Self-checkout theft causing problems for retailers — and shoppers who despise receipt checks
Self-checkout theft causing problems for retailers — and shoppers who despise receipt checks
I started using grocery self-checkouts during COVID, but I've kept using them because there's rarely a line (and I'm a misanthrope). I'd probably go back to using regular human checkouts if I had to dig through all my crap to prove what I bought.
Having said that, I've noticed myself making mistakes. I've accidentally failed to scan an item, and I've accidentally entered incorrect codes for produce. When I notice, I fix them, but I've probably missed a few.
I guess the easiest answer is for grocery chains to reinvest some of those windfall profits and hire more cashiers.
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Wait, are receipt checks why Shopper's Drug Mart no longer gives me the option of "e-mail only" for my receipt? The garbage bins full of them by self-check-out are disgusting; it's so wasteful.
Edit: Also self-checkouts are entirely on the companies not wanting to pay for cashiers, so I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. Want to make sure people are checking all their items? Stop trying to automate people out of jobs.
I agree but I want to push back on the 'automation' of jobs. Self checkout isn't automation. They just made you do the work.
Yup, the corporation's favourite hobby is externalizing of costs. This is just one more example.
Automation would be some kind of robot that unloads my cart and packs my groceries into properly organized bags.
That's true. Honestly, as someone who despises chit-chat and likes to be in and out as quickly as possible, I prefer self check-out, but I know the people pushing it aren't doing it for the same reason I would.
I have a friend who works at a shoppers, and she was saying even at it's height, theft is like .001% of daily sales. You'd have to steal a bunch of electronics to even make a dent.
There's a bunch of lemmings thinking "challenge accepted".
This isn't true for everything across the board however, and the number of .001% is a bit of hyperbole. The driving force behind theft is multifaceted but the biggest ones are probably a mix of resell value, time to flip, and ease of access. Most items not from grocery stores are fenced through oh say Offer Up.
I worked for a major retailer as a mix of boots on the ground and investigative loss prevention and I will say theft is far more common than people give it credit and that mostly stems from how damn easy it is. Pre-Covid theft only loss were probably about .8-1.5% depending on the location and during/after was around 2-4% these numbers are for my state only though.
Now of course this is still a drop in bucket and corporation are still horribly, horrifically greedy which is why I had to get out and now get to relax working from home. I just wanted to frame the numbers a little better since I had to live and breathe this shit for years.
Even this corporate shill website lists 'high' amounts of theft with "According to some industry data" as "an average-sized food retail store in Canada can have between $2,000 and $5,000 worth of groceries stolen per week"
So not only are those inflated numbers, that's still a tiny number. There are about 15,000-16,000 grocery stores in Canada. Even if every single one of those lost 5000 per week, that's 3,900,000,000 per year. They make over 9,000,000,000 per month - or 108,000,000,000 per year.
Even at their highest possible (and likely lying) numbers, that's 0.0361111111111111 % lost to theft.
Sure, some hyberbole, but barely. (And I worked at Costco and saw their theft numbers, and even they have laughably low ones.)