Shopping has just become an even more dystopian experience.

I went to Sainsburys today. As I got to the self-checkouts, I could see there was a much bigger queue than usual. I soon found out why: they have just updated all of the self-checkouts, and the new software is glitchy. About half the people there checking out were requiring assistance from the staff, and the three staff members could barely keep up.

For a while now all of the self checkouts have had screens above them that record, or at least watch you while you scan. You can see yourself in the screen, I assume it's to deter theft. I started scanning my items, and immediately I found out what the new software is. On the first item, the screen snapped an image of my face, and kept the image on screen above me, while the screen in front of me that shows the scanned items got a big warning flashing up on it, declaring that I had bagged an item that I hadn't scanned.

Both screens froze like this, my face on the screen above with a message in huge letters on the screen below declaring to the entire shop I had bagged something without scanning. Declaring me a thief to the entire shop, even though I hadn't done anything. Because the staff were so busy with all the glitches I had to wait there like this for about 10 minutes until someone would deal with it.

As I waited I watched the other checkouts and saw that this glitchy new tech was doing the same thing to other people. It seems ridiculous, it's made the process longer, caused a bigger queue, and is wrongly accusing everyone of stealing. It seems counter-intuitive, they want more people to use self checkouts but this is going to put me off using them in future.

I dread to think what they'll come up with next. Maybe they'll eventually get rid of all cashiers and when the machine accuses you of stealing there will be no one to check your items and see that you haven't. I wouldn't be surprised if they have robot police waiting to arrest you for supposedly unscanned items soon.

And let's not forget this is to stop starving, poverty-stricken people from accessing food in the only way some people have.

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There's a union grocery store near me that used to be a smaller independent brand, and it's RIGHT across the street from a massive nursing home. They always had lots of checkers and of course the store is full of elderly folks doing their daily shopping so everything was always slow but it moved well and everything was fine. It was pleasant.
They got bought by a mega chain recently.
The first thing the mega chain did was close half the registers. For months lines were literally down entire aisles. I waited 45 minutes in line once. There's only so much a young person getting paid minimum wage can do with 20 retirees in line. Everything just moves slower, takes longer. It's not anyone's fault it's just hard to move around when you're older and the kids at the registers can't do much to speed it up.
The next thing they did was install self checkouts. Okay, sure I guess.
And then they closed all the lines but one.
So now you have 2 people, one on each side of the store to manage the self checkouts, who run a and help extremely confused seniors do their self checkouts with the machines yelling at them for everything under the sun, and a third person manning the only full service checkout whose line goes down an entire aisle and around a corner. The machines are hard to use when you're younger and able bodied I can't imagine how frustrating they must be when you're not.
I had to stop going to the store, it was literally impossible to get through and honestly I felt like I was just in the way. This store is a lifeline to the folks in the home across the street and the megacorp took it from a place they could do some comfy shopping and have some much needed human interaction made it a living hell not just for them but for everyone.
Said megacorp is now trying to buy the other smaller chain in my city so I can't wait for it to become impossible for anyone to buy groceries.
Side note I'm actually pretty convinced these megacorps buy these stores and purposely ruin them so they can close them. In the US a lot of grocery stores are union and I think these girls are buying them and purposely ruining the so they can sell them and re open non union stores down the street.
Anyway fuck capitalism forever. Taking something that should be full of human interaction and care like groceries and ruining it is something only capitalism could achieve

The Lidl near me updated their self-checkouts too, and the software is so shit and slow now. It also requires you to print a receipt so you can scan it to leave, which is terrible for the environment, pressures people into buying something so they can leave, and makes it so much slower to leave. I fucking hate the dipshits who decided this was acceptable
- Agree on all of this. But also what the fuck is point of using an app for digital receipts to reduce waste if you make me print one to leave anyway.
- It also requires you to print a receipt so you can scan it to leave
  Wait this is new to you? This has been a norm in every single Lidl in Poland for years now. I think Auchan also introduced that recently and smaller stores like Delikatesty Centrum
- Like you're supposed to show the receipt to someone as you leave? I don't know what it's like in the UK but I just tell them no.
  
  No, you have to scan a barcode on the receipt to open a gate to leave. This is the only way to leave. In Ireland btw

Yeah these loss-prevention programs are getting so intrusive and inconvenient, they’re killing more business by turning people off from shopping there than they’re saving in shoplifting prevented.
- Best part about the cage is that half the time when you do get an employee to help they just hand you the item and go back to what they were doing rather than walk it to the front with you. I'm stealing it on principles now
- Its on purpose. They do not want people to shop in the store. They want people to order online. So theyll keep making shopping in person worse and worse and make people do online instead. Then they'll turn the huge box stores into glorified warehouses to support online ordering.
  
  Why?
  I was using sainsburys online ordering recently when I was unable to walk for a while, and I prefer to shop in store. With the online ordering they were sending me items that had reached their use-by date already, vegetables that were rotten, mushrooms that were slimy and black and some items were out of stock and they sent me substitutes I didn't want. So I would much rather go and choose my own items.
  
