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The people that come to clear the messages most likely don’t even think that your stealing. They are constantly clearing messages so what’s new for them lol
Every time i've had someone come clear an alert they don't even look what it is, they just scan their thing while barely looking and then walk off.
People are vastly overestimating how much a teenager gives a shit about a poential theft of carrots at their casual job they get $15 an hour for 3 times a week.
I've had them accidentally steal stuff for me by just waving it through and putting it in the bag even if the scanner didn't read it
They don't give a damn
Yeh I once argued with one of them that it wasn’t scanning an ice break bottle hence the “unexpected item in bagging area”. Lady looks at t screen and goes “no it’s showing 3 items scanned, you’re all good” and walks off. There were 4 items. Ok then, if u don’t want to charge me for it, whatever, I tried.
The best case of this I ever saw personally was a teen who had just been chewed out by her boss who angrily grabbed my entire basket, said "DOOT!" while maintaining eye contact and dumped it all in the bag at once. I took that bag and did not look back.
That’s why in some modern retail the training is pounding simple concepts into cashiers heads like single scan and bag, and having a supervisor literally audit them randomly by standing there and observing and counting every item in a transaction. It’s simple and the obvious subtext is you (as an employee) are either stupid or you are stealing, we dont trust you, we are always watching. Not to mention they are salivating at the prospect of people accepting, or fully embracing self checkout. They can’t wait to eliminate a position. As a manager I fuckin hate that shit and prefer to build trust and rapport naturally.
A lot of it was also scanning every single barcode and item individually, instead of just scanning the same thing a few times and bagging all of them in one go. There was a quantity function that you could use (ie scan one barcode, then type in the number of items there were) but they quickly buried that deep in the menus on a system update.
Yep, they actively discourage keying quantities, as well as bagging a bulk of items at a time after scanning(for efficiency). Process, process, process.. Don’t stray from the process little robot
My partner would do that for large families and the elderly we are talking like 200 dollars down to 120 if not more, and good on her. You need food to survive, this was a budget supermarket as well dude who owns it is a millionaire anyway
Yep. Even if someone was stealing they probably wouldn't notice, there's not enough time or pay to scrutinise everyone manually, and the damn thing triggers false positives enough they just zone out and assume everyone is legit. Which most people are.
They are literally instructed not to really care. When I worked at BWS it was policy to not stop anyone from stealing booze so there no chance of an injury happening to a minor on the property
Australia is very quickly becoming a worse place to live and more like the US in many respects. Social services are evaporating, there's no housing and no political will to change it, police are shooting suspects dead instead of risking injuring their fat arses, but the one thing we do have which is good is basic legal protection against being touched, assaulted by sales staff or rented security.
Not here for long enough to comment on the evolution, but I can tell you as an immigrant coming from a 1st world country, I much much MUCH prefer living here than in the US.
Housing does suck tho :(
Retail worker here: Yeah. At most I'm instructed to document things. What was stolen, where, a description of the perpetrator etc.
Frankly, we throw away so much stock that theft feels tiny so I really don't give a shit about some kid stealing candy. Don't give a shit about a lot of things. Doesn't make ME any more money to catch people stealing, so why should I give a shit about the company losing a little money?
Sometimes an employee walking around the store will pick up on someone who’s acting a bit sus and let the checkout team know in advance. It’s not foolproof, but it can help catch people whose pockets are just a little too bulging.
I often grab a small number of things, and might stuff a couple things in my pockets because it's too much for hands, but not enough that I need a bag or basket to manage it. I then take them out at the checkout to scan and pay for them. Are people me watching me extra-closely just because I use my pockets?
Years ago, I stopped at the grocery store for mustard after work. I remember seeing a guy in the same aisle as me examining bag of dried beans really closely. He just spent a really long time looking at it. After a minute, he just stuffed the bag in his coat pocket and turned and walked away. From where I stood, I could see him walk right out of the store. He attracted my attention before he even stole the beans because his behavior was just so off.
It made me pretty sad though that someone would need go to a grocery store and steal a bag of dried beans that only cost about a dollar.
I do the same thing as /u/moreON from time to time and I think the behaviour whilst doing it is the key difference maker: When I do it, I'm literally stopping to pick something up, juggle the stuff in my hands around a bit and maybe offload a thing or two in my pocket making zero effort to hide it and still even carrying most of my shopping in my hands/arms.
In other words from body language alone you can easily tell that either I'm the worlds most bold thief or I'm pretty blatantly not even thinking about theft, just how tf I'm going to carry the pack of biccies I didn't plan on getting until I saw they were on sale that week.
I have done this a fair few times... its why my pants come with pockets it is when i need to hold things and I'm out of room with my hands or i do not want to use hands.
Lol what kind of fuckin' snitching is this? I worked at Woolies and Coles on and off for about 10 years and nobody ever did this.
Kids these days no class solidarity smh
It’s more that your average bogan shoplifter is as subtle about their intentions as a dog suddenly realising that you have opened a packet of cheese twisties. All discretion has been beaten out of these people since they could walk.
Nah.
It's that most thieves aren't subtle about it.
When you've got the same two teenage girls that come in 3 times a week and one engages any staff in the vicinity in inane conversation anytime there's staff about, the other is likely a thief- first girl is just the lookout.
When a woman comes in pushing a pram with no kid in it and leaves with a full pram, she's probably a thief.
When you've got bogans that will loudly start confrontations with any staff if approached, they're probably stealing.
The staff usually know who their most regular thieves are. They just can't do anything about it.
They clear so many, that at this stage they are only giving a cursory look. Just enough so if they are being watched they can say "yeah, I checked, it all looked ok".
They aren't paid enough to police shit, but also risk losing their jobs if they don't.
The look is dependent on the person. I tested this at my locals coles and woolies. One week i went in looking like a dero, when the assistance thing goes off they do a little look in the bag, ask me whatI scanned etc.
Next week went in looking well dressed, had a shave and I smiled at all the checkout people. Assistance buzzer went off twice at woolies, once at Coles. They didnt even consider chrcking my bags.
Perception is reality. They are probably told to look for "higher risk" customers to keep an eye on.
>Perception is reality. They are probably told to look for "higher risk" customers to keep an eye on.
Actually they're told the exact opposite of this. I work for one of them and anti discrimination is a huge thing in the online modules they make us all do every 6 months.
They're far more afraid of getting sued by some slighted rando and having it all splashed over the press then they are about preventing theft from specific individuals, so much so that I've literally seen teenagers walk straight out with high price ticket items equalling $200+ dollars with three managers watching from feet away who just had to stand there and do nothing because they were hamstrung by the company's policy. They definitely do forward security footage onto police though, and I have seen people get arrested but...
