experience relevant to share.

I was out running an errand and my spouse asked me to go grab a couple items from Kroger since it was nearby.

I hadn’t been inside the store in like a year, so I was surprised to see gates at the door that opened and closed upon approach and walking away.

Also, while shopping, at some point suddenly the wheels on the cart locked up, causing me to bang the ever loving shit out of my shins on the cart frame. That’s when I got to learn about the new “anti-theft” wheel lock tech being used on all carts now.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I wanted to flip the goddamn cart over and kick the absolute shit out of it… but I knew that wouldn’t help.

…But if I read a story about someone going and drilling holes in every single one of those cart wheels, or setting fire to them all, or breaking the gates, I would laugh.

I imagine as soon as someone gets something worse than bruised shins and brings a lawsuit against these stupid companies, we will see these stupid things go away… but until then, I’m not fucking stepping foot inside any store that has that bullshit.

The grocery store in my city became straight dystopian. It was always a sort of sketchy area but nothing that bad. After the pandemic, they added a second armed, vested private security in black, one-way turnstiles going in and out, increased cameras with screens on every aisle that showed you with the words "RECORDING IN PROGRESS". They even added locks to the frozen section, so you had to get an employee to help you buy ice cream. The police and security would tackle clearly unwell people who were shoplifting food, face pushed into the concrete type of thing.
- The police and security would tackle clearly unwell people who were shoplifting food, face pushed into the concrete type of thing.
  
  Cops can generally get away with that. Store security guards assaulting customers open the store up to a lawsuit.
- Jesus Christ that all sounded (unfortunately) normal until the locked freezers. That's a step too far. I mean, all of it is, but that's actually a ridiculous concept lmao
- The "bad" grocery store near me has taken to posting security cam pictures of people they catch stealing which is a terrible, awful, extrajudicial thing to do, but I would be lying if I said it does not make for some hilarious pictures. It's a big wall of shame right as you enter the store.
- My wife's creepy racist incel uncle had a fit once when we went into a store and he saw himself on the security camera. He said he doesn't like seeing himself. My sister had the same reaction to seeing herself pre transition and apparently it's a common theme among trans people who haven't realized it yet.
  
  I know it's a bit of a tangent, but he's rabidly transphobic up to the point just short of being blatantly hateful. He's obsessed with my sister and other trans people and made a lot of obsessive and creepy jokes about dating them.
  
  This post triggered my PTSD.
I'm surprised it locked up like that. About 15 years ago I was a frequent customer in a store that had these and I never encountered any problem with it, nor did I hear of anyone else encountering a malfunction while using them.

That store implemented those locks because they were the closest supermarket to a college campus. Some students were taking the carts back to their dorms and chaining them up to a tree with bicycle chains. They would also use those carts to go shopping in a nearby supermarket of another store chain.

Different continent though, so it's probably not entirely the same technology. People like reinventing the wheel.
- People like reinventing the wheel.
  
  I see what you did there.
I always try and smash my cart into the gates extra hard every time I go through
Hackers messing with those anti-theft wheels: https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=fBICDODmCPI
I've had too many incidents with spoiled or opened food to ever use curbside pickup.
- My wife once ordered some dried basil or similar herb, they said they were out of stock and substituted it with an actual live potted basil plant. We both thought it was hilarious, but also annoying.

Some loss is the expected result of replacing workers with customers. Even cashiers who are paid and trained to check out customers have a failure rate of about 1%. Walmart treating their customers like criminals for things that routinely happen to even their own trained and incentived employees is ridiculous.

I'd get hostile too. This wastes literally everyone's time, employee and customer. Walmart and other companies already write off all their losses as tax write offs. It would actually be more cost efficient to do literally nothing. But it's not about preventing theft. It's about proving a point: that corporations control you.

I’m sorry but I don’t think that makes very much sense.

Retail theft is a real problem for a company’s bottom line. Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC. And self-checkout is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.

