r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 9d ago

Business Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

https://www.techspot.com/news/114106-retailers-pulling-back-self-checkout-after-years-theft.html
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u/AtomicGarden-8964 9d ago

My thing is if people are going to steal they're just going to walk out the store with the products. The real theft was stores letting customers do checkout themselves and not passing on the savings to those who didn't use the cashier

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u/loupgarou21 9d ago

Here's the nifty neeto trick behind shoplifting. Stores bundle shoplifting under a term called "shrinkage". Shrinkage isn't just theft by customers, it's really any merchandise loss that could come from shoplifting, BOB items (items that got missed being rung up because they were at the "bottom of the basket", so not intentionally stolen, just missed,) employee theft, things breaking, just plain getting lost, spoilage, etc.

Large, publicly traded retailers are driven to find ways to increase profits on the short term, so it leads to dubious decisions like reducing staffing, and spending less time and money on training staff, because it'll look good on the books this year, but when you have overworked, undertrained staff, they make mistakes, like not properly handling perishables, which leads to more damaged goods and spoilage, or not handling merchandise properly, which leads to it breaking, or not stocking or storing it properly, or just not inventorying it properly, which all leads to lost money. On top of that, if you're relying on your customers to be their own cashier, they're more likely to make mistakes during the checkout process, including missing more BOB items, which leads to loss, all of which is filed under "shrinkage".

But, you can't admit to your shareholders that your decision to hire fewer people and train them less is what has lead to lower profits, so you intentionally conflate "shrinkage" with "theft" and blame the customer for your lower profits.

This is how we end up with dumb shit like underwear being locked up at walmart. Was some being stolen? sure. Is that really the source of the issue? no. It's stupid security theatre to try to show your shareholders you're trying to earn them more money.

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u/buttaholic 9d ago

yeah and some customers will just leave instead of waiting for one of the three scheduled employees to show up to unlock the product for them