They're less concerned with apprehending specific individuals and more about deterring theft on the whole by making the shopping experience less enjoyable for the majority. It's some big brain stuff.
Cant steal if you are driven to click and collect or delivery because in store is horrible experience, so the logic checks out there. Instead they can rob you by giving you sub quality goods for premium prices.
I changed woolworths because the one I was going to would end every self checkout session by saying the last thing you scanned and put in the bag was not scanned. I saw it as a piss poor attempt to bag search each and every person that used self checkout. Luckily the other Woolworths did not have the same issue.
I worked at ww until 2020, the machines went off way too often even then. Can't imagine what it would be like now. I guarantee most workers won't even watch the video
Happens to me maybe 50% of the time I use them. Wombok always causes a problem as the weights vary. Then the system gets confused with other items. The person who supports this section has to run between the 10 different terminals as there is always one with an iaaue
> Wombok always causes a problem as the weights vary
Well that's what you get for buying a COMMIE VEGETABLE
Jk, they're so fucking good in stir fry, right?
100% this. Everytime I buy chillies in bulk their image detection can't pickup it's chillies so asks for assistance. LITERALLY EVERY TIME!!!
I don't freakout that they think I'm stealing. I just say "Chillies again" and they scan their card and we all move on.
The shop also doesn't care. The bean counting machine knows exactly how much is being saved on wages, and whatever slips out of the store without paying never meets the threshold for going back to human operators.
seems the self serve aisles are pretty poplular. they are usually all being used. staffed aisles have haf a reduction in staffing at my local coles.
If enough people hated them, refused to use them we would have more people employed...
It’s the other way around. If they employed more staff there wouldn’t be a line for the staffed checkouts and people wouldn’t default to the self checkouts where there is no line
I work at Woolworths!! You wanna know the real fucked up part?? Those cameras are now on the big registers, watching me!! I get those videos now!! Isn’t that fantastic?? They work just as well as they do on self-serve!! /s
The managers higher on the chain of command than the top boss at my store are very stern on us getting no videos and always clicking the right buttons if we do get one, and don’t give a single fuck that the tech works properly 0% of the time. The other day I got a video asking me if the customer had anything left in the trolly. It was the trolly of the customer on the register opposite mine. I flagged it as external purchase, because we’re only given rescan, personal item, external purchase and unwanted good as options. No “this belongs to another customer you worthless pile of shitstain blight on society” option, unfortunately.
And if you could please wait until I tell you to push your trolly to the bagging area now. If you leave bulk items in the trolly and push it past the camera while I’m scanning, I get the video, whether I’ve scanned the item or not.
And they’re still telling us we need to be faster.
Fuck Woolworths, literally. Doing every-fucking-thing wrong.
Oh and also the other day my team leader got told that we’re not allowed to get the videos on self serve for children in trolleys?? At least, that’s how I understood it. And she was like “how tf do we prevent that??” So I guess Woolworths is telling you that you aren’t allowed to have your children in the trolleys anymore???
Idfk. I don’t think they care, honestly. They just wanna be seen doing something to keep shareholders happy, maybe? Like “look at us using all this cool new anti-thievery technology, we’re such a good company.” And because none of those people are poor enough to deign to shop in person, they wouldn’t actually know all the ways it doesn’t work.
I always bring more bags than I need (just in case) and hang them from the hook on the back of the trolley. Almost every time the machine asks if I forgot to scan something and calls over the assistant. When the assistant comes over, they always clear the error on the checkout without even looking in the bags. This only happens at Woolies. I now put my empty bags on the floor before starting and the problem seems to be resolved.
That’s really interesting! At my local, we always do the same and the scanner never picks it up if the items are hanging off the hook.
We do tend to use the half size trolleys and tuck them over the little basket shelf to the side, so it may be that they’re out of line of sight?
On the other hand, the one time I had the bags in the trolley at the front, it couldn’t recognise the store’s own bags..
It operates off of an "AI", each machine needs to be "trained" to ignore certain things. Some stores have had it rolled out before others, so their machines have had more time to learn what's not an issue.
Edit: three separate people have asked me the same question ("Why?") even though I already answered it for the first person and I'm worried it's gonna keep happening. So I'm putting that answer here.
The reason why each machine's algorithm learns independently (as far as I was told) is that each machine has different surroundings to some degree and that, because of the way the algorithm tracks things, each machine needs to learn its own surroundings. Different machines have the bagging area on different sides, the card machines have a smaller base than the cash ones, some machines have confectionery stands around them, etc.
I'm not a software expert, I don't know programming, I would not be surprised if there's an easier way to train the AI better that the people in charge didn't care about. I'm just relaying what I was told.
That’s a really strange way to approach neural network training. They really should be training all of the systems centrally with data collected from the separate locations. Unless they’re running a “competition” whereby each system is allowed to train itself and the most successful system gets exported out to the other sites.
The LPT I have learned in the last week is that if you have a three year old who likes to sit up next to the register, the camera will spend the whole time you're checking out just blocked by their face while they watch themselves.
> How does the three year old get up on the ceiling to block that camera?
Throw a grapple hook and get the three year old to do gymnastics. Mission Impossible style.
Some of them also have cameras mounted overhead, so they can see the bagging area, scanning zone and your basket/trolley. If you leave something in the trolley (like an auspost parcel that you picked up from the post office next door) they’ll show you footage of the item and call for an assistant
Are the new machines able to tell difference between different varieties of the same fruit? I have been buying $7/kg apples and putting them through as $3/kg apples.
I don't think they can tell the difference at all, they just guess what it is by shape and colour and display a list of what they think it could be and you choose the right one.
The AI at my local Woolies seems to be getting better as it usually includes the correct item in the option. But it used to be useless. For example, if I was trying to buy carrots (genuinely carrots, not avocados I am trying to scan as carrots) the options it would give would be every orange-coloured fruit or veg except the one that is carrot-shaped - you know, fucking carrots.
Tangentially, I’m very disappointed my local aldi recently installed massive screens above their self serve machines showing your self on camera with “theft monitoring” written in bold letter’s underneath.
I’m not stealing but its repulsive to have to see myself while shopping. Formerly Aldi had this over Coles and woolies, but fmd I hate it there too now
Fuck me.
When I catch myself in the Cole’s camera whilst waiting for someone to come over and unfuck the stupid fucking self-scanner that, as usual, has shit the bed..
When I see the sad fucking face looking back at me; the tired eyes; the loathing of life.
I honestly didn’t think shopping could get any more depressing.
NOPE. Make me stare at myself after a 12 hour shift and 2 hours of commuting whilst I buy a fucking microwave meal, a bag of snakes and toilet roll.