Why would a corporation frantically seeking quarter over quarter growth spend money to “prove a point” about control?
- Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC
  
  https://www.businessinsider.com/target-closing-stores-due-to-crime-stats-tell-another-story-2023-10?op=1
  
  ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. They're blaming theft, but that's not it. Theft might be a part of it, but the stats nearby contradict that. We don't have access to their internal theft metrics, but the city data doesn't pan out. When there are stores (mission district) that have higher theft and are staying open, then is it really theft?
  
  Or is it poor retail performance since WFH is the new king and people live in the suburbs more than in the city. When continue to order online more and more instead of shop at a physical store.
  
  Theft is an easy way to blame other people without providing evidence. It's not the CEO's failure to adapt to changing market conditions, it's the poors! It's their fault! /s
- How about this. If self check out is a problem go back to paying cashiers.
- I'll never understand why people like you care about a mega corporation's bottom line. The executives are still making billions, while keeping their employees as poor as they can get away with.
  
  Target will survive without San Francisco. Even if they fail, the top dogs will just liquidate and take a fat paycheck home, enough for a 1000+ employees to retire and live off of for the rest of their lives, and they'll just pocket it all. Fuck 'em.
- So is CEO greed though. And they could choose to use that money to balance their budget, not ruin my experience of being out and about.

Hey remember when they gave you free bags, bagged it for you, and rang you up? That was kinda nice. Now the price is three times as high and all that service stuff is gone. The day before Thanksgiving is going to be hell this year at my supermarket

Those free plastic bags deteriorate into toxic materials that are presently all over the inside of your body. You had to wait in a slow line for people to bag the wrong things together and sometimes scan the same thing twice. Now I have my own canvas bags that last forever, I never scan my things twice, and my shit is bagged with the right things together based on where they go in my home.
- Switching from single use plastic to multi-use plastic has greatly increased carbon emissions of production. You also have to reuse the new plastic bags over 100 times for them to break even, emissions wise. (https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-cotton-bags/)
  
  I agree with you that canvas bags are better overall, but IMO we should move back to paper. It's WAY easier to reuse paper products, gardeners love the paper bags, and they break down quickly even if they are littered somewhere. There are some tradeoffs, such as transportation costs being higher because they are thicker than single use bags, but if you compare paper to multi-use bags, it's a fairly moot point.
  
  Also, I'd still rather someone bag my shit for me. I've had so many things broken or otherwise damaged by the cashier haphazardly tossing my stuff into the cart just so I can walk 5 foot and take 10 minutes to pack my own stuff. Personal preference, but it should be given as an option imo.
- The irony is that the plastic bags became the norm over the paper bags because they were thought to be more environmentally friendly, over the infinitely recyclable paper that literally grows on trees.
- My body is fine but thank you for your "sincere" concern.
  
  I went on the fast lines, maybe you need help with this. The trick is to look for lines that are shorter not longer. Easy mistake to make.
  
  I never had an issue with the cashier making a mistake and I have never been so freaken insane that I need to have the items in my bag in the reverse order of removal. Maybe they made so many mistakes scanning you because they were distracted by your fugly bag and advice on what order to put things in. You don't want to waste a single half second of your life putting groceries away. That could add up over an entire lifetime to a whole minute or so!
I can’t remember the last time I let someone ring me up at Walmart. Self checkout was always faster because most of the attended registers were closed. Most of my adult life I’ve bagged myself and idk if I’d want to go back tbh. The tech is annoying to deal with though
- Trust me it was nice. Value adds keep going down and prices keep going up. Keep hearing how everyone is unemployed and how CEO pay keeps rising. Biggest shareholder of Walmart has a mega yacht, maybe could have spent some of that money hiring people at the register.
  
  Whatever, enshitification continues. Now if you excuse me I want to watch a fifteen second yt vid and will have to watch a 30 second ad first from some alt-right "news" service that hates trans people.
If you are going to go on the day before, I'd recommend doing your shopping at 5:00am and be done by 06:00 am. That's when the day shift comes in. I wouldn't bring a cartful of groceries to the check stands before that time though, nite crew will be stressing out.
- Notes and thanks
They even used to bring your groceries out to your car, put them in your trunk, and return the cart for you.

