Rich people are more likely to steal from self-checkout. Why?

This entire article is based on a self report study of 5,000 people. Self report studies are usually unreliable and never tell a clear story.

In this case, literally all the study can show is that wealthier respondents self-report having knowingly stolen from self checkout. Is this because they are the most likely to do it? Or are they more likely to tell the truth on a survey, maybe if they feel less insecure in their daily life? We don't know if they actually stole, is it possible that the numbers are inflated when the wealthy respondents for some reason say they had stolen when they hadn't?

Self report studies have a use and can be helpful to find potential correlations worth properly studying, but taking a self report study and blowing it up into an article like this is irresponsible journalism in my opinion.

To clarify a bit: In an unscientific survey, those who self-described their household income as > $100,000 were 4% more likely than those with self-described household income < $35,000 to self-report they had not re-scanned an item at self-checkout that had failed to scan successfully.

Rather than speculate on this “result”, I’d consider it statistical noise.

Or perhaps rich people are more likely to tell the truth in this survey and there's no stealing/income correlation.

I doubt it, but the point is the article is not about who steals more. It's about who admits to stealing.

Back in the 1990s Sainsburys (a UK Supermarket) had a version of self checkout where you had special trolleys and big boxes you took home and put in your car and a hand scanner you walked around and scanned items with. You then took that to a till designated for it and they had an algorithm for when to rescan people. The idea people most of the time till time was very short and it was just payment. Usually people got checked on the first few goes and if items were found that hadn't been scanned then more rescans would appear in the future. It was meant to drop down to about 1 in 20 for rescan.

Within about a year the entire thing collapsed. Almost everyone was caught stealing expensive stuff like nappies and especially alcohol and the algorithm had the system rescanning almost everyone everytime and rescans took longer than people just putting the items on the conveyor belt. The few people who used it honestly found themselves in long queues behind people who stole due to the rescans and the attempt to save supermarket labour ended up costing much more.

Given that happened it amazes me we have the self checkout systems we do now. There is an obvious and clear trade off where people will use self checkout to take items without paying for them however you choose to organise it. As a business they have to decide if those loses pay off compared to the staff cost.

I fantasize about stealing something everytime I get one of these “Unknown item in bagging area” errors forcing me to wait for an attendant to come clear the error. What did I breathe too hard on the scale? The sheer nerve of the retailer both making me do their work and having less than zero trust in me is too much.

When the self checkout machine refuses to scan my item. I am very likely to just steal it. Consider it a payment for my wasted time and doing the work that used to be handled by the cashier.

This reminds me of this Montgomery Burns quote:

> If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it's your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift, or the Jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well I say, "Cheating is the gift man gives himself."

https://youtu.be/iLzoi1ndQH8?si=iVkvPfvxZhh01wG9

This seems accurate to me:

"There might be even a subconscious kind of thought of: Hey, if I got caught, if I ever did get in trouble, I have the resources — I could hire an attorney, or I could call somebody. I know how to make something happen."

For a wealthy person, this sort of theft is a "misunderstanding", for anyone else, it's a bigger risk.

Stealing from a self checkout is a cheap and easy thrill if you’re rich enough to pay for legal representation. For a poor person it represents a much larger threat and most lower paying jobs are much less tolerant of needing to take time off for things like a court date.

The extremely wealthy aren't going to steal from self-checkout because they either shop in stores that lack it or they have employees who do their shopping for them.

Perhaps for as many different reasons as there are people

There's also the "bundling". I once stole 3 beers accidentally. 4 bottles of beer were bound together with a cardboard piece at the top.

As it turns out, there's a barcode on the carboard. BUT there's also barcodes on the bottles.

So what happened? I swooshed the 4 bottles of beer in front of the self-checkout scanner. It beeped. Of course, it beeped because it scanned a barcode on one of the bottles, not the one on the cardboard bundler thing. 1 beer bottle was charged, not a set of 4 of them.

I did not realize until I got home. And I've had bad experiences with this, so sorry, I'm not going back.

So yeah, I think there's definitely a decent percentage of "fuck this self-scanning shit", especially when an item presents you with difficulties or subtleties when it needs to be scanned at the self-checkout.

Less consequences if they get caught.

Superiority complex?