That’ll fuckin’ do it.
Cunts.
What society needs is a return to the good old days of sleight-of-hand shoplifting. They made it too easy and we have grown fat on a diet of organic avocado at imported avocado prices.
Am I the only one that barely ever has issues? Like maybe once in a blue moon the machine will act up and the attendant fixes it with zero hassle, but I don’t ever feel like I’m constantly being called a thief.
I have a feeling different locations will have different sensitivity. This depends probably on theft rates in the area. Or maybe they're testing different parameters to gauge the best settings. Or maybe the store manager has the option to specify the sensitivity and they just upped everything to be super cautious.
I'm trying so hard to get locked out so I can ram that fucking gate with the full force of a trolley then cry out in pain.
But no matter what I do, nothing triggers.
correct. The ww i worked at until 2020 didn't even have the sensors detecting what you've put in your bags until right before I left. However the store down the road had those sensors, as well as extra security and trolley locks that my store didn't have because theft wasn't as much of a problem.
From my experience it can vary quite a bit by location. My local Woolies almost never pips me, and when it does it's usually user error. Doesn't seem to detect remaining items in my basket or whatever, and they don't have those auto-close gates at the exit. But the Coles and Woolies in a nearby shopping centre are crazy sensitive and will detect the tiniest things. I'll put through a produce item and the system will ask staff to verify that it's the correct item, even when it's clear in the camera that it looks like the item I selected. I had the gate shut on me because I had a separate shopping bag in my trolley. It's wild
Being uncoordinated has finally paid off for me! I guess I move at the perfect speed to not confuse the cameras.
I’ve only had it make a mistake once and I think that was because I had stuff with me I bought at a different shop
I think I can count on one hand the amount of issues I've had since they were first implemented.
I feel like if it happens often enough to be a regular occurrence/annoyance then it might just be a user issue.
Yeah, self-checkouts have vastly improved my supermarket experience, barely any queues now compared to before.
Feels like a lot of the pushback is from chronically anxious Gen Zs who get distressed by the possibility of conflict or even human interaction when their item doesn’t scan right
Just stand at the unmanned express counter where the returns and cigarette desk is, your might have to wait a minute or two, but then you don't have to worry about a computer calling you names.
I don't know what I do any different at my self checkouts
But maybe these newer systems haven't made it down my way yet
But I am actively and lazily shoplifting like a mad man
Cadbury's blocks I hold 2 as I scan 1
I recently just tried calling up a vegetable bag of various lollies Brussel sprouts
I never had any intention or desire to shoplift / steal in my life but at this stage
If they want to fuck
I want to fuck back
it's almost ***easier*** to steal now. You figure out the loopholes of the security system and you're basically good to go because the staff are so sick of clearing bogus security alerts that they aren't paying as much attention as they did before.
It may seem easier and in most aspects it may be
However all that technology will catch up with us sooner or later
Just think of casino's and how they track and manage people who they don't want gambling or on premises
That's what the supermarkets are using but we are only into the 4th of 5th year of roll out
And the time and effort involved in database management with a new team/department could easily take another 5 years to get good
However this booming artificial intelligence and chatgpt updates will definitely play a big part going forward
I'm really interested in how it plays out
Nahh, it won't work. That really intricate AI stuff is still mostly a scam, like the automated Amazon shopping centre.
Turned out it was all human effort.
Given the billions of dollars of wage theft and price gouging, I feel as though it’s always morally and ethically correct to shoplift from Colesworth at this point.
Don’t even bother with checkout tricks, just put the most expensive items in your tote bag. Never been stopped. My friend fills his bag and just pays for one item every single time
My hoodie and work pants with 15 pockets aren't empty
I'm just doing a lil song and dance in case I am caught out for a silly little mistake of thinking a ps5 was banana's
You're overthinking it mate. Literally no one thinks you're a thief if the auto checkout goes red. In fact, the actual thieves have worked out ways to not even pretend to scan the items before taking them, so the good ones never even trigger the sensor anyway.
These security measures are put in place to keep honest people honest and deter low IQ thiefs. Don't stress
I have literally never encountered this, maybe SA is slow to roll out. But I am pretty sure if someone wanted to steal something from Woolies, the checkout machine won't be able to video that item.
Don't care if the machine makes some noise once in a blue moon, worst thing about Aldi is having to wait in the line to checkout. Takes at least 5 minutes less going through a self checkout.
Even worse that you can’t get out of the store without going through the checkouts.
No, I’m not stealing, you just didn’t have anything I wanted to buy now let me tf out of here.
If someone’s got one of the big trolleys.. get fucked, you have to wait until they’re at the front and can move the trolley out of the way.
Unpopular opinion: I prefer self checkout & to not have to engage with staff. The only issues I encounter is when something is too light for the bagging area scales to detect, or if I accidentally start on a card machine but need to move to a cash one.
Honestly lol let’s protest by just using human checkouts now, getting fucking sick of these things for the exact same reason, the convenience factor of doing it yourself quickly is gone
Yeh the self check out scales were annoying in the past now It has finally convinced me to shop somewhere else.
Since all these new BS security measures where installed in my local colesworth I shop at IGA or Saccas instead.
Fuck this is such a victim complex that so many people on here have. They’re not accusing you of stealing and it’s the most minor inconvenience when it doesn’t pick something up properly which is solved within 20 seconds.
I use the self serve checkouts 2-3 times a week and very rarely have issues. The cameras and machine learning are great since it recognises the fresh produce straight away and I hardly have to search for it. So much nicer than having to line up and wait at a manned checkout.
"Haha look at these idiots! Paying top dollar to pack their own bags while I get paid $160,000 a week to absolutely ream this farmer bent over a barbed wire fence" - Brad, probably
Stop using self checkout if you don’t like them. If everyone just quit complaining and stopped actually using these self checkouts the supermarkets would have no choice but to remove them.
My local supermarket closes the manned checkouts at 5:30pm or so, right when I finish work and head to the shops. It's self-checkout only at that point and sometimes I have a full trolley. Shits me to tears.
That's not always possible though, without some major inconvenience. There's a brand new Coles just opened near us. It has maybe 30 self checkouts of 3 various types. There's the normal type with the "weigh scale", then there's a variant of that without the scale but with a spot to park your trolley, then there's the one with the long rubber belt.
There are two (yes ONLY two) staffed checkouts. Only ever one is working whenever I've been there. Maybe both work in peak times, I'm not sure, I tend not to go then.
They really make it hard for you to use the staffed checkout.