Maybe they should keep some non-self check registers open then. I was a grocery store cashier in high school and college and I got $20/hour for doing it (adjusted for inflation). Right now if I see a store only has self-check open I will walk out, what I want to do is start tracking my time then mailing in a 1099 and an invoice for my time.

The last few times I've walked into a Walmart, the place has been a disaster.

Shelves empty and in disarray, no evidence that they ever did carry the product I was after, the building in an increasing state of disrepair.

I'm done with this company.

The Walmart here is pretty good, but this is a small city/large town where most of the local businesses have gone, so we have to rely on the Walmart a lot of the time. They keep it clean and well-stocked. They even usually have a couple of checkout lanes open.

But Walmarts are generally awful from what I understand.
- Yeah hopefully ours goes out of business soon.
Have they choked out all other options in the vicinity?
- Not really; we're pretty flush for retail.

I'd never think to harass the poor employee who has nothing to do with the store managenent's decisions...

However, when I'm pissed or tired I'll sometimes be rough or sloppy with the machine, and I get pissed if they have too few manned checkouts for how crowded a store is. Banging items against the scanner glass, tap selections on the touch screen forcefully with my ring etc.

To keep the self-checkout machines company, I'll act like a machine too. If I unsuccessfully attempt to scan something, after 5 tries I "timeout" and move onto the next item.

I give 60 seconds for someone to come fix the self checkout when it fucks up. If no one is available, I'm taking my shit and leaving. I tried to pay, fuck you I don't have time for this.
- I tried to pay, fuck you I don’t have time for this.
  
  Lol, uh huh. Whatever you gotta tell yourself to justify stealing that bag of doritos, dude.
- It's unethical and I personally wouldn't do that...
  
  ...but in your situation practically speaking, if no one's going to come and fix the machine in that amount of time, then who would be there to stop you just walking out with your goods?
- Sureee you will.
  
  No, you'll stand there and look around annoyed like everyone else, all yourre saying is youre gonna be a dick to whoever has the misfortune of helping you.

It's gone further here.. we have shops with scanners so you scan the goods as you go around.. in theory speeding up checkout but..

25% of the time you end up selected for 'random check' so an employee has to come and rescan everything anyway
If there are any 'restricted' items a like painkillers, a different employee has to come over and allow them.

Given the chronic understaffing meaning you're basically in a queue for attention, it frequently takes longer to get through the 'rapid' checkouts than it would if I simply queued up and got someone else to do it. But as far as the supermarket thinks they're winning as they pay fewer people.

Companies only want to shift to self checkout because they think they'll make more money.

It's all about profit.

I was fooled, I thought it was going to be better for me. And it was for awhile, because I can check myself out faster than the average employee.

However, the average customer sucks at checking themselves out. So the line for self checkout sucks. Stores use scales to make sure you're scanning the right number of things, but that means that I have to put everything down on a tray, and then put it back in my cart after.

Worst of all, I check out so fast that I regularly get stopped because I guess I look like a thief. No, I didn't steal anything, I just don't want to waste any more of my precious time in this depressing fluorescent establishment.
- You can tell who's never worked as a cashier because they take fucking forever to check out
- My local grocery market solved the problem of customers sucking by just adding more self checkout and it worked I think. I don't know I go even when it's super busy and never have to wait and if I do it's for like 20 seconds. Wegmans for what it's worth . Overall the quality of Wegmans has gone down though the past few years.
This is the store policy making the experience suck.

Random checks at Kaufland (European supermarket chain) only require the employee to visually inspect your cart to see if you scanned everything and they only need to rescan like four items, to verify the employee actually took the time to check instead of just waving you through, so it's all very fast.

Also, all employees can clear restricted items, so that's fast too. My only gripe is that alcohol-free beer also triggers the age verification, but that's a minor issue.

I love the hand scanners since thanks to them wonky scales and weight limits are a thing of the past. They really make checkout faster, as long as the store isn't using them in a boneheaded way.
- Non-alcoholic beer still has a little alcohol in it

I don't know about you, but I get annoyed that I still can't use NFC at checkout. It's 2023, tap to pay has been around in the US since 2016 and much longer in Europe.

