Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech::When Walmart’s anti-theft self-checkout tech alerts an employee of a missed scan, it can cause some uncomfortable situations.
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.
Don’t drink the water. There’s blood in the water.
And probably some forever chemicals, but we’ve made that everyone’s problem
Don’t forget microplastics.
Comes with the blood.
Where isn’t there, the Antarctic?
No, that’s all oil
oil
DID SOMEONE SAY THEY NEED SOME FREEDOM?!? F16s fly overhead, teens getting tossed ARs
WE WILL SAVE YOU
and your resourcesAnd penguins
The penguins are coated in the oil.
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.
We’re accepting white the Nordic countries are fiercely xenophobic. It changes the game quite a bit.
NL is neither a Nordic country nor ethnically homogeneous. Just like all countries with a history of colonizing other people, many of those people are now in NL. Stop blaming everything on diversity
Nice try, but no.
Dutch 75.4%, EU (excluding Dutch) 6.4%, Turkish 2.4%, Moroccan 2.4%, Surinamese 2.1%, Indonesian 2%, other 9.3% (2021 est.)
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.
Jeez where do you live?
NL as well. Maybe it’s because it’s a big city, poor neighbourhood, more theft, I don’t know, but I’m done with it.
Sounds frustrating, sorry to hear that
Thanks, it really was. I had happily used the self-checkouts for years before that, so it’s a real shame.
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.
Costco can stop you from leaving either. They can however revoke your membership for breaking the terms. But if you not longer care about you membership you ignore them like the Walmart checkers
I did that last time I went to Walmart for something. Long line of people waiting to show their receipts and I just walked out.
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?
It’s not like you’re trapped… you can just walk out if you want, but doing so without paying and carrying full bags may raise an eyebrow with employees. Although I think I could easily get away with that in my small village supermarket during quiet hours when nobody is paying attention.
However, it’s super easy and not frustrating at all, because the stores TRUST their customers.
A third of these are people who are either disabled or in medical crisis. They’re marked “funny”. And this is where you go for entertainment? Well, when people tell you who they are, believe them.
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.
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)
Fuck Walmart
This is the way.
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.
True, the store security usually didn’t actually do anything, the police would be doing that while the security talks to them, but on two occasions I did see the security tackle a person.
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.
Hostile to the point of attacking the employees?
I’ll call for their manager and attack the manager specifically. Is there a term for that yet?
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
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
This.
Both Walmarts in Portland OR closed a few months ago. Good fucking riddance
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How about this. If self check out is a problem go back to paying cashiers.
No way. I don’t need someone to frantically scan my items while I barely manage to bag them in time.
Then they need to rehire baggers, too.
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.
Yes, they absolutely could and should. That wasn’t my point. I just don’t think it makes any sense to say that they made the change to their self checkout to “prove a point” about controlling people.
Zero class consciousness. They don’t lose any money from theft, but rather use it as an excuse to extract more money out of the local area. You’re completely out of touch if you don’t think that companies flat out lie about their theft problem, if they were genuinely having stuff being stolen from them they would employ like 10x the value of what was stolen to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We know this because that’s literally what happens whenever they suffer a monetary loss from unionization they spend like 1000x the loss on illegal union busting.
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.
Multi use plastic bags are a moronic half measure agreed. What some places are doing is using paper for disposable bags and selling actually long term re-usable bags for a little more like a 2-5 bucks a bag mostly.
Yeah the idea that people buying a dozen polyester bags made of substantially more plastic that still gets thrown away by people on average is not great. Our fast scramble approach to solving issues is often awful like that though. Look at the waste that the turn from plastic straws caused all because of a school report about turtles.
Don’t get me started on fucking paper straws…
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
I don’t understand. You’ve had cashiers break your shit, and therefore you prefer they do the bagging?
Bring your own bags => cashiers toss stuff into cart and break things, because you have to bag your own stuff.
Cashiers bag stuff => less things break, because stuff is bagged then put in the cart.
Here, everything goes out on a belt where you have to bag it yourself. The cashier never touches your cart or items apart from scanning them.
Costco recently came to my country and it feels so incredibly weird to wait for someone to first unpack your stuff and for someone else to scan it, and then someone else packs it again.
I am not sure how to put it, but I almost feel humiliating in a way.
It’s also pretty common in grocery stores to walk around with a handheld scanner which you dock when done so you can pay. The great thing about this is that you bag your stuff while shopping and when you pay, it’s already bagged.
Yeah. Piling stuff on another belt so we can bag it ourselves is the norm here as well. I find it fascinating that I will simply pile everything into a haphazard pile on my side of the cashier, but when the cashier scans it, he/she usually piles it up into a very nice and tidy organized group.
I see, that explains the confusion.
Costco recently came to my country and it feels so incredibly weird to wait for someone to first unpack your stuff and for someone else to scan it, and then someone else packs it again.
I’m in the states, but I still kind of feel weird having them do this. That said, they’re much faster at it than me and lines are always huge, so they probably prefer it this way.
What country is this if you don’t mind me asking. If uncomfortable with answering , no pronlem. Also, they have hand scanners for everyone?
It’s Sweden. Yes, anyone that is a (free) store Member can use the scanners.
Note that not every store has those, only bigger grocery stores do.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. In the olden times, a bagger (or the cashier) nicely packed the stuff into bags making sure not to break shit. All the stores around me now just yeet shit back into the cart after scanning it with no regard to what it lands on or if it breaks.
