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.
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.
They don’t really care which store you go to. Keep in mind all these big retailers at the end of the day are owned by the same half dozen people. The CEO of a specific company might care, but they answer to the board which is chaired by people that also own stock in all the other retailers. So they push for the online stuff knowing that profit margins are better with online, and even if you do go to some other stores online shop they’ll still make money.