It really is stupid cause literally every business accepts NFC payments now. Even gas pumps. But not Walmart.
- From an employee I talked to it's because they have a specific contract with the payment processor and it requires using specific payment devices that are covered in the contract and they don't want off it for as long as possible because it gives them preferential fees.
  So until the cost of business lost is enough to cover increased payment processing fees, don't expect to see tap to pay.
I left my cart in the checkout lane once because of this. I forgot my wallet, but had my phone with my wallet app. They are actively refusing to implement tap to pay in order to drive people to their app. Not happening.
They want you to use Walmart Pay in the Walmart app. That's the only contactless way you can pay there. It's not horrible but you need have an Internet connection to use it.
- Do the stores not have free WiFi? I've never been in a Walmart, but all bigger stores here in Europe have WiFi.

It's not the system that bugs me. It's the amount of time it takes for the employees to actually come and get the shit going smoothly again. Even when it's pretty dead in the store, it can take an extraordinary long time before one of the employees watching the area actually comes over when the light is flashing red and I'm trying to get their attention.

I ran 8 of the damn things a decade or so ago and I was damn fast. I feel really let down every time I check out with one both with how none of the problems have been resolved and also with how the operators seem to be sleeping with their eyes open.
Yeah in most places I've shopped they don't even have staff covering the self checkouts so they obviously don't care that much.

All the retail shops that were built 20+ years ago have a ton of un-peopled check-out stands. My local grocery store. My bank branches. The hardware store.

Companies have reduced their staffing to two or three checkers and a self-checkout line.

We're doing the work for them. They're hoarding the profits. It's a mess.

My local BofA branch has twelve or thirteen checker stations and I've never seen more than two people at the counter. I don't know when the branch was built, but it was clearly at a time when the semblance of customer service existed. Now, long lines and poor service are normalized and the idea that you'd shop around for a better experience is non-existent.

They were never intended to have 100% of the teller/check stands open.

It’s for surge and holidays, if you go in on Black Friday or other super busy times, you’ll see a vast majority opened.

It also makes counting easier, if 1 person uses a drawer and it’s off, it’s easier to hold a person accountable, rather than if 5 people used it
- As someone who used to have to fix tills, this is both true and not right.
  
  Yes most larger retailers have more tills then they plan on having open outside of say Xmas, and also to allow for some to be down and not effect over all sales. But also no (started years ago) that you will see even on the most busy days of the year most of the lanes open.
  
  I would say about 10 years ago with express and self checkout the big retailers gave up on hiring enough people to use all the forward tills and I think moved to the idea that people will wait on those busy days. I watched stores be built with less and less lane capacity and have less and less dedicated cashiers. Like a lot of companies retail giants see payroll a tempting place to make cuts on and after covid they have learned (hopefully incorrectly) that people will put up with a lot more BS then was expected years ago.
Abolish the minimum wage laws.

Computers are cheaper than employees, so this is where we have come.

One time I went to wal-mart and at self-checkout there was a security guy (with a bulletproof vest...) with the employee. I don't know if he was there to look intimidating to potential thieves or to protect the employee from violent customers, but I did not like the feeling of him watching me scanning my items. Am I a customer or a potential profit-loss theft for wal-mart? I fucking hate that company...

If you hate it so much, show it with your wallet. Shop elsewhere.
- That's pretty hard to do if you live in an area that only has the one store near, and even then; would the multi-billion dollar company really care if it gets like $1200 less per year from a single customer?

Of course. Sometimes it doesn't work. Often times it's an honest mistake that a cashier themselves may have made. And now WalMart is treating you, a paying customer like a criminal.

Based on nothing but the people I have seen at Walmart, I would assume there are more people with a convicted criminal history shopping at Walmart than Target.

A key to success in business is knowing your customer base.
- They do sell crowbars no?

I bought jelly and the age restriction went off. The clerk came and I had my ID out to check. We both had a laugh

customers should get a discount for using an SCO.

"Raise the price for everyone who doesn't use self-checkout? Sure thing!"
- They have to pay an employee to scan and bag your items. By using self checkout they are saving money. It makes sense to charge less for a service that costs them less.
I need to know the reasoning the person who downvoted you uses...