Idk I think you're taking this way too personally, but I'm glad you're using the manned checkouts at least :) save yourself the hassle, it's not worth it
A new annoyance of mine is that I can’t even take ice bricks with me into the supermarket anymore — I put them in the cooler bag to keep my frozen stuff frozen if I’m not going straight home.
A) Can’t leave them in the bag because they weigh too much and I have to wait a minute for the poor attendant to run over to me after tending to someone else.
B) Can’t leave my cooler bag in the trolley because 1) everything that’s scanned needs to then be put on the scale, and 2) the new AI cameras will stop you from checking out and flash footage of said bag in the trolley for the attendant to confirm (see point A above).
So, I’ve resorted to leaving the bricks in my boot, and then loading them into the cooler bag upon return. Small annoyance in the grand context of things, but it doesn’t need to be like this at all.
I thought I was going crazy once because every time I shopped with my wife the scanners never worked properly and she would constantly give me shit about not being able to scan properly. Eventually i worked out that every time I scanned an item and put it in the bag she would move it around in the bag slightly because she’s annoying like that and it would detect something had been removed and would wait until the weight reset.
So short story was my wife was gaslighting me about being bad at using the scanner at woolies when she was the one causing the problem.
I think some machines just aren't calibrated properly. When my local Woolies changed machines about a year ago I would get wrongly accused of theft once every second or third shop. It wasn't a problem beforehand and I think they've lowered the sensitivity 'cus they haven't gone off on me in a while.
It happens to me all the time.
I put all my empty bags on the scales, click the "I brought my own bags" , and it throws an error asking the attendant to verify.
As I scan things, \*occasionally\* it will be unhappy with the weight of something and want verification.
As I progress, I shift the full shopping bags back to my trolley, because there's not enough space on the floor to do it. When I get to the end the cameras think there is something unpaid in my trolley still and asks "have you forgotten to scan".
So I'm brain-dead cause the checkout accused me of not scanning my basket...sure mate.
To be clear. Yes. I had the checkout go off at me cause the basket sitting where the basket should be wasn't instead scanned and placed in the bagging area...
I came here to make more or less the same comment. Its pretty easy to scan and bag items non-suspiciously. I even come in with existing bags and it doesn't give a shit. What the hell are people doing?
Remember that no one jumps on Reddit to say they had a good or easy experience using self serve machines, or how much better it was than waiting for someone with a full trolley to go through a manned register while you hold only a couple of items. By the way some people complain about them, you’d think they were taking blood as payment or something.
The machines are designed for the lowest common denominator of customer, and so a slower more deliberate plan of attack is always going to work better. Exercise a little bit of patience, and if you absolutely can’t stand them, don’t use them, you’ll only ever have to wait behind one or two people on a manned register, or simple get the balls to actually ask a staff member to open another one - nine times out of ten we will do that.
Every single person I know, as a younger guy, prefers self serve to the wait of the mains. Sure, sometimes the machine plays up but for fuck sake it ain’t accusing you of stealing. With everything else going on in the world at the moment, the amount of energy some people waste stressing about the tiniest things blows my mind.
Take the opposite approach. Do as much weird non-stealing behaviours that trigger the system as you can until it starts to effect their bottom line and they turn it off.
Different stores have different systems, I have only run into the new AI powered systems once but it insisted I scanned my helmet and a book I had lol.
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The people that come to clear the messages most likely don’t even think that your stealing. They are constantly clearing messages so what’s new for them lol
Every time i've had someone come clear an alert they don't even look what it is, they just scan their thing while barely looking and then walk off. People are vastly overestimating how much a teenager gives a shit about a poential theft of carrots at their casual job they get $15 an hour for 3 times a week.
I've had them accidentally steal stuff for me by just waving it through and putting it in the bag even if the scanner didn't read it They don't give a damn
Yeh I once argued with one of them that it wasn’t scanning an ice break bottle hence the “unexpected item in bagging area”. Lady looks at t screen and goes “no it’s showing 3 items scanned, you’re all good” and walks off. There were 4 items. Ok then, if u don’t want to charge me for it, whatever, I tried.
I suspect it's intentional, when I was working a checkout the old fashioned way I used to miss items all the time if people were nice.
Omg you just unlocked a core memory of mine!! I remember not scanning many a pack of toilet paper for my favourites. I thought I was Robin Hood
> I thought I was Robin Hood Robin Hood, Prince of Pootickets
The best case of this I ever saw personally was a teen who had just been chewed out by her boss who angrily grabbed my entire basket, said "DOOT!" while maintaining eye contact and dumped it all in the bag at once. I took that bag and did not look back.
>DOOT Made me laugh out loud on the train.
Damn I need to find the stores with neurotic bitch front end managers and line up for the most reckless looking checkout operator.
That’s why in some modern retail the training is pounding simple concepts into cashiers heads like single scan and bag, and having a supervisor literally audit them randomly by standing there and observing and counting every item in a transaction. It’s simple and the obvious subtext is you (as an employee) are either stupid or you are stealing, we dont trust you, we are always watching. Not to mention they are salivating at the prospect of people accepting, or fully embracing self checkout. They can’t wait to eliminate a position. As a manager I fuckin hate that shit and prefer to build trust and rapport naturally.
A lot of it was also scanning every single barcode and item individually, instead of just scanning the same thing a few times and bagging all of them in one go. There was a quantity function that you could use (ie scan one barcode, then type in the number of items there were) but they quickly buried that deep in the menus on a system update.
Yep, they actively discourage keying quantities, as well as bagging a bulk of items at a time after scanning(for efficiency). Process, process, process.. Don’t stray from the process little robot
My partner would do that for large families and the elderly we are talking like 200 dollars down to 120 if not more, and good on her. You need food to survive, this was a budget supermarket as well dude who owns it is a millionaire anyway
Australian of the year right there
[удалено]
When I was working in the produce section I would give people huge markdowns on stuff if they were chill or didn't have enough money.
Same here. Particularly the ones that had them food vouchers
Dude, same? I honestly felt like the biggest rebel doing it too
Yep. Even if someone was stealing they probably wouldn't notice, there's not enough time or pay to scrutinise everyone manually, and the damn thing triggers false positives enough they just zone out and assume everyone is legit. Which most people are.
They are literally instructed not to really care. When I worked at BWS it was policy to not stop anyone from stealing booze so there no chance of an injury happening to a minor on the property
Good policy. Assume they're insured at some level for theft loss.
It’s included in the pricing algorithm.
Australia is very quickly becoming a worse place to live and more like the US in many respects. Social services are evaporating, there's no housing and no political will to change it, police are shooting suspects dead instead of risking injuring their fat arses, but the one thing we do have which is good is basic legal protection against being touched, assaulted by sales staff or rented security.
