Stealing from Self-Checkouts | Hacker News Reader

Stealing from Self-Checkouts

theatlantic.com

33 pointsprostoalex44 comments

>There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”

So, here's the link to that particular reddit gem, in case you want to read it in all its glory:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/comments/56saoh/selfche...

I'm... almost sympathetic to an argument that amounts to the frustrating/dark side of automated assistance, which is probably something the audience here would do well to consider. I get frustrated with tech too and sometimes want a way around it.

But I wish that discussion was still active so I could reply... WTF, man. They're offering an automated way to complete a purchase, and it's not like you got paid to interact with the checkout cashier before. But let's say you see it that way. Let's assume that cashier was costing the store $25/hr (maybe), so the 6 minutes (maybe) they worked on your purchase might be worth up to $2.50. Are you scrupulously making sure you only evened the score/took the store to the tune of ten quarters?

Unless you can't for some reason, pay for your groceries, don't inflate the prices everyone else has to pay to offset the cost of "external shrinkage," and keep society in the crucial resource of trust.

25 usd / hour? More like 10 usd, at least in the UK

2.5x salary is a reasonable estimate of the cost of an employee. So $25/hr isn't that high for a total cost. Probably high for the US, it depends on the store, and an $8/hr job would result in lower end costs especially for part-timers without benefits (health insurance).

“Fringe” rate in the organization I’m in is less than 50% so 150% for a cashier is a stretch. To figure the cost that high you’d have to add some things like some fraction of their supervisor’s pay (which would be unfair because they’d have to be there anyway).

He's factoring in employee overhead. Entry-level employees in most of the US only take home around $7-10/hr before tax.

On the other hand these same thieves could choose to shop at a place with a person attending the register and probably paying slightly more to enable the store to hire this cashier.

Wow that subreddit is just on a whole another level of projections. Posts often refer to Company X/Y/Z mistreating their employee so much that I have to teach them a lesson!

Seriously, that doesn't justify your action to steal. You stealing (in peace time) is just you being a scum.

To be honest, I prefer to use an automated checkout. With a cashier, I'm always stressed because I have to put the items in the bag as quickly as they scan them, to avoid delaying the queue and wasting the cashier's time. In the automated checkout however, I can take my time to organise the bag and pay when I'm ready.

Why was this downvoted? By Americans who have never experienced this?

It depends on the automated checkout. In the Washington, D.C. area (U.S.), Giant Foods installed automated checkouts that are the same "length" as a regular checkout. You scan your items, put them on the belt, and they go to the bagging area at the end -- you can't bag them as you scan them. Once you're done, you're rushing to bag items as someone else decides to start scanning their items and send them down the belt, mingling with your items.

At Harris Teeter, on the other hand, you scanned an item and put it in the bag. You could load the bag as you wished.

>don't inflate the prices everyone else has to pay to offset the cost of "external shrinkage"

In most cases (and almost always at stores with automated checkouts), the retailer is already charging the most they think they can to make the most profit. It's just supply and demand, the higher the price, the less people will buy it (and vice versa), so the retailer will almost always charge the price such that the number of people that will buy it times the price of the item is the highest. (This is ignoring loss leaders, etc).

If shoplifting were to suddenly stop overnight, do you think the stores would lower their prices?

(not saying that makes shoplifting okay)

>If shoplifting were to suddenly stop overnight, do you think the stores would lower their prices?

Supermarkets might be a special case here. The margins are super thin and people tend to be very sensitive to the cost of food for some reason. So, yes, the stores would probably lower their prices.

You can read that user's other comments for other gems, such as "why are gay people bad employees" and "why are women so messy".

This is the rhetorical trick of "just asking questions" and it's nasty.

Yes - but in that user's case, it wasn't a rhetorical question. The gay coworker post had examples of some gay people he worked with he didn't approve of, and he vehemently argued in the comments, too.

I'm probably not the target audience. I queue up to use a checker. I like talking to them as they squeeze my Charmian and if they get paid to swipe things past barcodes while studying before university class we're all winning. Self checkout is slower for more than two or three things and th conversation is bad. FELLOW ROBOT GOOD DAY HOW IS YOUR IBN PRODUCT CODE LASER MINE IS RED

I'm much the same way, though I think another reason behind preferring the human checkers is the fact most self checkout machines are horrible in terms of usability. Oh no, you removed an item from the bagging area! Time to shut down the whole machine until some staff member comes over and unlocks it again!

Why? Who in their right mind thought this was a good design decision? It doesn't stop theft, it doesn't stop scams, it doesn't do anything other than infuriate legitimate customers at seemingly random.

Or in another example, trying to find the item you're buying if it's not a standard product with a bar code on the bottom. If the shop has a bakery or meat counter or whatever, that usually means lots of scrolling through pages trying to find the item you bought while hoping you can remember what the name of the damn thing was on the shelf in case two items look almost identical. Or in case you can't make out certain details on a tiny icon properly.

A human cashier can usually sort this stuff out much quicker than a customer using a self service machine could.

> When Voucher Codes Pro, a company that offers coupons to internet shoppers, surveyed 2,634 people, nearly 20 percent admitted to having stolen at the self-checkout in the past.

I weep for humanity. But there's no way the grocery stores would tolerate that level of theft. There's obviously strong correlation between people who steal and people who respond to Voucher Codes Pro surveys.