Not at walmart, but one of our supermarkets in town has two self-checkouts. I tried them a few times, and they were so f-ed up that I gave up on them. One time, the machine did not accept any cash, but was stuck in the menu choice "pay by cash" without a "back" button. So I took my stuff to the normal checkout, which had the problem that my steaks had already been scanned. Solution: leave a bag of 20+ Euro meat at the checkout, and get a new one from the butchers shop.

normal checkout, which had the problem that my steaks had already been scanned

Lol, that meat had a serial number.
- Yes, if I get if from the butcher inside the supermarket, it has a "local" EAN13 barcode that "costs" the total of all parts I got.
- Meat heist is unironically a real thing
Dang, from one 'local' establishment to the next.

And I bet you're paying more, too.

If we shop at chain grocery stores we're self-checking (and destroying local businesses). If we buy from Amazon we're supporting billionaires and destroying local businesses. If we shop at mom&pop stores we're paying too much for less in an age of inflation. Good luck getting everything you need from side-of-the-road vegetable stands (who skirt tax and have no liability). We can't win.

It's funny, my local Walmart ditched the weight checking part of the self checkout so it's quick and easy, yet every time I go at least one person has managed to fuck up badly enough to need to call help over

Meanwhile I'm getting a decent discount on my purchase, which is nice

You're stealing?
- Unexpected item in bagging area?
  
  Fuck you buggy robot, keep up. I’m moving on to the next one.
  
  Didn’t get scanned? The store is getting the quality of checkout that it paid for.

Fucking Kroger's (grocery store in the US) self checkouts yell at you if you have more than like 6 to 8 items, so you have to wave down an employee to continue scanning.

Then it complains for more than 15 and you have to wait for the employee again.

What's the point? How often do people go to a grocery store to get less than 15 things? It's just frustrating.

They also have random items that will ALLWAYS trigger the "You need to get an employee" alarm.

Like goddamn, I just want some fucking oatmilk.
- removed! You aren't old enough for that oatmilk!!!
That has to be a location specific thing, because I've gone to dozens of different Krogers and I've never had that issue with the self checkouts. The worst that happens to me is the scales will get twitchy sometimes and think I doubled up on something, and won't let me continue scanning till an employee resets it. But even that's a pretty rare occurrence.
- They've just recently replaced all their self checkout stations with new ones that do that, so maybe the ones near you are still the old ones.
I've only seen that pop up when I go to pay. Never when just scanning. What's weird is it's not consistent, even at the store I frequent. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't. Last time they had canned soup on sale I bought like 30 and didn't get any messages.

Normalize leaving your groceries in the cart and leaving the store, and finding another store that doesnt make you bend over backwards to pay for your shit.

and finding another store that doesnt make you bend over backwards to pay for your shit.

Not so easy in a small town where the big box stores have killed local business.
The only real outcome from that is to make underpaid employees have to put all your shit back.

When their AI is well trained on social behaviours, they'll start sending Minority reports

Ohh man i fucking hate self checkouts with a passion the soulless passive agress voice. The voice annoynecemnts to scan rewards card to take groceries to take recipt the 3 different "would u like to dobate to x" that constantly swap wheres the yes and no button is. Then sometimes it just fucking freezes and cos the bloody product isnt heavy enough to detect and it wont give me the ability to scan something till the other thing has been put down. I have no multiply button so if im buying 30 of something then i have to get a godamn employee to go into the employee section and hit the multiply button or my inabiloty to remove something once scanned. It all pisses me ofd so much. I do however have to say aldi has figured it out and i hope they dont go down the route of everyone else.

It almost pisses me off as much as ordering food via a qrcode and then being asked for a fucking tip. Im in australia we dont tip cos we have a fucking decebt minimum wage. But why does the fucking robot need a tip it disnt have exemplary service its a fucking machine.

I never hear the voices from the machines, because I always have my headphones on. Fuck hearing people in the shops.
- Probably the best solution ngl
I'm thankful my grocery stores have a mute button for self checkout. It makes for a much less stressful experience, I don't know why they have it narrate so much junk.