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!
Like a lot of the crap in your body that is hurting you its not obvious until you get a health issue or cancer later and then noticeable statistically not individually EG you look at two populations and one had more folks with a much higher incidence of cancer or auto immune diseases or what have you. The fact that its not obvious doesn’t make it any less real. Those free bags were closer to free cigarettes.
I used to manage cashiers and handled 10 of thousands of transactions and observed more. Like any human beings they do occasionally make mistakes. If you haven’t noticed anyone EVER making a mistake ringing you up it means you don’t pay attention.
I don’t tell cashiers how they should bag things because that’s obnoxious but I do know that I do a better job of not putting fresh things with meat or things that are liable to be squished with canned food or all the non-food items together.
If you avoid 4 minutes waiting once per week and 2 minutes putting away things over your life you will save over 300 hours. You aren’t liable to be awake for much more than 100 hours a week so that is like 3 weeks of your life.
We are just lying now I see.
Could you just not follow the math. Do you not believe I was an illustrious supervisor of cashiers, or do you just not believe microplastics are bad for you?
I agree with the top level comment but this one reeks of toxicity, so unnecessary
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.
Ahh yes the value of getting something for free for almost 2 decades goes down the moment they actually want people to watch the ads or ask people to pay.
I can’t even count the number of Epoch Times ads I have gotten telling me how the media invented trans people. I keep blocking them but they keep coming back. Do you support that ad as well? How about the Prague-U ones where a woman explains how the Southern Strategy is a myth? This morning I got one about the Turtle Twins, the author explained how slavery wasn’t really all that bad.
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.
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Eh. Shop wherever you get the best deal.
Getting screwed over by someone locally isn’t better than getting screwed over by someone miles away unless you’re a tool.
You understand why Walmart is able to charge so little for shit? Their workers are paid garbage (a lot have to supplement their wages with food stamps), they buy in such crazy volume that they can undercut mom and pop places with impossible margins and they drive local businesses under. I hope the deals are worth it
Amusingly the 2 Walmarts in my city closed due to crazy shoplifting. I’m not sad to see them go, but they left a massive crater in the shopping center where NOTHING needs that much space and I can’t see anybody moving in anytime soon. Sadly they’ve chased smaller places out of the area already so shopping options are limited
Walmart workers are paid comparably to workers at Kroger and Target.
Walmart is able to charge low prices because they make up for it in volume. They make up for it in volume because they charge the lowest prices.
I hope the deals are worth it
It is. If mom and pop stores want to stay in business, they can take a hit to their paychecks so customers have a better deal. If they aren’t willing to do that, then they shouldn’t get to stay in business. It is business, after all. I’m not getting ripped off just to be nice to someone local, lol.
Bragging about being equivalent to Kroger pay is… sheesh…
Yeah I don’t think they get that countered their own point. All of em are corporate places that are cheap and pay shit.
The one corporate retail chain I’d give a pass to is Costco. They show that it is completely possible for all of these larger chains to compensate their employees fairly.
The best deal is always free. So, I’d rather inconvenience the conglomerate haute-booj than the petit-booj, even if it’s only a few dollars.
The best deal is always free.
What are you talking about? Who told you that and why do you spout it as though it’s a law of the universe?
No, the best deal is not ‘always free.’ That’s the kind of soundbite that’s appropriate for republicans.
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.
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?
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.
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I’m not gonna cry for a corporation that doesn’t give a fuck if you eat or not. Why are you?
I’m not “crying” for any corporations. I’m laughing at that jackass for their asinine rationalization for shoplifting. If you don’t understand the difference, I don’t know what to tell you.
You’re not crying for them, you’re licking their boots
You’re free to do so, of course, and we’re free to laugh at your dumb ass paying full price for $20 steaks that were only half as much three years ago.
Lemmy sure attracts some fucking characters. The guy simply pointed out that stealing isn’t justified by a 60-second wait. And you are jumping in here ranting about the price of steak for some reason. You’re not Robin Hood. You’re just a dumbass with a keyboard.
Tell us you’re not listening without telling us you’re not listening
This dumbass with a keyboard knows their worth and knows it is rarely if ever worth it to pay full price for stuff. Especially expensive necessities, for example meat, for which the prices skyrocketed thanks to the lockdowns and aren’t going back down because of the horrifyingly astounding greed of big corps like Walmart who largely control the market.
Hence, stealing stuff like that from Walmart is justified.
Hell, it’s justified simply because it is Walmart, but that is the more detailed justification.
It doesn’t matter either way, though, because people are going to keep doing it regardless of what you think.
So carry on, dumbass keyboard warrior. The only one you’re hurting is you. 😎
Sucks to suck. Fix your machines.
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.
I’ve done it several times lol
One time I’ve gotten a “hey you can’t do that” but in my area the guards aren’t allowed to stop you. Which imo is a dumb rule but it allows me to do this.
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
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.
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.
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.
They do have WiFi.
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?
As for your first point, you’re right. If the local business scene is non-existent, then there’s little one can do.
As for your second point, well, that’s not the point. If OP says he hates Walmart so much, and he has a choice, then shopping elsewhere would be good for him.
Plus even if $1200 won’t break Walmart, well, at least that’s $1200 OP isn’t willingly and reluctantly giving to them.
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?