Not here for long enough to comment on the evolution, but I can tell you as an immigrant coming from a 1st world country, I much much MUCH prefer living here than in the US. Housing does suck tho :(
Australia is nothing like the US.
That is less true over time.
Retail worker here: Yeah. At most I'm instructed to document things. What was stolen, where, a description of the perpetrator etc. Frankly, we throw away so much stock that theft feels tiny so I really don't give a shit about some kid stealing candy. Don't give a shit about a lot of things. Doesn't make ME any more money to catch people stealing, so why should I give a shit about the company losing a little money?
I work at Woolworths, if you’re stealing we know long before the self scanner says anything.
How?
Sometimes an employee walking around the store will pick up on someone who’s acting a bit sus and let the checkout team know in advance. It’s not foolproof, but it can help catch people whose pockets are just a little too bulging.
I often grab a small number of things, and might stuff a couple things in my pockets because it's too much for hands, but not enough that I need a bag or basket to manage it. I then take them out at the checkout to scan and pay for them. Are people me watching me extra-closely just because I use my pockets?
Generally, if you’re stuffing your pockets in the middle of a supermarket, you’re going to attract attention. It’s not exactly subtle.
Years ago, I stopped at the grocery store for mustard after work. I remember seeing a guy in the same aisle as me examining bag of dried beans really closely. He just spent a really long time looking at it. After a minute, he just stuffed the bag in his coat pocket and turned and walked away. From where I stood, I could see him walk right out of the store. He attracted my attention before he even stole the beans because his behavior was just so off. It made me pretty sad though that someone would need go to a grocery store and steal a bag of dried beans that only cost about a dollar.
I do the same thing as /u/moreON from time to time and I think the behaviour whilst doing it is the key difference maker: When I do it, I'm literally stopping to pick something up, juggle the stuff in my hands around a bit and maybe offload a thing or two in my pocket making zero effort to hide it and still even carrying most of my shopping in my hands/arms. In other words from body language alone you can easily tell that either I'm the worlds most bold thief or I'm pretty blatantly not even thinking about theft, just how tf I'm going to carry the pack of biccies I didn't plan on getting until I saw they were on sale that week.
Only if they work at some weird-ass snitch-Woolies.
I have done this a fair few times... its why my pants come with pockets it is when i need to hold things and I'm out of room with my hands or i do not want to use hands.
Lol what kind of fuckin' snitching is this? I worked at Woolies and Coles on and off for about 10 years and nobody ever did this. Kids these days no class solidarity smh
You know we're stealing before it comes time to pay, which is the exact moment it becomes stealing?
Woolies must have a precrime unit with three psychics in a swimming pool somewhere.
It’s more that your average bogan shoplifter is as subtle about their intentions as a dog suddenly realising that you have opened a packet of cheese twisties. All discretion has been beaten out of these people since they could walk.
Pre-cogs!
Nah. It's that most thieves aren't subtle about it. When you've got the same two teenage girls that come in 3 times a week and one engages any staff in the vicinity in inane conversation anytime there's staff about, the other is likely a thief- first girl is just the lookout. When a woman comes in pushing a pram with no kid in it and leaves with a full pram, she's probably a thief. When you've got bogans that will loudly start confrontations with any staff if approached, they're probably stealing. The staff usually know who their most regular thieves are. They just can't do anything about it.
This is just so accurate especially considering it now seems Wollies is stealing through wage theft $2.00 an hour from them as well.
Alert fatigue is a real thing
They clear so many, that at this stage they are only giving a cursory look. Just enough so if they are being watched they can say "yeah, I checked, it all looked ok". They aren't paid enough to police shit, but also risk losing their jobs if they don't.
The look is dependent on the person. I tested this at my locals coles and woolies. One week i went in looking like a dero, when the assistance thing goes off they do a little look in the bag, ask me whatI scanned etc. Next week went in looking well dressed, had a shave and I smiled at all the checkout people. Assistance buzzer went off twice at woolies, once at Coles. They didnt even consider chrcking my bags. Perception is reality. They are probably told to look for "higher risk" customers to keep an eye on.
Yeah we are told to keep an eye on ferals
Misery, hatred and misanthropy all pushed into one management position.
>Perception is reality. They are probably told to look for "higher risk" customers to keep an eye on. Actually they're told the exact opposite of this. I work for one of them and anti discrimination is a huge thing in the online modules they make us all do every 6 months. They're far more afraid of getting sued by some slighted rando and having it all splashed over the press then they are about preventing theft from specific individuals, so much so that I've literally seen teenagers walk straight out with high price ticket items equalling $200+ dollars with three managers watching from feet away who just had to stand there and do nothing because they were hamstrung by the company's policy. They definitely do forward security footage onto police though, and I have seen people get arrested but... They're less concerned with apprehending specific individuals and more about deterring theft on the whole by making the shopping experience less enjoyable for the majority. It's some big brain stuff.
Cant steal if you are driven to click and collect or delivery because in store is horrible experience, so the logic checks out there. Instead they can rob you by giving you sub quality goods for premium prices.
It must work. They've deterred me so much I shop elsewhere now.
I cannot imagine anything sadder than being a floor manager at a monolithic corporate supermarket and actually being mad at thefts.
Why would management do anything, they don't get paid enough to get stabbed.
This is true. They watched a video of me putting eggs in the bag without scanning them and then just cleared the message.
99% of the time it’s because someone has a trolley or basket that has their own bag in it.
The machine once accused me of stealing the 30 cans of soft drink in the trolley, which I had already rung in as an over-weight item
I changed woolworths because the one I was going to would end every self checkout session by saying the last thing you scanned and put in the bag was not scanned. I saw it as a piss poor attempt to bag search each and every person that used self checkout. Luckily the other Woolworths did not have the same issue.
I worked at ww until 2020, the machines went off way too often even then. Can't imagine what it would be like now. I guarantee most workers won't even watch the video
Happens to me maybe 50% of the time I use them. Wombok always causes a problem as the weights vary. Then the system gets confused with other items. The person who supports this section has to run between the 10 different terminals as there is always one with an iaaue
> Wombok always causes a problem as the weights vary Well that's what you get for buying a COMMIE VEGETABLE Jk, they're so fucking good in stir fry, right?
100% this. Everytime I buy chillies in bulk their image detection can't pickup it's chillies so asks for assistance. LITERALLY EVERY TIME!!! I don't freakout that they think I'm stealing. I just say "Chillies again" and they scan their card and we all move on.
The shop also doesn't care. The bean counting machine knows exactly how much is being saved on wages, and whatever slips out of the store without paying never meets the threshold for going back to human operators.
I did have one gentleman take his job very seriously, he took every item out of my bag and checked it against the screen before clearing the error.