As for your issues with the inability to remove things, I do know the trick. (I can't speak for non-us self check out kiosks) As someone who worked as an attendant for the kiosks, the main cause of setting off the thing is picking your bag up before the scale has settled. The scale isn't just checking that the weight has increased by a certain amount, it's also waiting to make sure the weight is balanced. The issue with that, is the intuitive thing to do when your bag is full is immediately put it in your cart to make space. So the best thing to do is put your item in, wait a few seconds then you're set to move the bag. With the small things not registering, could be uncalibrated scales. I have never ran into the multiply issue, as the ones I've all been to have scan guns and you can just shoot the barcode a bunch.
- Huh, I'll have to look for a mute button, thanks for the hint. Mine keeps yelling at me to finish unloading then churns out a nonsense marketing phrase. Utterly annoying.
- Damn wish i cpuld shoot the barcode a bunch thr ines im forced to use make u put down every item before u can scan another so no double scanning to count 2 items

Seems like i have a complete different experience of self checkout here in Germany. But why? Are our devices newer?

No we just care less about theft. The German ones are build to maximace speed and therefore usability. This theoretically makes it rather easy to steal.

If this would become to much of a problem they would also reduce comfort to increase security
- In Finland, we've been getting handheld scanners in a few shops where you scan and pack while you shop, and then pay everything at once. The "theft prevention" is very infrequent random checks where they ask to rescan three items to see if you paid for them.
  It feels like stealing would become really common, but it's been a few years and they are just installing more of em, so I guess not.
- The experience in the US sounds entirely different than even in Canada.
  
  I think it's an indication of the state of the US. People don't steal for fun. Maybe some do, but not in quantities that put an armoured security guard at checkout.
- Is it really? I imagine, paying a Person for every checkout must be way more expensive than some higher theft rate.
Same Czech Republic and Slovakia. All the stores have now majority of sell checkout registers. People prefer them. No issues with them.

There is usually one person assigned to 6-8 of these that is watching and making the corrections.

It cut the waiting time significantly.
Some machines use scales to measure the weight of items, scan one item, put it in the "bagging area" (scale), repeat. Many stores have disabled scales because they're buggy and don't catch thieves, who learn that to steal, don't put items on the scale. Now, stores have employees watch and offer "technical support". "Oh, ma'am, I think this item may have been missed. Let's check. Do you need help with how to scan items?" I don't try to steal, so don't find the machines to be a problem.
No, in Germany sellers truly want SCOs, while Wal-mart just doesn't want to pay employees.

I don't understand people that get upset and hostile at employees in these situations. When I go through self checkout I go in with expectations already set that it's very likely that at some point during the checkout process the machine is going to trigger an alarm and an employee will need to come over and override the alarm. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does my first reaction isn't to get all pissy and throw things at the cashier.

If you have no patience for this sort of thing, then go through the regular checkout. See if it takes longer going that route.

The store has chosen to save money by pushing work onto customers via a buggy robot overlord.

Employees are the only person you can complain to.

Just more billionaires making things shitty for everyone.
- I could justify it if even a fraction of a percent of the savings were actually passed on, or hell, even distributed to the few employees they still have. But no, it lines the fat cats pockets.
- Yeah I do agree that complaining to employees is useless, but it's also a really frustrating situation and it's not like you can get the CEO on the phone to complain. I wouldn't personally complain at an employee, but I do get how someone might in the midst of such frustration.
What regular checkout? Around here they are all closed down and only self checkout is available.
- Take all your shit to customer service and check out there.
I would LOVE to go through a regular check out! If only we still actually had more than 2 open in a full supermarket. It's not about time taken, though, it's about the sheer level of inconvenience that it's become. It's an active pain in the ass to have to do the job that used to be done by employees, with shitty machines that yell at you every few minutes, while actively being recorded and treated like a criminal, and have to go through another checkpoint where they're going to once again actively treat you like a criminal and look through your receipt. Or I can spend like, 30 minutes in line at one of the two open cashiers.
I think a lot of it has to do with that last part of your comment. The amount of times I've gone to the grocery store to find there's no register open other than the self checks or that there's 1-2 open at a huge grocery store with a 6-8 people in line for them and no self check line... People are being forced into self checking when they don't want to. These people are obviously going to be more easily upset by issues with the self check machines. Walmart in my limited experience (try to never buy anything there if I can avoid it) is the worst offender I've seen.

