Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech::When Walmart’s anti-theft self-checkout tech alerts an employee of a missed scan, it can cause some uncomfortable situations.
Remember everyone. If you see someone shoplifting from Walmart, no you didn’t.
As long as it’s just “shoplifting”. Where I’m at, people will come in on a bike with a trash bag, load it up, roll out, and go to the next town over and sell the stuff on the street in the ghetto.
Since you kids are so sheltered you don’t believe anything like this happens, here it is on video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8JLIWxxya4
Tell your moms I said hi, suburb kids
It’s pretty common here. A lot of stores have been hiring private security, but if the security intervenes then the thief can sue them.
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makes the shopping experience shittier for the rest of us (locked merchandise)
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the syndicates fencing these goods use the money to support actual harmful crimes
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the people doing the thieving often get violent themselves
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raises prices and causes store closures
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people don’t want to work in shitty stores, so the workers they have do the bare minimum (again, worse shopping experience for the rest of us)
The bazaars where people sell the stolen goods also cause lots of problems.
Tell what? All of it’s happening out in the open, the cops just refuse to do anything about it. It’s not like if you tell a cop they’ll be like “oh shit I had no idea, let me go run over there and do my job for once, thank you citizen!”
To be fair to cops, they’re understaffed and they don’t want to do their jobs for fear of activists suing them. But all of those suits are paid for with tax dollars, so idk why they care, just do your job and if they sue you, they sue you.
I think it boils down to laziness but with the excuse of being sued.
I feel like it depends. Stealing is morally wrong no matter what. But I’d probably act as if I saw nothing if someone just stole a sandwich or similar. I’m not sure I’ll act the same if I see a teenage girl of a family that is obviously very well off steal things like makeup (that one literally bragged about it in front of her parents during a dinner where I was invited).
In our society people are acknowledged as human beings through consumption, and that need is hammered onto our heads by ads and beauty norms everywhere.
Belonging is a human need. Sometimes some cheap makeup is all it takes.
But also, the rich people are stealing from us in so much worse ways. A rich teen stealing from a rich corporation is kind of karmaeic, and really, even if she was caught, nothing significant would happen, whilst a poor girl doing the same would suffer a lot more.
Ergo, if you see something, no you didn’t.
I don’t know that stealing is morally wrong no matter what. My rabbi taught that if a man steals to survive, the crime is not his, but of his community because they did not save him from poverty. That teaching really stuck with me. Yes, stealing indicates something is seriously wrong in the world, but there’s a big difference in where the evil lies— is it in the thief, or in the society?
Walmart and their customers deserve each other.
Why do people get hostile when they are showed a video of themselves moving items to the bag without scanning the item? Why not just accept your fate at this point and pay or give the goods back?
This leads me to think about how Walmart’s focus on cheap low quality goods with stores placed in areas where finances are often tight has created this “I want it but can’t afford it” despair.
You walk into this soul-less, hyper efficient box store and it’s easy to notice they have a lot of stuff but not a lot of staff. And the staff are not exactly motivated to care about theft.
It’s not a long shot to start to think it would be easy to get away with grabbing something, because perhaps Walmart is an easy target. But the efficiency of the place is where that mistake falls short.
The truth is, there are very few businesses with as sophisticated an anti-theft system. Walmart is dealing with petty theft on a global scale and understands exactly how much it costs them, especially if they are perceived as an easy target.
Walmart has the technology to wait until the number of thefts from a single person exceeds the local felony levels and only then press charges. It’s a trap, and ripping off Walmart is a lot less profitable than it might seem.
I caught someone stealing a felony amount of alcohol by using their young children(<5) and they acted like I was the wrong one in the situation.
You got caught, accept the consequences of your actions. Nope, I am the bad guy because I recognozed someone who stole a felony amount of an unnecessary product the other week, watched them on the cameras, and called the police station next door to wait in the lot for them.
They also didn’t show in court and got a warrant for it.
I don’t understand that level of incredulous lack of accountability for your own actions.
I don’t shoplift because I’m fairly fortunate to be able to work a job that pays a living wage. Yet every single time I use a self-checkout (not just at Walmart), it flags an employee for something; maybe I left a prescription in the cart (you have to pay for those in the pharmacy). Maybe I’m shopping with my wife and her purse is in the cart. Once it thought I was stealing my own kid.
If you don’t trust me to do a thing, don’t let me do a thing. It feels like harassment.
I’d get hostile too. This wastes literally everyone’s time, employee and customer. Walmart and other companies already write off all their losses as tax write offs. It would actually be more cost efficient to do literally nothing. But it’s not about preventing theft. It’s about proving a point: that corporations control you.
I’m sorry but I don’t think that makes very much sense.
Retail theft is a real problem for a company’s bottom line. Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC. And self-checkout is one of the easiest ways to pull it off.
Why would a corporation frantically seeking quarter over quarter growth spend money to “prove a point” about control?
I’ll never understand why people like you care about a mega corporation’s bottom line. The executives are still making billions, while keeping their employees as poor as they can get away with.
Target will survive without San Francisco. Even if they fail, the top dogs will just liquidate and take a fat paycheck home, enough for a 1000+ employees to retire and live off of for the rest of their lives, and they’ll just pocket it all. Fuck 'em.
I don’t give a flying fuck about a megacorporation’s bottom line. Fuck Walmart. Fuck Target. I don’t disagree with a single thing you just said.
I just didn’t think it made any sense to say that they made an expensive change to their self-checkout just to “prove a point” about controlling people.
But apparently no one knows how to read. And once some of you saw downvotes you knew everything you needed to know about what I think.
So is CEO greed though. And they could choose to use that money to balance their budget, not ruin my experience of being out and about.
Enough so that Target is pulling out of San Francisco, IIRC
ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. They’re blaming theft, but that’s not it. Theft might be a part of it, but the stats nearby contradict that. We don’t have access to their internal theft metrics, but the city data doesn’t pan out. When there are stores (mission district) that have higher theft and are staying open, then is it really theft?
Or is it poor retail performance since WFH is the new king and people live in the suburbs more than in the city. When continue to order online more and more instead of shop at a physical store.
Theft is an easy way to blame other people without providing evidence. It’s not the CEO’s failure to adapt to changing market conditions, it’s the poors! It’s their fault! /s
How about this. If self check out is a problem go back to paying cashiers.
No way. I don’t need someone to frantically scan my items while I barely manage to bag them in time.
Eh. Shop wherever you get the best deal.
Getting screwed over by someone locally isn’t better than getting screwed over by someone miles away unless you’re a tool.
You understand why Walmart is able to charge so little for shit? Their workers are paid garbage (a lot have to supplement their wages with food stamps), they buy in such crazy volume that they can undercut mom and pop places with impossible margins and they drive local businesses under. I hope the deals are worth it
Amusingly the 2 Walmarts in my city closed due to crazy shoplifting. I’m not sad to see them go, but they left a massive crater in the shopping center where NOTHING needs that much space and I can’t see anybody moving in anytime soon. Sadly they’ve chased smaller places out of the area already so shopping options are limited
The best deal is always free. So, I’d rather inconvenience the conglomerate haute-booj than the petit-booj, even if it’s only a few dollars.
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