  There’s no guarantee that the people turned off from retail shopping by overreaching loss prevention will go to the retailer’s online store. It’s more likely that if someone finds Target annoying because everything is locked up, they’ll go to Amazon instead than Target’s website.
  I think it’s a convenient cover for shoddy management. Bad bookkeeping? Supply chain is a mess? Cheap shipping means goods are damaged in transit? Just blame it all on shoplifters and then you’re off the hook.
- relevant Duckman rant.
  
  I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

I’m going to crash out if we have to go through TSA security at every place we go.
- yeah but what if someone flies a plane into the drug store check out? have you considered that possibility you filthy commie??
  
  CVS deserved 9/11 2.

Sounds like I have cover to steal, thanks for the heads up

at my local shop they don't even bother checking anymore, when the self checkout needs human assistance (most of the time), a worker just walks up to it and swipes their card to override it without even looking at the screen unless you are visibly a child
- They're usually disinterested teenagers who just want to finish up their shift and don't give a shit what you're doing at the checkout. But every once in a while you get the vigilante who thinks they're on a fast track to management if they nab a thief.
- I scanned the bar code on my grapes and it complained, said set it aside. Instead I typed in the code and continued. Same order, I "adjusted" the price of some candy by not scanning 1 bag. The worker was called over at the end because of the grapes (which were correct), but the machine didn't even notice the extra bag of candy, lmao.
  Fucker machines are constantly complaining when I scan correctly and not when I'm "haggling" with it. Its even seen my meds (paid for at the in-store pharmacy) in the cart and complained. I have some social anxiety and like it when I get a few pack of seeds on a "coupon", so I keep using them. But damn do they program them shits to be the most annoying experience possible.
  (Be careful when not scanning things, missing a lot is going to get you in trouble and some stores love to throw FELONY charges at peeps. But missing a thing or two can be explained by "oops, long day haha, lets scan it".)

Reminder that it's very easy to cover stuff in your trolley with bags. It's often easy to just throw stuff through the checkout, look like you scanned it, and wait for an employee to unlock the till because they're overworked. You can even leave stuff on the scanning platform so it doesn't get weighed, and staff are unlikely to pick up on it.
Also an important reminder that at least in the UK, shop staff have no authority to 'check your receipt' or any bullshit. Any random basket checks or whatever, you are completely in your rights to ignore them and leave.
Very few shops will permit their staff to ever forcefully detain people, but legally speaking, shop staff can only detain you if they can argue reasonable belief you have committed a crime, unlike for police, just suspicion is not enough. No matter how qualified or SIA-certified a security guard is, they have no more rights than normal citizens. If they forcefully detain you and you committed no crime, you can sue for assault, wrongful imprisonment, damages, distress, etc. (compensation is usually in the thousands).
Under no circumstances do they have a right to forcefully search you, they have to call police for that.
Police can detain you for any reason, but they cannot search you without reasonable grounds. They cannot legally enforce nor perform a random search without reasonable grounds. If they do, sue. (obviously they have lots of get-out clauses, but there are also many successful suits for this kind of action, so it's not a fruitless endeavour)

Where I'm at every supermarket chain has suddenly decided to simultaneously launch reward program ads, so everyone now needs to scan their phones at the checkout for like a five percent discount after they hiked prices by 35 percent over the last five years. You shouldn't force seniors to have to use their phones for shit like this and cashiers shouldn't have to do tech support all the fucking time when these systems just don't work. As capitalism squeezes even the last drops of profit out of society everything is just going to get more and more dysfunctional
- In Poland it's pretty much the norm, one thing I hate that is normal here are things like "67% percent discount! Only for people with Moja Biedronka App, also you can only by a max of 3 per card :)"
  To get things like butter and milk at normal prices, you have to hunt these discounts and usually if they happen people by in bulk using all the individual family cards they've got so families leave with 9 or 12 sticks of butter anyway.
- Its criminal. Shopping at kroger basically requires it. Insane they get to say BUY ONE GET ONE* ((in tiny text) *with card).
  At least there you can get a physical piece of plastic you scan...

Some months ago our Aldi disabled weight checks on the bagging area platform. Makes things faster as you can scan with both hands rather than having to wait for the item to settle on the output one at a time.

I've lived in both the UK and Spain, and it's interesting to me how much easier it was for self-checkouts to take hold in the former. I think part of it is that culturally British people are way more open to novel technology (for better and for worse) , particularly if it enables them to avoid interacting with the people serving them 🤷

I hate low trust societies

In Soviet China they record your face when you buy groceries. Not only that, but you also have to do the work of a cashier and even bag your own items

In my area Walmart did the strategy of closing all the regular checkouts to force everyone to use the self-checkouts. After they figured out it makes it easier to steal, they had to put more employees up front watching them
So now they just don't open all the self checkouts rather than pay the old amount of wages and we're waiting longer than ever to ring up our own groceries.

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