Yes, people who are using a voucher based site sound like they probably are already on the hunt for deals. I am not surprised that the numbers would be inflated for stealing if it gives them a better deal as well with little risk.

FWIW, the local supermarket near where I live decided to get rid of their self checkout, and I heard it was due to theft (and I do not live in a neighborhood where I would have thought theft would be an extra-serious problem...).

It could be that supermarket margins are very thin (perhaps 2%), so appreciable extra shrinkage can tip you over into the red.

In the my major metropolitan area, a major grocery chain is in the course of eliminating self-checkout.

They don't broadcast why, publicly, but knowing some of the staff and management, at a couple of the stores, I and another family member have both heard that it's "shrinkage".

Just as well, as far as I'm concerned. They are union jobs, and they have a mix of both permanent staff (with benefits including retirement benefits) and "starter" jobs for kids in high school or putting themselves through college.

All things our communities need.

P.S. Yes, "union". I don't see anyone slacking off. And I know the union's gone for to bat for one quite decent fellow I know, when a new middle manager tried to jerk him around.

Don't know about your specific situation, but in my past experience and positions, even if your store is in a "nice" area it isn't insulated from coordinated mobile shoplifting rings operating from the "not-so-nice" areas.

I got out when self-checkout was just becoming a thing but even in those early days, the lack of accountability was already being taken advantage of by means of all the very scams listed in the article.

This number is meaningless without context. I've stolen from supermarkets - because I'll occasionally run low on space in my basket, and I'll stick an orange or something in my pocket, and forget to check out with it.

A grocery store would very easily tolerate 20% of their customers doing that once a year.

I guess I'm type B for boring because I pay for everything at the self checkout.

Honestly the thought never even crossed my mind

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292254

There's one thing that prevents me from using self-checkouts: they have an annoying synthesized voice that says things like "place your items in the bag" or "please insert cash". I'm opposed on principle to voice interfaces that can't be muted, and machines telling me what to do. So far my best experience was with a checkout that let me change the language, so at least I couldn't understand it.

Unexpected item in the bagging area

Someone I know was working at a grocery story when they were introducing self-checkout. The store did an internal test and they asked employees to try to steal using self-checkout. It was incredibly easy to do. However they went with it anyway. The idea was that people were honest and overall it was still an improvement.

However one thing that's different now compared to 15 years ago is there are online communities where those who are dishonest can share tips and tricks. Someone already mentioned but this exists:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/

---

If you're here to preach morals, enjoy your very brief stay. If you're here to learn and share, please help contribute to our wonderful community ...

---

> If you're here to preach morals, enjoy your very brief stay. If you're here to learn and share, please help contribute to our wonderful community ...

I'm not sure, but it seems like you're implying that preaching morals cannot be a contribution to your community.

If so, I think it raises some interesting issues about community and morality.

Exactly it just seems like a strange sub doesn't it. Even has nice mascot - the cute Reddit alien with a mask on.

Are there subs for other crimes like medical malpractice, robbery? What about more serious ones say rape or contract killing. I am sure assassins would "benefit" from sharing tips and tricks of the trade.

At first I thought, oh maybe these are people who are hungry and have to feed their family so they are stealing an extra bag of rice or potatoes. But I see them bragging about electronics, media, expensive clothes. The one that caught my attention is bragging about stealing thousands a month from Whole Foods. They justify it by saying Whole Foods treats their employees badly.

A trustless society is no society at all.

So, given that the article didn't cite which subreddit, which reddit group made those comments?

Probably /r/shoplifting or /r/stealing .

Yeah, I finally found the post by searching the body text.

Just crazy on /r/shoplifting - people bragging all the time about their "scores". They don't know that their profiles are pretty readily accessible via snoopsnoo.com , Im guessing.

You'd have to be an idiot to do that in this day and age of ubiquitous video surveillance and smart machine visual perception.

you drastically overestimate the value of catching a couple of people stealing a couple of things vs implementing the system that catches them using video surveillance and cv

Statute of limitations for larceny in Massachusetts is 6 years. Would you really want to bet that it'll still be that hard in 2024?

Right, like CVS is going to keep all their surveillance video for over six years.

Hmm, I can't think of any reason a chain store would want to keep customer behavior data around...

That wouldn't suprise me, considering the amount of other information they legally must keep on hand for some years on-site and then years in mass storage. (former CVS employee). Some of a pharmacy's surveillance would be kept just for instances of robbery and prescription fraud. The last one isn't always known upfront. There is also the issue of employee theft.

Even with video evidence and some theoretical fancy algorithm divining your name from your face and Facebook page, stores aren't always inclined to prosecute unless you're a serial offender or a big fish. The article touches on this. The exact policy varies by store, corporate overlord and the cooperation of the local government.

Litigating costs money so for minor cases they'll often try to defer prosecution in favor of other (sometimes terribly unethical) means of resolution. Signed confessions, bans from store, direct restitution, etc.

To put it in perspective, I once had a guy return a PSP paid for with a credit card. Inside the box was a brick-- the red masonic kind, not the result of a botched firmware transplant (the cashier neglected to check the contents before accepting the return). We had his name, we had his credit card number and we had his face on camera. We didn't pursue it, so the scammer got away unscathed...but the cashier lost her job. Justice in action!

I guess, surprisingly, I'm the good guy for actually paying for my things.

Wonder how many small businesses go under because of this kind of theft.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com