Is this an American thing? We had these things in Europe for years, and I never heard of anyone having problems.

Older people still prefer regular checkout, scary computers and that sort of deal.

In my nearest supermarket (europe) it is a pain. You go through self checkout cause it should be faster, but it works like shit, and you have to wait a lot until someone comes to fix the problem. We are civilized, though, we don't cause problems to the shopkeepers. Still a pain, though
Kinda funny how much faster Europe has adopted retail tech lately. Last time I was there 7 years ago they were still mostly using cash for transactions, but now the cashiers get a little buttmad if I don't tap my phone to the scanner immediately. I hardly see anyone using phone payments in the US and I don't understand why it hasn't caught on. At least not where I live. It's about as fast and convenient as it gets.

Or maybe it's just because I'm in a major city right now and kit everywhere in Europe is like this.
- Pretty much in any major town in my tiny country, this is the case also.
I'm in europe and the issues I've had are getting an alert that an employee needs to come to check and sometimes that can take awhile.

One store also has a scanner so you self scan as you go BUT the paying part is at an actual employee instead of a machine. Every damn time they are alerted to randomly pick some items from your cart to check if any weren't scanned. And every damn time they pick the items at the bottom of my basket and damage stuff because of it. Or sometimes there is no one at the checkout so i stand there with my basket/cart and scanner like an idiot for 3-5 minutes for an employee to show up. That might not seem like a long time but it sure feels like it...
- Yep this is exactly why I refuse to do the scan as you go, it ends up seriously frustrating. Self scan at checkout is fine if you don't have paracetamol or alcohol, otherwise you're waiting ages for assistance.
  
  It's definitely an overall worse experience
Yes. The technology options for self checkout in the US are terrible, so the user experience is terrible. All the horror stories in this thread are true. The stores are terrified of theft but refuse to hire checkers. There's also way too many grocery stores, so there's little money to put into technology upgrades and appropriate levels of staffing. For example, I am less than 5 minutes drive from 9 grocery stores. Extend that to 10 minutes and I've got over 20. Silly.
- That's crazy. We have a designated checker for each self checkout.

This post has reminded me that I should go steal from Walmart soon.

I get this is was said playfully. However, you really should not. They always press charges and will advocate for jail time. In some states, that’s a month of jail over something as small as a candy bar.
- Security is a cat and mouse game. There's always a way to steal from anyone, especially a convenience-oriented business.
- Lol nah, if you get caught you were making it look too obvious. There's a fine and subtle art to stealing from Walmart.

In Sweden we usually have a self-checkout alternative where you acquire a wireless scanner when walking in, scanning when picking from shelves and put it directly in shopping bags.

At checkout, you just pay and walk out. There is random controls, where an employee will check like 5 randomly chosen things from the bags. This is seldom though, like once every three/four months or something.

Makes for very quick checkout.

I would guess this wouldn't work in many countries with a more prevalent stealing culture (among which mine, France).

I don't say that out of nowhere, it shocked me when I went to Sweden and I saw people alone leaving their bags at their place while they go to the bathroom / getting their orders, or just leaving their bike unattached - even for five minutes I would guess it would be quickly stolen in France.
We have it as well. I call it the anti-boomer queue (so no queue)
- So basically the boomer queue ensures that cashiers have a job, and it ensures that I don't have to be treated like a criminal because the cashiers are bagging the groceries and I won't be subjected to "random controls". I'm not seeing the negative.

I'm cool with checking myself out I actually prefer to but the anti theft nonsense is to much. Nearly everyone triggers it and last time I had to wait an extra five minutes for an employee to clear it and then they had to count 20+ small items all because I waved my arms over the machine fixing the cuff of my shirt.... I don't blame the employees that's their job

LET ME AT LEAST MUTE IT

I've had a problem at self check out recently when I was buying a birthday card. I scanned the card, and placed the card and envelope it comes with in the area where scanned items go.