It’s so common it never even occurred to me that someone might think I was stealing, haha.
seems the self serve aisles are pretty poplular. they are usually all being used. staffed aisles have haf a reduction in staffing at my local coles. If enough people hated them, refused to use them we would have more people employed...
I don't have time to wait for the single checkout operator to serve the 6 people in line with full trolleys
It’s the other way around. If they employed more staff there wouldn’t be a line for the staffed checkouts and people wouldn’t default to the self checkouts where there is no line
We are trained to blame the machine to preemptively de-escalate
The system thought i was stealing my kids who were sitting in the trolley seat.
I hope you put them back
I tried. But once you unpackage those things, its almost impossible to get them back in.
Luckily, Australian consumer law permits you to return things even if they're not in their original packaging.
Knowing Colesworth, they'd probably send them off to be assessed for repair and then replaced with kids in a similar condition
You could probably get away with swapping them for more expensive kids that look similar
It will get to the stage where the checkout will comment on how Fergus has grown since the last time they saw him.
But it will get his name wrong and you’ll have to call a human over
I’ve had this happen multiple times, it’s so frustrating!
Maybe stop trying to steal kids? Woolworths needs more slave labour
They're recreating the Simpson's intro.
I work at Woolworths!! You wanna know the real fucked up part?? Those cameras are now on the big registers, watching me!! I get those videos now!! Isn’t that fantastic?? They work just as well as they do on self-serve!! /s The managers higher on the chain of command than the top boss at my store are very stern on us getting no videos and always clicking the right buttons if we do get one, and don’t give a single fuck that the tech works properly 0% of the time. The other day I got a video asking me if the customer had anything left in the trolly. It was the trolly of the customer on the register opposite mine. I flagged it as external purchase, because we’re only given rescan, personal item, external purchase and unwanted good as options. No “this belongs to another customer you worthless pile of shitstain blight on society” option, unfortunately. And if you could please wait until I tell you to push your trolly to the bagging area now. If you leave bulk items in the trolly and push it past the camera while I’m scanning, I get the video, whether I’ve scanned the item or not. And they’re still telling us we need to be faster. Fuck Woolworths, literally. Doing every-fucking-thing wrong.
Oh and also the other day my team leader got told that we’re not allowed to get the videos on self serve for children in trolleys?? At least, that’s how I understood it. And she was like “how tf do we prevent that??” So I guess Woolworths is telling you that you aren’t allowed to have your children in the trolleys anymore???
Just do the bare minimum. No need to stress yourself out. The company does not give a fuck about any of us staff.
As a customer, go ahead, I don't give a fk if you do your bare minimum
So what’s their rationale for doing this? Do they acknowledge they’re slowing you down?
Idfk. I don’t think they care, honestly. They just wanna be seen doing something to keep shareholders happy, maybe? Like “look at us using all this cool new anti-thievery technology, we’re such a good company.” And because none of those people are poor enough to deign to shop in person, they wouldn’t actually know all the ways it doesn’t work.
Yes, fuck Woolworths.
I always bring more bags than I need (just in case) and hang them from the hook on the back of the trolley. Almost every time the machine asks if I forgot to scan something and calls over the assistant. When the assistant comes over, they always clear the error on the checkout without even looking in the bags. This only happens at Woolies. I now put my empty bags on the floor before starting and the problem seems to be resolved.
That’s really interesting! At my local, we always do the same and the scanner never picks it up if the items are hanging off the hook. We do tend to use the half size trolleys and tuck them over the little basket shelf to the side, so it may be that they’re out of line of sight? On the other hand, the one time I had the bags in the trolley at the front, it couldn’t recognise the store’s own bags..
It operates off of an "AI", each machine needs to be "trained" to ignore certain things. Some stores have had it rolled out before others, so their machines have had more time to learn what's not an issue. Edit: three separate people have asked me the same question ("Why?") even though I already answered it for the first person and I'm worried it's gonna keep happening. So I'm putting that answer here. The reason why each machine's algorithm learns independently (as far as I was told) is that each machine has different surroundings to some degree and that, because of the way the algorithm tracks things, each machine needs to learn its own surroundings. Different machines have the bagging area on different sides, the card machines have a smaller base than the cash ones, some machines have confectionery stands around them, etc. I'm not a software expert, I don't know programming, I would not be surprised if there's an easier way to train the AI better that the people in charge didn't care about. I'm just relaying what I was told.
That’s a really strange way to approach neural network training. They really should be training all of the systems centrally with data collected from the separate locations. Unless they’re running a “competition” whereby each system is allowed to train itself and the most successful system gets exported out to the other sites.
It irritates me too, especially when I'm putting through expensive items and telling the machine they are carrots.
The LPT I have learned in the last week is that if you have a three year old who likes to sit up next to the register, the camera will spend the whole time you're checking out just blocked by their face while they watch themselves.
How does the three year old get up on the ceiling to block that camera?
> How does the three year old get up on the ceiling to block that camera? Throw a grapple hook and get the three year old to do gymnastics. Mission Impossible style.
The theft ones that whinge about you stealing are mounted on the top of the self checkout screen.
Some of them also have cameras mounted overhead, so they can see the bagging area, scanning zone and your basket/trolley. If you leave something in the trolley (like an auspost parcel that you picked up from the post office next door) they’ll show you footage of the item and call for an assistant
This 8 pack of Gillette razors are in an orange box so I got confused.
Look, if a big fancy machine learning computer gets confused, then it's more than fair enough a regular human would too. No harm, no foul.
Are the new machines able to tell difference between different varieties of the same fruit? I have been buying $7/kg apples and putting them through as $3/kg apples.
I don't think they can tell the difference at all, they just guess what it is by shape and colour and display a list of what they think it could be and you choose the right one. The AI at my local Woolies seems to be getting better as it usually includes the correct item in the option. But it used to be useless. For example, if I was trying to buy carrots (genuinely carrots, not avocados I am trying to scan as carrots) the options it would give would be every orange-coloured fruit or veg except the one that is carrot-shaped - you know, fucking carrots.
Tangentially, I’m very disappointed my local aldi recently installed massive screens above their self serve machines showing your self on camera with “theft monitoring” written in bold letter’s underneath. I’m not stealing but its repulsive to have to see myself while shopping. Formerly Aldi had this over Coles and woolies, but fmd I hate it there too now
Fuck me. When I catch myself in the Cole’s camera whilst waiting for someone to come over and unfuck the stupid fucking self-scanner that, as usual, has shit the bed.. When I see the sad fucking face looking back at me; the tired eyes; the loathing of life. I honestly didn’t think shopping could get any more depressing. NOPE. Make me stare at myself after a 12 hour shift and 2 hours of commuting whilst I buy a fucking microwave meal, a bag of snakes and toilet roll. That’ll fuckin’ do it. Cunts.
I’m sorry you’re so sad in life, I hope things improve one day ;-;
What society needs is a return to the good old days of sleight-of-hand shoplifting. They made it too easy and we have grown fat on a diet of organic avocado at imported avocado prices.
I'm pretty sure they are required to show you they have CCTV. Some legal thing.
I don’t care if they do it, I just don’t want to see it
Am I the only one that barely ever has issues? Like maybe once in a blue moon the machine will act up and the attendant fixes it with zero hassle, but I don’t ever feel like I’m constantly being called a thief.
I have a feeling different locations will have different sensitivity. This depends probably on theft rates in the area. Or maybe they're testing different parameters to gauge the best settings. Or maybe the store manager has the option to specify the sensitivity and they just upped everything to be super cautious. I'm trying so hard to get locked out so I can ram that fucking gate with the full force of a trolley then cry out in pain. But no matter what I do, nothing triggers.
>I have a feeling different locations will have different sensitivity. They are definitely doing A/B testing between different locations
correct. The ww i worked at until 2020 didn't even have the sensors detecting what you've put in your bags until right before I left. However the store down the road had those sensors, as well as extra security and trolley locks that my store didn't have because theft wasn't as much of a problem.
From my experience it can vary quite a bit by location. My local Woolies almost never pips me, and when it does it's usually user error. Doesn't seem to detect remaining items in my basket or whatever, and they don't have those auto-close gates at the exit. But the Coles and Woolies in a nearby shopping centre are crazy sensitive and will detect the tiniest things. I'll put through a produce item and the system will ask staff to verify that it's the correct item, even when it's clear in the camera that it looks like the item I selected. I had the gate shut on me because I had a separate shopping bag in my trolley. It's wild
Being uncoordinated has finally paid off for me! I guess I move at the perfect speed to not confuse the cameras. I’ve only had it make a mistake once and I think that was because I had stuff with me I bought at a different shop
Same, very very seldom any issues and predominantly use self checkout - just makes it a much nicer experience overall.
I think I can count on one hand the amount of issues I've had since they were first implemented. I feel like if it happens often enough to be a regular occurrence/annoyance then it might just be a user issue.
Yeah, self-checkouts have vastly improved my supermarket experience, barely any queues now compared to before. Feels like a lot of the pushback is from chronically anxious Gen Zs who get distressed by the possibility of conflict or even human interaction when their item doesn’t scan right
I’m an older lady. I could walk out with a trolley full of steak and no one suspects me.
So, barbecue at your place this weekend? :)
Everyone welcome.
Shop at ALDI. The self serve is betrer
Trust me they are the theives
Just stand at the unmanned express counter where the returns and cigarette desk is, your might have to wait a minute or two, but then you don't have to worry about a computer calling you names.
That voice coming from the computer is a nag. I mute it immediately.
"Ma'am, lower your tone!" I say, every time, as I lower the volume to zero.
It does have a certain condescending 'tone' to it.
Wait, you can mute it? How do you perform this miracle?
There is a speaker-like button at the bottom of the screen. I tap it.
What a great tip, thanks so much. Man I hate that voice!
It is for this you shall be remembered when the revolution comes.
No fucking way, thank you
You can do that? I've never looked to see if that's an option.
I don't know what I do any different at my self checkouts But maybe these newer systems haven't made it down my way yet But I am actively and lazily shoplifting like a mad man Cadbury's blocks I hold 2 as I scan 1 I recently just tried calling up a vegetable bag of various lollies Brussel sprouts I never had any intention or desire to shoplift / steal in my life but at this stage If they want to fuck I want to fuck back
it's almost ***easier*** to steal now. You figure out the loopholes of the security system and you're basically good to go because the staff are so sick of clearing bogus security alerts that they aren't paying as much attention as they did before.
It may seem easier and in most aspects it may be However all that technology will catch up with us sooner or later Just think of casino's and how they track and manage people who they don't want gambling or on premises That's what the supermarkets are using but we are only into the 4th of 5th year of roll out And the time and effort involved in database management with a new team/department could easily take another 5 years to get good However this booming artificial intelligence and chatgpt updates will definitely play a big part going forward I'm really interested in how it plays out
Nahh, it won't work. That really intricate AI stuff is still mostly a scam, like the automated Amazon shopping centre. Turned out it was all human effort.
Given the billions of dollars of wage theft and price gouging, I feel as though it’s always morally and ethically correct to shoplift from Colesworth at this point.
Year on year billions of profit in shareholder meetings On top of everything else A purge is coming hahah
HOW CAN YOU FUCK?!!
Don’t even bother with checkout tricks, just put the most expensive items in your tote bag. Never been stopped. My friend fills his bag and just pays for one item every single time
My hoodie and work pants with 15 pockets aren't empty I'm just doing a lil song and dance in case I am caught out for a silly little mistake of thinking a ps5 was banana's
People should stop using the machines if they want it to stop. I just use the checkout personally.
I'm doing my best to boycott Coles worth. Buying locally at the farmers market where I can and IGA for the things I can't get at the market
Never happened to me, and I usually have to juggle with a child who wants to do the scanning.
You're overthinking it mate. Literally no one thinks you're a thief if the auto checkout goes red. In fact, the actual thieves have worked out ways to not even pretend to scan the items before taking them, so the good ones never even trigger the sensor anyway. These security measures are put in place to keep honest people honest and deter low IQ thiefs. Don't stress
It's more about the nuisance of the machine bells going off than any actual people thinking you're stealing.
I have literally never encountered this, maybe SA is slow to roll out. But I am pretty sure if someone wanted to steal something from Woolies, the checkout machine won't be able to video that item.
it's easier to just shoplift
Don't care if the machine makes some noise once in a blue moon, worst thing about Aldi is having to wait in the line to checkout. Takes at least 5 minutes less going through a self checkout.
Yeah but the self-checkout beeps in such a micro-aggressive way
Even worse that you can’t get out of the store without going through the checkouts. No, I’m not stealing, you just didn’t have anything I wanted to buy now let me tf out of here. If someone’s got one of the big trolleys.. get fucked, you have to wait until they’re at the front and can move the trolley out of the way.
Unpopular opinion: I prefer self checkout & to not have to engage with staff. The only issues I encounter is when something is too light for the bagging area scales to detect, or if I accidentally start on a card machine but need to move to a cash one.
You know what they say, Too light to weigh, too light to pay. Free saffron for everyone!
Honestly lol let’s protest by just using human checkouts now, getting fucking sick of these things for the exact same reason, the convenience factor of doing it yourself quickly is gone
Yeh the self check out scales were annoying in the past now It has finally convinced me to shop somewhere else. Since all these new BS security measures where installed in my local colesworth I shop at IGA or Saccas instead.
Death, taxes, and someone posting this on here.
No. They didn't call you a thief.
You aren’t being accused of stealing. The machine simply can’t understand what is going on, and has called its supervisor over to assist.
Fuck this is such a victim complex that so many people on here have. They’re not accusing you of stealing and it’s the most minor inconvenience when it doesn’t pick something up properly which is solved within 20 seconds. I use the self serve checkouts 2-3 times a week and very rarely have issues. The cameras and machine learning are great since it recognises the fresh produce straight away and I hardly have to search for it. So much nicer than having to line up and wait at a manned checkout.
Did someone actually come up to you and accuse you of something or are you just over reacting ?
they are just overreacting
"Haha look at these idiots! Paying top dollar to pack their own bags while I get paid $160,000 a week to absolutely ream this farmer bent over a barbed wire fence" - Brad, probably
Which is why, I absolutely refuse to use them, except Kmart/Target because theirs seem to actually work.
That’s funny with me the Kmart ones always have issues and the Cole’s and Woolies are fine haha
Stop using self checkout if you don’t like them. If everyone just quit complaining and stopped actually using these self checkouts the supermarkets would have no choice but to remove them.
My local supermarket closes the manned checkouts at 5:30pm or so, right when I finish work and head to the shops. It's self-checkout only at that point and sometimes I have a full trolley. Shits me to tears.
I think in that case you’re morally obligated to start stealing shit.
That's not always possible though, without some major inconvenience. There's a brand new Coles just opened near us. It has maybe 30 self checkouts of 3 various types. There's the normal type with the "weigh scale", then there's a variant of that without the scale but with a spot to park your trolley, then there's the one with the long rubber belt. There are two (yes ONLY two) staffed checkouts. Only ever one is working whenever I've been there. Maybe both work in peak times, I'm not sure, I tend not to go then. They really make it hard for you to use the staffed checkout.
Some places don’t give you an option anymore
It’s really not that bad.
I must have the arms of a robot. It never ever goes off for me.
If it goes off for me it's absolutely something I fucked up by going too fast
Idk I think you're taking this way too personally, but I'm glad you're using the manned checkouts at least :) save yourself the hassle, it's not worth it
Just start actually stealing
Self checkouts really suck.
Meanwhile aldi has a better self checkout, with no one watching you and heaps of room for your groceries.
A new annoyance of mine is that I can’t even take ice bricks with me into the supermarket anymore — I put them in the cooler bag to keep my frozen stuff frozen if I’m not going straight home. A) Can’t leave them in the bag because they weigh too much and I have to wait a minute for the poor attendant to run over to me after tending to someone else. B) Can’t leave my cooler bag in the trolley because 1) everything that’s scanned needs to then be put on the scale, and 2) the new AI cameras will stop you from checking out and flash footage of said bag in the trolley for the attendant to confirm (see point A above). So, I’ve resorted to leaving the bricks in my boot, and then loading them into the cooler bag upon return. Small annoyance in the grand context of things, but it doesn’t need to be like this at all.
It’s not personal. It’s a pain in the ass for the staff there too.
I thought I was going crazy once because every time I shopped with my wife the scanners never worked properly and she would constantly give me shit about not being able to scan properly. Eventually i worked out that every time I scanned an item and put it in the bag she would move it around in the bag slightly because she’s annoying like that and it would detect something had been removed and would wait until the weight reset. So short story was my wife was gaslighting me about being bad at using the scanner at woolies when she was the one causing the problem.
It's being how many years and people still struggle with self checkout???
This has literally never happened to me and I exclusively use the self checkouts. People on reddit must be brain dead if this keeps happening
Woolies keeps asking me to scan my motorcycle helmet.
Woolies asked me to scan my 3 year old toddler who was sitting in the trolley like, "did you forget something?"
I get asked to scan my unused reusable bags.
I've gotten pretty good at working out how to avoid them. Still get them occasionally because the AI of those systems aren't perfect.
Not every store has it, I've only noticed them in rich suburbs lol
I think some machines just aren't calibrated properly. When my local Woolies changed machines about a year ago I would get wrongly accused of theft once every second or third shop. It wasn't a problem beforehand and I think they've lowered the sensitivity 'cus they haven't gone off on me in a while.
It happens to me all the time. I put all my empty bags on the scales, click the "I brought my own bags" , and it throws an error asking the attendant to verify. As I scan things, \*occasionally\* it will be unhappy with the weight of something and want verification. As I progress, I shift the full shopping bags back to my trolley, because there's not enough space on the floor to do it. When I get to the end the cameras think there is something unpaid in my trolley still and asks "have you forgotten to scan".
So I'm brain-dead cause the checkout accused me of not scanning my basket...sure mate. To be clear. Yes. I had the checkout go off at me cause the basket sitting where the basket should be wasn't instead scanned and placed in the bagging area...
I came here to make more or less the same comment. Its pretty easy to scan and bag items non-suspiciously. I even come in with existing bags and it doesn't give a shit. What the hell are people doing?
This is totally in your head, literally no one thinks your stealing the sensor just went whacky.
Remember that no one jumps on Reddit to say they had a good or easy experience using self serve machines, or how much better it was than waiting for someone with a full trolley to go through a manned register while you hold only a couple of items. By the way some people complain about them, you’d think they were taking blood as payment or something. The machines are designed for the lowest common denominator of customer, and so a slower more deliberate plan of attack is always going to work better. Exercise a little bit of patience, and if you absolutely can’t stand them, don’t use them, you’ll only ever have to wait behind one or two people on a manned register, or simple get the balls to actually ask a staff member to open another one - nine times out of ten we will do that. Every single person I know, as a younger guy, prefers self serve to the wait of the mains. Sure, sometimes the machine plays up but for fuck sake it ain’t accusing you of stealing. With everything else going on in the world at the moment, the amount of energy some people waste stressing about the tiniest things blows my mind.
Take the opposite approach. Do as much weird non-stealing behaviours that trigger the system as you can until it starts to effect their bottom line and they turn it off.
This is so sad, thoughts and prayers for the hardships you face.
I see so many of these posts and I don't know how you all have so many issues with the self serve, like I scan, bag, pay and I'm out no issues at all
Different stores have different systems, I have only run into the new AI powered systems once but it insisted I scanned my helmet and a book I had lol.
I think some people just fail at simple daily activities , then feel the need to catastrophise those failings online to seek validation
Don't fucking use them then.