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Comment by Lio | Hacker News Reader

Waitrose self-checkouts point a camera at your face when pay so that you can see yourself on screen.

I dislike shoplifting and petty crime but I also dislike this form of cheap, petty intimidation.

I don’t want to live in this dystopia.

Whoever designed the Waitrose self-checkout was a master in the art of annoying one's customers. Not only there's a camera pointed at you, the machine will urge you to bag an item "or press finish and pay" as soon as you take a few extra seconds e.g. to solve a Backpack Problem with a can of sardines and a packet of pasta etc. And they're supposed to be the up-market chain?

I was stopped several times to get my bag searched in the Dutch upmarket chain. I wouldn’t say it means anything.

(Though people told me that was exceptional and I was just unlucky)

Is that Albert Heijn? They have nice freshly squeezed orange juice and pindakaas. I remember automated checkouts when I was in Amsterdam but I also seem to remember they were out of order. Small blessings, I guess?

The large Asda near me does this, too. Not happy about it but not sure what can be done to stop it. Probably needs either Scottish Parliament or Westminster to enact a privacy law and I can’t see that happening.

Perhaps it’s already covered under the European convention on human rights, but I don’t know if that still applies.

That's the one the Tories tried to tear down as a "villain's charter" isn't it? And Labour are very keen to show they're "tough on crime". So I guess, not.

I think Asda’s is so bad and intrusive that I’ve long since stopped shopping there. Also the worst of supermarkets on the quality front. Even Lidl is better.

That's the second reason I avoid self-checkouts whenever possible, honestly. The odds of me being hassled because of some sort of surveillance messup or because I did something wrong at the checkout are substantially lower if an employee is the one ringing up my purchases.

Just make sure you pocket stuff before reaching the checkout then.

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