The kiosk, correctly, thought I put an unscanned item in the area. It was just the envelope the card comes in, so no need to scan it. But an employee had to come over and verify themselves before I could continue.

I don't see the anti theft measures as being an issue, you need to protect your merchandise from theft to run a successful business. But, it should be made a little smarter, to know that if you scan a card, there is very likely an envelope that comes with it.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Retailers broadly are facing increasing theft and have responded by locking up merchandise, warning investors of major losses, and implementing new technology to help combat the issue.

In 2019, Walmart introduced computer-vision technology at its registers to reduce inventory shrink, a term retailers use to describe merchandise losses from theft, fraud, error, and other causes.

Employees overseeing the self-checkout stations can monitor the registers from mobile phones and, in the case of issues, pause the machines to prevent customers from checking out.

The employee, who has worked at Walmart locations for over two years, said the self-checkout technology caught many customers off guard — particularly when they saw that the registers flagged them and then played back a video on the machine's screen showing them scanning items.

"It was personally uncomfortable for me to notice somebody purposefully not scanning an item," said Dominick Haar, 20, a recent newly former Walmart employee who worked self-checkout in a store in Southern Illinois.

"I think it created a lot more stress for the employees, not to mention customers that just want one-on-one personal conversation when they go to the store," Leroy told Insider, referring to the self-checkout machines.

The original article contains 923 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The definition is wrong. There's nothing "self" about them if an employee has to hold your hand throughout the entire process.

Perhaps they should be paying the customer with savings since they're saving so much money not paying a full-time checkout attendant per register. The customer is now the employee.
- Meh, I don't mind using self-checkout when it's actually self-checkout. I hate standing in lines and my anxiety doesn't do me any favors so I'm all in favor if the system actually works.

I don't blame them

Why do people get hostile when they are showed a video of themselves moving items to the bag without scanning the item? Why not just accept your fate at this point and pay or give the goods back?

This leads me to think about how Walmart's focus on cheap low quality goods with stores placed in areas where finances are often tight has created this "I want it but can't afford it" despair.

You walk into this soul-less, hyper efficient box store and it's easy to notice they have a lot of stuff but not a lot of staff. And the staff are not exactly motivated to care about theft.

It's not a long shot to start to think it would be easy to get away with grabbing something, because perhaps Walmart is an easy target. But the efficiency of the place is where that mistake falls short.

The truth is, there are very few businesses with as sophisticated an anti-theft system. Walmart is dealing with petty theft on a global scale and understands exactly how much it costs them, especially if they are perceived as an easy target.

Walmart has the technology to wait until the number of thefts from a single person exceeds the local felony levels and only then press charges. It's a trap, and ripping off Walmart is a lot less profitable than it might seem.

I don't shoplift because I'm fairly fortunate to be able to work a job that pays a living wage. Yet every single time I use a self-checkout (not just at Walmart), it flags an employee for something; maybe I left a prescription in the cart (you have to pay for those in the pharmacy). Maybe I'm shopping with my wife and her purse is in the cart. Once it thought I was stealing my own kid.

If you don't trust me to do a thing, don't let me do a thing. It feels like harassment.
I caught someone stealing a felony amount of alcohol by using their young children(<5) and they acted like I was the wrong one in the situation.

You got caught, accept the consequences of your actions. Nope, I am the bad guy because I recognozed someone who stole a felony amount of an unnecessary product the other week, watched them on the cameras, and called the police station next door to wait in the lot for them.

They also didn't show in court and got a warrant for it.

I don't understand that level of incredulous lack of accountability for your own actions.
The key is to be subtle about it, understand the local laws and keep the thefts under the felony limit.

target reversible retina scanners

Walmart and their customers deserve each other.

It's not "anti-theft".

It's just dumb **** criminals who can't handle being herded and being RIGHTLY LABLED as useless C***S

Until you get caught in a similar predicament without having stolen anything. Then you'll waste 10 minutes being humiliated by having your entire cart rechecked, all the while catching looks from everyone else checking out. Then you will be frustrated and might say something about it. But yes, they are all dumb criminals. You'll be the only innocent one who was ever humiliated in this way...

Grow up

Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech