The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up behind me and very persistently told me that I hadn't scanned something. Annoyed, I pointed on the screen where it showed I had. His eyes went wide, and he spun around, and quickly hurried away, no apology.
If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't code that intervention/confrontation as their mess-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still got dinged as suspicious, to cover their butts.
We do seem to have a lot of shoplifting here in recent years. And I have even recently seen a street person in a chain pharmacy here, simply tossing boxes of product off the shelves, into a dingy black trash bag, in the middle of the day. Somehow none of the usual employees around. Yet there's often employees moving to stand behind me at that same store, when I use their self-checkout. (Maybe my N95 mask is triggering some association with masked bandits, yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? But an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go when they have symptoms.)
They do not want to confront trash bag man for good reason. What happened is people who don't give a fuck and have no problem with using violence realized there's nothing stopping them from loading up bags of goods and walking out of the store. "Oh you want to stop me? just try mother fucker." Even so called security guards want no part of trash bag man because there is a high chance of violence and most humans do not want to engage with that. Never mind these guards are paid very little and are nothing more than security theater. Pull a gun and those guys are going to be no more a guard than the cashier or a person in line.
The stores are left to fend for themselves as cops these days seem to care less and less. So I am not surprised they are employing all sorts of janky tactics to prevent loss.
There are plenty of reliable young men who enjoy engaging in violence and will take low-paid jobs in store security. (There are many more who don't actively enjoy it, but don't mind engaging in it and consider being competent at violence an important part of being a man.)
The pharmacy gives its security guards instruction not to use violence because they don't want to get sued when a guard seriously injures a thief: it is impossible at the scale of a chain of stores to subdue and detain thieves without some risk of killing some thief or seriously injuring him.
I’d rather shop at a store that actually prevents theft, deterring future thieves from stealing. It will be a safer place to shop with lower prices.
The legal limits are very clear and simply enacting violence “against people who might be thieves” is not within them.
I was accused of shoplifting by a gigantic dude who moved in to detain me as I was going into my car. Could have gotten Walmart badge or paraphernalia from anywhere (most walmarts aren't that aggressive but this one was). I could have told him to eat shit and it was clear he was willing to get violent. At that point I would have had to decide whether to draw a weapon, because he clearly would have overpowered me and put me in imminent fear of death. I handed him my receipt with one hand while preparing for the possibility to draw a weapon with the other, thankfully he seemed satisfied and turned out to be a real Walmart employee.
I decided I didn't want to ever face that decision again so I never went back
I live in New Zealand.
If you ever visit Texas take a look around the entrances to stores, shops, restaurants, bars etc. You should see large white signs with a "gun-buster" and a 30.0* code. or a large "51%" symbol in red. It would be incredibly rare to see a person with an open carry gun thou
30.05 is to tell people that "constitutional carry" (carry without a LTC) is not allowed on the property. A person with a License to Carry may carry on the property.
30.06 says a LTC person may not conceal carry on the property.
30.07 says a LTC person may not open carry on the property.
The 51% lets people who carry know that the establishment has a liquor/beer permit and receives 51% of income from sales of alcohol. Meaning it's a felony to bring a firearm onto the premises. The others are misdemeanor trespass
Then you may see a reminder 46.03 sign at places like schools, sporting venues etc as a reminder that weapons (not just guns) are not allowed.
It reminds me of "Posted"[0] signs that I've seen in lots of places in the southern US. Growing up in the Northeast, we didn't have such things[1].
[0] "Posted" is shorthand for "Private Property. No Trespassing." I get that the word "posted" means "I posted the sign. Pay attention or you might get arrested or shot." But I have no idea how the latter got shortened to the former. It's also an interesting regionalism, although not specifically related to legal codes and their taxonomy.
[1] Where I grew up we just had "No Trespassing" or "Private Property" signs.
Edit: expanded footnote [0].
And no one is compelled to be a security guard; if the risks and pay don’t align, they’re free to walk away.
More evidence to me that the US was set up to serve corporatist interests over pretty much everything (and everyone) else. Why else provide shopkeepers with some special legal status? (Which again, they don't have in any other country.)
Has this actually happened? Or are the chain pharmacies using “shrinkage” as a scapegoat for other deficiencies? I find it incredibly hard to believe that retail theft puts an appreciable dent in profits.
> Finally, corporate claims are not holding up to scrutiny, and are being used to close stores that are essential assets for many communities. For instance, the CEO of Walgreens has acknowledged that perhaps retailers “cried too much last year” and overspent on security measures that failed to reflect real needs. And although the National Retail Federation said that “organized retail crime” drove nearly half of all inventory losses in 2021, the group later retracted its claim; it now no longer attaches a dollar amount to money that is lost due to retail theft. And in memorable cases, major retailers have chosen to maintain stores with much higher rates of crime, while closing others.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/retail-theft-in-us-cities...
https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-walgreens-manager-co...
Bit of an assumption there.
There is no easy answer for this breakdown. The cat is out of the bag and these losers aren't going to stop unless they are stopped and face real consequences. Though as you said, the stores do not want the liability of guards taking action so they are left with locking everything behind glass and deploying privacy invading surveillance. Of course that doesn't stop anything and quality of life goes down.
Stores have plenty of incentives to engage in privacy invading surveillance even ignoring shoplifting as a factor. If a store saw zero shoplifting they'd still deploy privacy invading surveillance because it's profitable for them to do it right now and it will only be increasingly profitable for them to do it in the near future.
Not to be pedantic, but by definition it is, isn’t it?
>Not to be pedantic, but by definition it is, isn’t it?
It is not[0].
Being present in the US without legal status is a civil infraction and not a crime. Unlawful entry is a criminal act however.
That said, the vast majority of undocumented folks entered the US legally and overstayed their visas. Which is a civil issue, not a criminal one.
Those who made an (whether valid or not) asylum claim are legally in the United States until their asylum claim can be adjudicated.
[0] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/is-illeg...
It is not the case that "every illegal immigrant is already a criminal," which is what GP claimed.
Also it’s poor form to copy/paste the same response over and over, even if you were reading the posts you replied to.
Yes. The link[0] I posted with my comment cites that specific law:
To be clear, the most common crime associated with illegal immigration is
likely improper entry. Under federal criminal law, it is misdemeanor for an
alien (i.e., a non-citizen) to:
Enter or attempt to enter the United States at any time or place other
than designated by immigration officers;
Elude examination or inspection by immigration officers; or
Attempt to enter or obtain entry to the United States by willfully
concealing, falsifying, or misrepresenting material facts.
The punishment under this federal law is no more than six months of
incarceration and up to $250 in civil penalties for each illegal entry. These
acts of improper entry -- including the mythic "border jumping" -- are
criminal acts associated with illegally immigrating to the United States.
Like all other criminal charges in the United States, improper entry must be
proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict.
Being present in the US without legal status is a civil infraction and not a
crime. Unlawful entry is a criminal act however.
That said, the vast majority of undocumented folks entered the US Legally and
overstayed their visas. Which is a civil issue, not a criminal one.
[0] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/is-illeg...
Entering the United States without proper documentation, such as a passport or visa, is considered a federal crime under 8 U.S.C. § 1325. This statute criminalizes unauthorized entry, including entering at unauthorized times or places, evading inspection, or misrepresentation to gain entry.
I would love to understand if you truly believed that no such federal statute exists, or we’re just intentionally spreading misinformation.
> This statute criminalizes unauthorized entry, including entering at unauthorized times or places, evading inspection, or misrepresentation to gain entry.
[0] https://www.uscis.gov/forms/all-forms/form-i-94-arrivaldepar...
Because ICE is having a lot of trouble finding enough people who crossed illegally to round up and put in concentration camps, they're scouring the country for people in the other category. And in many cases the threat of visa cancellation is being used to suppress political speech. A lot of people don't know that because they don't understand that there's a way to get here legally that doesn't involve getting citizenship or a green card. I think if you've never left the country it probably doesn't occur to you that there's a whole system of checkpoints that you can use to enter the country but almost zero control after that other than your own good faith efforts. And this is true just about everywhere else in the world.
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/163419/miranda-du-unconstitu...
None of which has anything to do with the matter at hand.
It. Is. Not. A. Crime. To. Overstay. A. Visa.
But I agree with the sentiment that they are selecting the easiest targets.
Neither stores nor the guard want to escalate a situation to a violent situation. The stores don't want bad press or liability for collateral damage. The security guard isn't trying to put their body on the line for some merchandise. Yeah, maybe you have a cowboy looking for trouble, but based on my experience talking/working with some guards, I'd be surprised if they are instructed to get physically involved.
"Violence is okay to perpetrate, but not to respond with."
That's a value judgement. Here's my value judgement: Violence is not OK to perpetrate and a response of any magnitude to stop that violence is acceptable, up to and including killing the assailant.
Glad I live in a state within the US that supports this value, as well as providing people the means to do what they need to do if they find themselves victimized.
I don't think you'd feel at home here.
Or is it not “real” violence if it’s justified? In which case, pretty much all violent people will tell you they are justified.
Which means it reduces to “it’s ok for me to be violent because I’m righteous, unlike those thugs”
(the offenders were caught by police later that day, so it really wasn't worth the trouble to run after them)
Perhaps it had something going for it that we lost when we decided to forsake it.
When I attended the same high school in the 00s, we once were put on a district-wide lockdown because some kid at the other high school all the way across town had inadvertently left his paintball gun in the back seat of his (locked) car—after a weekend of fun in the woods with his friends—in the school parking lot, and a security officer saw it.
Now, today, we get periodic local PSAs urging people to not leave firearms in their locked cars in their own driveways at night, because people are breaking into cars, stealing the guns, and using them to commit crimes.
I won't speculate on how we forsook it, but clearly something here has been forsaken. That the way things were a mere ~50 years ago seems unthinkably impossible today clearly speaks volumes.
The one big difference though is today we have school shootings, so folks are pretty humorless about guns near schools. I'd love to hear your ideas for how to solve that, because they keep happening.
I don't care to propose any solutions here, especially around such politically-volatile topics, because I believe the actual changes that transpired and the reasons for why they did are worth acknowledging and investigating first.
Also the leaving guns in vehicles thing could also be affected by another number here. And that is miles driven per capita and vehicles owned per household averages. That is you could have the same total number of thieves that steal guns, especially among those with more poverty, but as you increase the number of cars groups that could no longer afford them have them. Also the number of miles driven means the potential thieves are covering way more territory.
Anecdotally I heard about things like this in the late 80s and early 90s. Farmers were complaining that groups out of Chicago were running off with all the stuff they'd leave around all over the farm.
In addition starting in the mid 70s was a long recessionary period (stagflation) after decades of a good economy in the 60s that shook the US to the core.
That's no longer true. Everyone has a cellphone pretty much everywhere. You don't think of hoodlum stuff while bored, you watch a livestream of it and think "I could do that too".
We live in a much different world now.
Well go on then. Let's hear your theory out loud.
It would have been gone in 15 minutes at my house in the city.
I cant sum it up properly but three things come to mind: Fear - we have been filled with fear, this in turn leads to more people forsaking responsibility and wanting the government to act as a nanny to protect them, which leads to a lot of childish behavior whether it be people acting helpless or people aping being big and tough. So fear leading to a lack of responsibility leading to childish behavior. This makes people more self centered and less considerate of others around them.
Edit, to add: This lack of responsibility is also tied to legal liability of being sued. Cant take down a crook because they might get hurt and sue which makes me wonder what kind of legal system we have which ignores the irresponsible act of criminality. To me it's "live and die by the sword" - you fuck around and you find out. Of course this can be reversed, a person taking action against a criminal can be hurt and then who is responsible? The liability cuts deeply both ways. There is no way to win unless that changes or we install a safety net.
Our monkey brains can’t comprehend a world with billions of people in it. Stuff on the news is rare pretty much by definition. It gets rarer the broader your news gets. National news has stuff that’s much rarer than local, and world news is rarer still.
But your monkey brain doesn’t get that. It sees a story about somebody getting murdered and it does, holy shit somebody got murdered, this is bad! It sees these stories daily and it concludes that the world is incredibly dangerous.
This isn’t new, but the volume is way up. Decades ago, we might get twenty minutes of world news each night on the TV. Now we’re constantly bombarded with it.
People in developed countries are safer than pretty much any human has ever been before, and they feel more threatened than anyone before as well, because they’re exposed to a deluge of tragedies. The fact that the denominator on those tragedies is eight billion just doesn’t compute.
Oh, and leaded gasoline probably doesn’t help. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. The last cohort with substantial childhood exposure won’t retire for another two decades or so.
For most of American's history each generation was better off than the previous one, but that's no longer the case. People's standard of living is in decline. They are forced to watch their children struggle in ways they never had to. The things that made people feel safe and stable and part of a community like homes and jobs with pension plans are out of reach for most people. More and more people are sliding into poverty.
All of this leads to a situation where people increasingly feel that they have to look out for themselves and that makes people fearful and distrustful.
50 years ago husbands beat the living shit out of their wives without recourse of the law. 50 years ago drunk driving was a socially acceptable past time. I knew people with dozens of DWIs and other that had killed people in alcohol related accidents that didn't get any prison time. What we call hate crimes now were just crimes that weren't investigated by the police.
This said, there is something that has change.
24/7 news and always on news with the internet. The fears we had of bad things happening to us were things we may have watched once a day, not every 15 minutes on the hour. That seemingly had a pretty large effect on how people viewed their safety in this world.
Point being, willingness to engage in violence has nothing to do with it.
IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss. That's the tradeoff for replacing your employees with robots and forcing labor onto the consumer. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I suspect it just didn't make sense to have an employee outside smoking or sitting in the break room scrolling on a phone while the customers went through and maybe paid for their goods, when that employee could simply run the checkout counter.
>> IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss
I agree this is the logical conclusion, but obviously they're not going to accept it when you can throw a fraction of the labour savings to hire some cheap security theatre that reminds the honest people big brother is watching.
As soon as I got to the hotel and figured it out, I went back to correct the mistake--but imagine getting harassed or taken to the back for a careless error? I'm sure that happens more often than I hear about.
(PS I am genuinely surprised their weight sensor, that flags an attendant, didn't go off. That thing usually trips if you breathe on it funny.)
Target is well known in doing exactly this. A lot of shoplifters stay away from target past a 1 time hit.
I can be through the whole process at CVS (with some random item like a birthday card) in about 30 seconds.
I no longer shop at CVS.
You really have to be able to judge to self checkout ability of the people in line. Some will get stuck for 5 min before a clerk comes to do it for them.
It's not really a secret that retail LP generally abuses their role across the board and allows prejudace to run rampant in its ranks, giving that it is almost entirely comprised of people from backgrounds that lack any higher education and recieved a few months training at best to do what they do. Heck, step in any active American mall and you will encounter mostly white men who didn't quite have the chutzpa for the police academy, but still carry the guilty-til-proven-otherwise attitude.
Source: I was LP briefly for TJX companies and left due to the rampant and accepted bigotry I encountered with them. In their case, it was that I was repeatedly told to target black women if I wanted to meet quota each month, since their own numbers said most apprehensions were black women and not one person in the LP heirarchy knew what confirmation bias or survivor bias was. Also, yes, they have quotas. I was put on their equivalent of a PIP the second month I was there for not meeting mine. We can rest assured that Kroger, Walmart, etc, use lots of the same tactics and quiet codes.
1. Social media today has strong mob behavior, which is one of the reasons I often default to not naming when you want to talk about a more general problem. In this case, it would probably be OK, but I defaulted to not. Think of it like a blame-free post-mortem for the org to learn from.
2. I don't want to invite more grief from elements the stores and their bureaucratic mechanisms, if the mention of them online percolates up to corporate. The-coverup-is-worse-than-the-crime is a commonplace thing in corporate hierarchies, and if we're talking about a potentially dim/petty/underhanded person with access to power (e.g., the high-tech systems including features like facerec and maintaining profiles of ordinary people, and some data shared between companies) that could be a whole lot of grief for you. You can possibly eventually find out what happened, and sue, but the harm to you will be done, so better to just stay off the radar of sketchy employees of stores you frequent.
not that i'm that surprised, but still shocking to read such things in 2025.
Lasted a mere 6 months at that job before I decided I could no longer turn a blind eye, since by then it had become clear to me that the problem was not isolated to just a few LP associates.
Hah, I was in JC Penney and I grabbed a handkerchief for a suit, and I packed it into my fist, to do a magic trick type thing. Went to find my fiancee, felt someone behind me. Except I looked back, and he hurriedly asked a sales associate some benign question about where to find X. I kept walking to my fiancee, who was looking at jewelry, and when I got there he ducked behind the counter, as if he worked there, and was poking at the register and talking to another sales associate. I pulled the handkerchief out of my closed fist, did some lame "ta da" thing to my fiancee, and dude looks disappointed and walks off, no longer pretending to be either an employee or customer.
Without snark I think we're on a site where being anti-corporate could hurt someones stock investments, naming companies is seen as rude.
Is this a new jobs program? I've been seeing a lot of these middle aged/elderly guys with "Loss Prevention" on their shirts walking the aisles aimlessly in supermarkets and department stores. What's the point really when there are cameras everywhere?
The innovation of having customers grab their own stuff without supervision was required for all these massive super stores.
We shouldn’t compare the status quo of self-service with some shoplifting to an imaginary ideal of self-service with no shoplifting. We should compare it against the actual alternative of stores bottlenecked by clerks that can only serve one customer at a time (or at least stores small enough that a clerk can watch everybody doing their self-service). You have to pay those clerks!
Stealing is wrong. But some loss is a cost of doing business. People shouldn’t get irrationally obsessed about it, to the point where they think society is crumbling or whatever. Or make LP so annoying that they scare off normal customers.
The modern version of an old time "full service" store is an e-commerce warehouse in an exurb with quick delivery and that actually works just fine for a lot of things. It's a big component of why the retail sector has been struggling over the past decade.
It might be worth thinking about how these costs are accounted for. In the case of the big store, loss is taken by the store (of course they pass that along as higher prices, but it is ultimately the store’s problem). For deliveries, a good chunk of easy theft (stealing off your porch) is the customer’s problem usually. There’s some unfortunate socioeconomic crosstab there, I think: if you live in a nice neighborhood, theft is less of a problem. If you work from home, you can probably set things up to not leave a package out for too long.
Seems like the burden is falling most squarely on people who live in tough neighborhoods and have to actually go to work.
In some places Amazon has (had?) these self-service lockers where you could pick up your purchases. (Might have been a very college-town centric solution, or something?). It could be nice to see that standardized and spread out.
There is a whole business model built around being a package receiver for folks who don't want deliveries left on their doorstep. Most private PO box companies will receive packages for you, and there are apps that allow any business with a physical location to act as a package receiver for a fee per delivery. Often it is more convenient than residential delivery since you won't get delivery drivers falsely claiming they attempted delivery. When I used to travel a lot, I had a service that would receive mail and packages, and hold them until I was back in town. I think it was ~$10 month and well worth it.
At a lot of the stores that offer it, the curbside pickup is hopping. Tons of associates constantly wheeling out cartloads of merchandise to an ever-rotating group of cars. More and more people opt for the curbside experience it seems, which is pretty much the full-service experience just more asynchronously. I do it from time to time, but typically not for grocery items as I usually don't like the experience of substitutions or the app saying they have something when they really don't.
Grocery stores have a low profit margin. In 2020 it was 3%. In 2024 it was 1.6%. That is not a good number. Assume this number is two times worse in California or other areas with spontaneous looting. Lots of empty shelves with pictures of products you can pick up at the counter.
https://www.fmi.org/our-research/food-industry-facts/grocery...
Go outside and touch grass
I was accused of not paying for certain items at a grocery store recently, and I explained that I bought those at another store. The LP person didn’t even ask to check the receipt from the other store. I proceeded with packing my groceries and went home.
I wonder if we can recognize that store people would want to reconfirm if we have correctly paid for the things we thought we bought, and we just answer them. No need to assume ill intent.
Perhaps loss prevention should look at management for the stolen money
However I suspect it's also an outdated claim. Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded. In the past five years it has increased 100%+ in many areas. It has almost been normalized where some groups will proudly boast about how they've scammed and stole, especially at self checkouts.
I have zero problem with max enforcement. I'm not a thief and if you have a thousand AI cameras tracking my every move through the store, I simply do not care. I also don't see a particularly slippery slope about systems that highlight the frequent thieves. Further I appreciate that retail operates at a pretty thin margin, so every penny they save (both on labour and by catching/preventing thefts) is actually good for law abiding society. So more of it, please.
You can't, resources are limited.
>Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded.
I don't know that that's true. Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.
https://counciloncj.org/shoplifting-trends-what-you-need-to-...
Regulatory authorities and courts enforce against wage theft. Shoplifting enforcement is mostly up to businesses.
>Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Shoplifting reports to police were down in some cities (albeit up in others), but that doesn't necessarily track the actual data.
https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/shoplifting-inci...
Courts incur costs between fees and lawyers, and even filing a report with the dept of labor (the typical recourse most people take at first) means you have to wait while you aren't being compensated for that time. Given wage theft in the majority of cases impacts people who can't often afford to go without those lost wages, this is a tough situation to be in, and even if you go through the labor department with a complaint, manage to get it reviewed in a timely manner (it typically takes months before hearing anything), you may still end up in court anyway depending on a number of factors.
You could sue for the lost wages directly, but again, this becomes an issue of cost, getting the case heard and tried in a timely manner etc. This could drag on for months to years, depending.
On the other hand, if a store sees someone shoplifting, they can and do call the police, and they can and will arrest someone for shoplifting. Its dealt with close to or during the incident occurring. Thats a really big difference in the feedback loop.
Imagine now, that you could call the police when you have a verifiable instance of wage theft, and the person(s) responsible was arrested and you given upfront restitution pending trial. That would be the equivalent of how we treat shoplifting vs wage theft. The differences are not minor, and I imagine they're intentional on behalf of lobbying from business groups.
If business owners or their subordinates were being arrested for wage theft I imagine things would change quickly, but there's such a lag time between actual accountability and the instance of it happening - and even when found guilty they simply pay the back wages plus penalties in the best case scenario, and thats if it gets to the point of either a lawsuit or arbitration on behalf of the labor department - that they have done the calculation that paying incorrect compensation (the most common form of wage theft) is overall costing them less than paying out labor disputes, as with anything that has hefty process attached to it without guaranteed results, it discourages the most vulnerable from engaging with that system even though they would benefit most.
They aren't equivalent, and its disingenuous to see them as such.
I haven't heard of a short-term Cerebral Palsy, but then again I'm not an expert.
so you're complaining, but also defending the position of the companies and intentionally refusing to name them.
its like you dont know you're in a class war here, and you'll be sick of these increasingly authoritarian practices until you fight back.
The LP guy caught a few non-employee shoplifters, but there kept being more loss until eventually an employee - one who had been there a long time - stole something on camera. It turned out to be the employee who had installed all of the cameras, but apparently he just got brazen/sloppy.
After that he got arrested and I never saw him again, and a few months later the LP guy moved on because the store's losses had dropped to more acceptable levels.
A couple of years later, the store closed down.
Did I just step into a time portal to 2022? Have you... been in a coma for the past several years? haha
I have a duty to my family to protect them, and if that means wearing a mask to reduce my risk of getting covid, then their safety overrules my own comfort.
I have a duty to protect my fellow citizens. Some of them are also vulnerable to covid, though I don't know them personally.
The scientific proof of association between school (esp school start) and the spread of disease goes back over 100 years. I see no reason it would be different for covid, perhaps even stronger for covid where many college age people would be asymptomatic or low symtpoms.
Most people no longer wear masks in stores here, but there are some. And some employees do as well. Including the person at/near the customer service desk of the grocery I mentioned, I think the last 2 times I was in there.
The CDC knew this at the time. The "flatten the curve" message was "slow things down enough until we know more and can avoid our hospitals from being overwhelmed and more people dying."
The idea that the virus ever could have been stopped if we'd just all cooperated harder was a retcon invented later by people who wanted to criticize other people for not caring as much as they did. The actual experts always said the best we could do was spread it out.
This would be expensive, but as expensive as what we did was? Surely not! So, other regions providing funding and resources to the regions taking on the burden would be a strictly rational move.
You might say "oh, but people didn't know about the spread!"… but that's a ridiculous claim. The Less Wrong crowd tracked it in near-real-time from open source intelligence, and governments had access to more intelligence than that. The number of governments giving nonsensical advice, like "masks don't work because the respiratory disease is not spread via aerosols", and "replace your soap with dilute alcohol", lampshades a broad coordination problem. (We're not much past the "sweet-smelling herbs will protect from the plague" advice of yore, it seems.)
The things we needed to do were done – but for ridiculous political reasons, nearly everyone waited until after the disease had reached their regions to close their borders: internationally and intranationally, at every level! (The algorithm in Pandemic II's easy mode was more sensible than that.) So much of that effort, that psychological torment, was wasted. Even if the whole world had taken Australia's approach, we still would've brought the disease to manageable levels within a year. But there wasn't the political will… and so it goes. I think we're less prepared for the next novel disease outbreak, now.
It can be done. It just requires leadership, discipline, and the willingness to take strict, decisive, politically unpopular measures against violators and spreaders of misinformation. As Schwarzenegger said, when there's a pandemic on, screw your freedoms.
Forcing business owners to allow people of all races into your business was both unpopular and cited as an example of authoritarianism.
An American example: MLK never had popular support during his life. His approval rating around the time of his assassination was in the 30s or so. It would not be unfair to say that in the places that mattered most, he was wildly unpopular.
Doing the right thing is frequently unpopular at the time that you do it. There is a balance, but if you give everyone agency, you have to figure out how to keep the assholes from using their agency to infringe on another's agency.
COVID is no longer a novel virus and its deadliness has vastly decreased. Yes it is by any reasonable understanding of the phrase, COVID is "less nasty". At its peak, 20,000 people were dying each week due to COVID in the US. Presently that figure sits around 200.
COVID is also nothing like the plague, that is a major illogical jump. Early pandemics, such that in the Sasanian Empire, had a 25-50 million deaths (depending what century you draw the line). The Black Death was particularly deadly, with an estimated mortality rate of 70%.
How you can suggest COVID is now the plague is just absurd. You also make a very unfounded conclusion that if we "just stayed in doors a little bit more guys!" we would of solved it. Delusional.
I think the comparison to plague is accurate, since quarantine and social distancing were effective in reducing mortality during the Black Death, as were plague vaccines.
There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) which can intervene with your self-checkout process to "remind" you that you didn't actually scan everything.
In any case, the plaintiff will most likely be able to take the case to discovery.
[1] https://lewisbrisbois.com/newsroom/legal-alerts/2024-bipa-de...
[2] https://alcatraz.ai/blog/face-authentication-vs-face-recogni...
They aren't allowed to use it and instead are required to physically walk up, move the customer out of the way, and push the same button on your screen.
WalMart has two popular designs within my city (not sure if one is just un-updated, yet¿) — their type which accepts half dollars is my favorite cash design.
I have seen designs which don't weigh each item, allowing simultaneous scanning... that also call an attendant to verify if it thinks you snuck an item by (then plays a loop/clip of its alleged violation).
Personally, I have a family member that works as attendant to a dozen self-checkouts... and it seems like it would make more corporate sense to have more human checkers and only allow cash with them.
I'm not sure where I would find the data to back this up, but since it seems like an across-the-board change I imagine the labor savings have proven to outweigh (heh) the inventory shrinkage.
To me, the Uniqlo system where everything has an RFID tag and the machine just automatically scans the contents of your basket is the platonic ideal but I know that comes with issues of its own in different retail contexts.
And then there’s fucking Costco where after the system calling over a rep after I scanned something. apparently I am only to use the scanning gun for things that are staying in the cart, when I bagged it it called them over.
Yes, I want 2 boxes of cereal.
I just find it easier to go to a cashier.
Wastes a lot of time for those of us working with >=2 hands.
Another nearby mega-chain still uses the scales and makes you bag every item before you can scan anything else. I don't ever shop there, almost entirely for that reason alone. I would definitely never knowingly shop at a store that was scanning my face and storing it in a database.
That's a new one. It's clever but I feel guilty having laughed.
I remember one I saw where the guy was filling two shopping carts with laptops at each Walmart, each one so high he could barely see over them. Then pushing the two carts out through the tire shop area. Did this at multiple stores. Walmart only called the cops once it was over $60K estimated loss.
That being said, Target stores in Washington do something similar, as the threshold for felony theft is $1,000, they'll pull the trigger on LE / LP involvement if you hit that threshold over multiple events, and bring the receipts for the previous.
I _somewhat_ think that's ripe to be challenged on proving intent in the previous instances, but I also know that serial retail thieves are not likely to be the most sympathetic cause there.
They tend to put up a very good prosecution.
Plus, Walmart doesn't prosecute anybody. They hand the evidence over to the police and the the district attorney decides if they want to prosecute. Walmart can file a civil suit which I'm wondering if that's what they actually do. There (as I understand it), they only have to show that you likely stole something vs a criminal case where they have to show beyond reasonable doubt that you stole something. It's a much lower bar.
What Walmart can and does you at the time they file with the state is trespass you. Which counts for all Walmart stores and properties. That's where things like facial identification probably come back in so your caught the moment you walk in a store.
Trespass is very easy to prove.
They don't technically prosecute anyone, but in the county where I was witness to prosecutions for Walmart shop-lifting they were putting a lot of pressure on the DA office. They would bring a ton of muscle, investigators, attorneys, print outs, DVDs, etc. They would push their prosecutions hard when they wanted to.
https://corporate.walmart.com/purpose/esgreport/governance/e...
>Walmart works with policy makers and public safety officials to ensure we are providing a safe workspace for our associates and a safe, enjoyable shopping experience for our customers. The nature of retail crime varies across our stores and geographies, and includes complex organized retail crime. Walmart works closely with our trade associations to support efforts to pass laws (such as the Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act) that ensure these crimes incur meaningful penalties, and that law enforcement have resources to appropriately prosecute these crimes.
Needless to say the can help sway local elections based on how they push certain political figures.
If all they have is a dozen videos where it looks like you are shoving something in your pocket but no other hard evidence, that wouldn't go anywhere in court.
Also if you're stealing as an immigrant, you should be deported without any questions asked.
> Don't go implying that actions are somehow worse when someone who took the risk of moving to a new country does them as opposed to someone who won the birth lottery.
And even if it is true, I still don't see why premeditated charge stacking should be allowed. If someone comes into the store that they know will steal, they should be banned from the store and arrested for trespassing then and there. Shitty criminal justice policies does not justify creative abuses of the law by corporations or prosecutors. Having 25% of the world prison population, along with all the costs that go along with it does not benefit us, it only hurts us. And it has repeatedly been shown that stiffer criminal charges do not prevent crime, if it did the US would be one of the safest 1st world countries, not the most dangerous 1st world country by a large margin that makes countries without actual functioning government seem peaceful.
As we say over here, bless. your. heart.
...if you only knew how bad things really are [deadpan.face]
We are nations of loopholes, inside and out.
Firstly, stores don't "press charges." A store may report a crime, but it is the state that "presses charges" and prosecutes alleged criminal activity, not the store.
Secondly, in the US, we have statutes of limitation[0] which limit the time in which criminal charges can be brought. These vary by state and by offense, but IIUC Petit (sometimes referred to as 'Petty') Theft usually has a one or two year statute of limitations.
I bring that up as, again IIUC, other countries (notably the UK) do not have such limitations.
IANAL, but I'm not sure if multiple petit thefts (usually misdemeanors) can be aggregated into a single charge of grand theft[0] (a felony). I'd expect that also varies by state. YMMV.
[0] Once again, this varies by state, but petit theft (larceny) is typically charged for stuff valued at less than $5,000.00, while grand larceny is for stuff valued at USD5,000.00 or more.
Most professional cashiers are only trained in one merchant's POS. Suddenly, me a layman consumer is supposed to be a flawless operator of every variant of self-checkout POS that I encounter. It's a bit crazy to me that a court would side with a merchant unless some egregious evidence or pattern had could be demonstrated.
Costco can't enforce the receipt check, but they can terminate your membership - but that's only because they're a membered organization in the first place.
Lowes got rid of all cashiers and went to 0 armed bandits (self checkouts).
Menard's has hidden policies which you don't find out until you're at the receiving end. Hut they have human cashiers.
Not surprising that they’ve titrated the cashier lines to always be much longer.
At least it’s not a government again giving you quick service if you sign away your rights with a lineup around the block for those that with to assert their rights.
I’m also thankful that my local grocery store is subject to a massive development proposal, so they’re not bothering with capital improvements like self-checkout.
I've gotten used to the expectation that I will be my own cashier at most places, but I'm not OK assuming any liability that comes with my lack of cashier skillset/training which is what they want.
I am pretty sure the evidence shows the opposite.
- Punishment works to deter crime when it's immediate and high-likelihood. Particularly, if someone gets caught and faces some immediate consequence on one of the first few times they shoplift (especially the first time) then that makes a huge difference to the probability that they'll become a habitual shoplifter
- The vast majority of shoplifting is done by a small number of essentially lifelong career shoplifters. Imprisoning them is unlikely to set them straight, but taking them off the streets for long periods makes a significant impact on the amount of shoplifting the community experiences
I agree that prisons are literally useless in stopping criminal behavior, and almost certainly accelerate it for most. Prison is only scary the first day on your first bit. The second time you get locked up you already know the system, know all the staff and know all the other inmates. It's less of a deterrent each time.
The issue is that a vast proportion of offenders aren't committing crimes out of necessity. A large proportion are doing it because it appears to be quick, easy money and regular jobs aren't considered manly or cool.
source: a lot of time spent inside
"Con College" — where you learn tricks of the trade, and further divide with racism / hatred.
>stealing ... [because] regular jobs aren't considered manly or cool.
This, but also too many lazier-mindset people think this will be an easy lifestyle to sustain long-term (it's not).
Several states tax a considerable amount on even basic foodstuffs (e.g. Tennessee).
I think UBI would be better. Expecting capitalists to work against their own self-interest is doomed to fail.
And who's the group who is overpoliced in this country? And who up-thread said to target black women? Yep.
The 13th amendment was terrible. It should have never had an exception for punishment for a crime. Instead, we have a states controlled slave state.
They could also consider banning substances that make people more aggressive... There's a particular artificial pesticide whose name I don't remember, which is coincidentally banned in all the places with much lower crime rates, and has been shown to alter behaviour in monkeys.
Having a hidden social credit system hidden and managed by a private actor seems like the worst way of doing it.
I'm not sure if you have been to an American jail but they do not set folks on the straight path. They are basically Crime University, and the folks on the inside trade all kinds of information about how to crime more effectively, where to crime, what tactics police use and what neighborhoods are safest or most dangerous for police activity.
I was thrown in lockup for a weekend for not changing my tags after moving and letting it escalate out of control and what I saw in that inner city lockup truly shocked me. Folks had incredible amounts of illegal goods on them (despite having been searched and thrown in jail) and were openly performing transactions, sharing "industry secrets" and coordinating for future work once they were out.
If you have spent any time in an American jail or prison, I think you would be disabused of the notion that you can simply lock a criminal up for a few months and "fix" them. I would suggest that it's the opposite, a few months in jail turns a newbie criminal into a true amateur or journeyman with networking, education and future opportunities.
Knock 12 points up over 3 years and you lose your license.
The problem is the time it takes from being caught to getting the letter can be a couple of weeks. You could literally go from 0 points to license loss for driving 10 miles on an empty road with changeable speed limits and have no idea until a week or two later when you get 4 letters arrive.
Now until the court takes away your license you’re still allowed to drive, but it gives you no chance to change your behaviour.
I can understand why the stores will do it this way. Each prosecution is very expensive. If you're going to go though the effort with the legal system bring a case that stops the culprit. More so, doing this tends to scare the hell out of people that think they've gotten away with something. Kinda like the thievery version of the Santa Claus song.
"Walmart knows when you are sleeping. Walmart knows when your away, Walmart knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake".
I live in Illinois and look forward to collecting my $2k check for this but the reality is that the only person to blame for the theft is the person committing the theft. The same way we don’t blame women for how they dress or just because someone is trusting that doesn’t make it right to attempt to steal.
you, I, and probably most people on HN have the privilege of seeing it this way. for others, it's sometimes not a moral question, but a question of survival or at least dignity.
This premise assumes two things for it to be true:
1. These stores have the technology to detect when you started a checkout transaction with an item, but said item was not scanned. 2. These stores have the additional technology to detect the cost of this item (afterall, if they're aiming for a threshold then they have to have some sort of monetary figure here).
I don't doubt that machine learning object detection can say, track a banana versus an apple. But I sincerely doubt its reliable enough where it can classify Mandarin oranges versus regular oranges. If the tech was reliable enough to do EITHER of these two technical abilities (let alone both of them at the same time), then the grocery would simply employ this technology as part of the self checkout process itself. Screw prosecuting people, just have them use this wizzbang auto detection self checkout where no scanning is needed.
Finally, I sincerely doubt that even with enough instances that you'd be successful in a prosecution that you actually could prove intent to shoplift versus say the much more likely fact that you forgot to scan an item or poorly scanned it. Again, to prove a serious intent then would subsequently have to build some sort of pattern analysis (i.e. you always stole expensive cheese or something) to make it obvious.
Has there been even a single prosecuted case someone can actually point to? It really doesnt make sense. I also could see this being thrown out because an argument could be made that the company sitting back and letting this continue to occur without intervention is tacitly allowing it to continue and thus sets a precedence that its allowable.
This feels like it should be illegal. Holding back on reporting or prosecuting until you think you're more likely to get a conviction or a bigger conviction, feels close to entrapment.
To do otherwise is just unnecessarily vindictive, showing that it's the punishment that matters more than the prevention.
A year ago my wallet was stolen. The guy went on a shopping spree until my cc companies started denying charges. In each store he made sure to spend less than $500, so individually there was no crime worth reporting. I did file it as $2k+ of stolen goods but afaik the cops never pursued it and the thief got away with it.
The point is that from the store’s point of view the only way to prevent it is to wait for it to be a crime the SA will prosecute. It’s honestly shocking to me that people in these comments rush to defend thieves stealing power tools and stuff from Home Depot. There’s no argument to be made about them “stealing food for their staving families” this is very clearly purely about crimes of opportunity by selfish degenerates who have no interest whatsoever in the betterment of society.
And btw, it’s possible that Home Depot does report every crime, but the only time anything happens is once it reaches that threshold that progressive SAs determine is worth prosecuting.
Hah. I had pretty good evidence when it came to my stolen laptop and iPhone when I was given a lead to the person selling them on eBay (essentially, someone bought the phone on eBay, tried to convince me to unlock it, and when I refused and the seller refused to take it as a return, he said "I know the real owners info and I'm giving him your info").
His eBay page was a treasure trove. Probably 100+ phones for sale, most "without charger". Same, 50+ laptops, "no chargers or accessories".
Contacted the police.
"He probably didn't steal them himself" - Uhh, isn't selling knowingly stolen property still a crime?
"..."
They could not possibly have cared less.
Someone steals enough from big box store, and the cops DO RESPOND and charge etc.
Individual has proof of multiple thefts, and cops don't give one fuck, as in your case.
Now speaking of retail theft, by far the biggest retail theft is time-theft against employees. Do you know wwhat happens when you report that? You're told its a civil matter.
Individual wronged == civil matter
Big company == criminal matter
If they get away with it, they never stop, and just keep stealing more and more. Most never hit any repercussions. Yet in amount of actual numbers of people committing those acts, it's a very small number compared to the number of thefts.
So stopping it early is just smarter. Better to stop someone stealing 250 euro, rather than wait a year, let that same person steal more and more, just until they steal 5000 euro and it's worth it to prosecute. It's still the same person, same amount of effort. Just more damage to society.
In Texas the felony limit is $2,500. Is stealing $1000 on Monday, $1000 on Tuesday, and $1000 on Wednesday really so much better than stealing $3,000 on Monday?
It shouldn't be. It's a crime
It doesn't feel close to entrapment at all.
Maybe you could argue they aren't doing their best to minimise losses and such aren't eligible for a full recovery of their losses, but not that the perpetrator didn't commit the offense.
I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.
You don’t want to pay people to do that and put yourself in a higher theft situation, then you haggle the customer even more by treating them like a criminal.
I had one of these happen at a self checkout the other day where the system did object tracking and it turns out I had many duplicate items to scan so I used the same item scan code to save time even though its weight system forces me to do one at a time I can at least have a prealigned code handy. I ended up doing some tricky hand switching between items (crossing over) while doing it quickly and that tripped up the object tracking system, so an employee came over and reviewed the video of my checkout right in front of me… at a grocery store for a $2 item.
The anti consumer sentiment is high for an economy based so highly off consumerism.
I've seen this sentiment in recent years, but with respect to time, self-checkout was always faster than human cashiers. You didn't need to wait while the cashiers did procedures like counting the money in the drawer and waiting for a supervisor to sign-off on it. The lines were unified so that your line was served by 4-8 checkouts rather than 1 cashier (or 2 as is the case with walmart). That meant that any issue with a particular customer e.g. arguing over pricing presented on the shelf vs on the system, needing to send someone out to verify the shelf, didn't affect the time you needed to wait as much. They were a very positive thing for customers when they were introduced.
Basically, instead of having to get in a line of 3-6 people and having to wait for each of those to be served before you by one cashier, you just instantly check-out with usually no line.
With respect to labor, it's basically the same. That's unless, in your part of the world, they let you use the self-checkout with huge quantities of groceries that need bagging. In my experience, there's (always?) a limit on the number of items for self-checkout.
Where I am there is a limit that many people ignore and I have almost never seen any employee try to enforce
Also like the other response, I hadn't heard of explicit limits either, as long as everything fits on the bagging scale.
It's not just about speed, though, it's particularly about the unified lane and the fact that 2 self-checkout stations easily fit in the space of a single human cashier station (that may be unoccupied because of a store's hiring budget). It's also about peoples' patience. If a store hires less cashiers and enough people are still willing to wait in line such that there's profit, well...
The trust is the key. If we are trusted, Home Depot should not be secretly keeping tabs on us...
Yikes, the entitlement. Should they also have someone push your cart around the store and load it for you?
If you don't like it, you have the freedom of association to use a different store.
Life goes by fast. I’d rather spend those small minutes lost with my loved ones or back to doing things I enjoy more. Over my lifetime that’s a lot of time.
I only shop in person at Whole Foods because it’s two blocks away. Every Tuesday they have some nice discounts and it’s fun to walk the aisles. Otherwise I just deliver groceries from Costco every 2 weeks or my Amazon prime subscriptions.
Why continue purposefully at a disadvantage? Makes no sense.
Why not just walk to the theater to your seats and actually get excited for the movie? That ticket seller is doing their job and Gtfo.
I think people are so doom and gloom about this stuff.
Isn’t it better to just like go sit at the seats with your family or friends and enjoy the trailers and talk about the movie before it starts? Idk. That’s actual connection building.
I saw Avengers in Japan and my friends and I were talking to Japanese people about the movie at our seats.. using google translate. Actual connection building.
I don’t think anyone goes to the movies to enjoy waiting in line to ask some college student who doesn’t give a shit for 4 tickets to Dune.
I don’t get it. You like having middlemen? lol
> You like having middlemen?
Consider this, there still has to be someone to maintain that machine. What's the point then, exactly, except to pretend like the people around us don't exist? And just because they're not the closest people to us? I'm afraid I don't see the upside, actually.
Both have lines and the self is always faster. I’m that guy and I timed it myself when I was curious. Like I said. I don’t get it.
They run a business. I just need some stuff and I’m outta there. I don’t really care beyond that exchange.
Even setting that aside, if you're so into min-maxing your free time that you can list waiting in line at the grocery store as one of your biggest regrets in life, then you gotta recognize how privileged a life you lead.
I optimize my life because I get one life.
The actual privileged people are those who were born in first world and still manage to lose somehow.
Well... that's because capitalism incentivizes us to do it wrong. Instead of the dreams of the early sci-fi writers getting real - aka, robots and automation do the majority of the work, leaving humans time to socialize - we have it even worse nowadays, with even with the work force of women added to the labor pool, there still are constant political pushes to expand working hours or to even make it legal to hire children again.
If the profits from productivity gains over the last decades would have been distributed to the workers, either in terms of purchasing power or in free time, we wouldn't be in this entire mess.
On top of that I don't want to be in a position where I get accused of shoplifting when I forgot to scan something. I'm simply not trained on the 7+ different self-checkout terminals they have around here.
When a job doesn't need people, keeping a person there is not some kind of noble gesture. It's annoying.
What exactly do you mean?
That the companies moved to self checkout because they couldn't get the staff?
Or people prefer self checkout because the manned tills are few in number?
The first is very very hard to believe
Why?
At least in the US our unemployment rates have been very low. Higher demand for labor leads to higher labor costs which allows more expensive automation to be economical.
You can say "Well pay them more", but that doesn't get you out of a labor shortage. That just ensures you get the labor rather than someone else.
My local grocery store has something like 15 checkout aisles, and usually only have one or two open. If they manned each aisle, there would be no wait and self checkout would be pointless. But they are not going to staff properly because the CEO needs another yacht.
There are - currently - three-hUndred-and--fifty-seven -- people - inthequeue. Please wait
Like imagine being in the era when electricity was becoming more prevalent and I’m sure some people were complaining about some ideal then as well.
That said I do agree that self checkouts should not be using methods beyond what’s reasonably necessary.
I'm all for more efficiency. Me fumbling with self-checkout is the opposite of efficiency.
What's that? I should learn to do it better? How much would that cost in terms of both time and money? Multiply that by several hundred million, as compared with a few hundred thousand cashiers.
You're saying that (x)250,000,000 < (x)500,000, where x = the cost in time and money to become proficient in checking stuff out. Is that correct?
If so, your math seems a little off. AFAICT, the only folks who get the benefit of this "efficiency" are the store owners who, instead of paying folks to do the job, makes the customer do it instead.
What's that? Those savings are passed along to the customer? Give me even one example of this being the case. I've certainly never seen it.
That's what I do. I only go to whole Foods on Tue for the fun of seeing what’s on sale.
I do that as well. In fact, I have deliveries coming today.
But some things I prefer to get from West Side Market and/or H-Mart, which are right nearby me because of the superior selection and my ability to choose specific products for myself.
Without me, there'd be no cart gatherer jobs.
I once said this without stating it as a joke, but was surprised to find people enthusiastically agreeing with me. /s
Even if this suit fails, the store is vulnerable to continuous repeats by other parties. Written consent from each customer is the only viable protection. So the BIPA law may mean that face detection, not just recognition, is not practical in Illinois.
Answer: File a lawsuit and use discovery to find out.
If I don't determine this is a face that I've seen before, I've not recognized the face (maybe I have recognized that there is a face there).
To recognize entails re-cognizing: knowing again what was previously known. Simply noticing that something is a face does not satisfy that; it is only detecting. Without linking it to prior knowledge, recognition hasn’t occurred.
Because, one of the valid dictionary definitions of "recognition" is simply acknowledging something exists. No prior knowledge needed for that, other than the generic training the facial detection software has undergone.
"Facial recognition" refers to seeing a face and knowing whose face it is. It's the difference between "that's a face" and "that's my friend Jeff".
That some constituent word has some other definition is not relevant. What you're doing is equivalent to reading "my nose is running" and thinking "egads! This person's nose has sprouted legs and taken off down the track!"
Edit: it seems the law defined the term "facial recognition" so that was the only answer I was seeking
You can do that, but I hedged my statement with:
> and expect anyone else to understand you
under which constraint, you're incorrect.
There's a relevant quote from Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass:
> "When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
In other words, to put the burden on the listener rather than the speaker to be clear about meaning, is bad communication.
No one reasonably uses "facial recognition" or "I recognized a face" to mean "I detected that there was, indeed, a face there."
In this case, the statute doesn't even say "facial recognition". It discusses storing a "scan of face geometry" such that it identifies an individual, and clarifies that an ordinary photograph doesn't count.
Ignoring context leads to things like "English as She is Spoke" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke
Decent dictionaries give some guidance as to the contexts in which each each definition is applicable, but for thoroughness you probably cannot beat the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary.
The relevant definition here is neither legal nor technical, but from common usage, where recognizing a face, if not qualified, is taken to mean recognizing an individual by their face, not recognizing that you are seeing a face.
Like the google 'incognito' mode that wasn't private browsing, and google was found guilty.
engineers might say "of course it's not private" but the court opinion differed.
common sense to a normal person might not match engineer thinking.
Is a picture of a face count as "biometric" information? I strongly doubt it and suspect this case will be thrown out.
Wren Solutions / Costar seem to be the main vendors of these “public view monitors” — such as the PVM10-B-2086.
https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609...
“Face Detection Boxes (Neon Green, Front and Side Detection)”
In some stores here in the UK they have CCTV with a sort of attention getting dancing LED light ring around the lens which I assume is there to a) trick you into looking straight at it (and so get a clear shot of your face) and b) remind people that cameras are there doing something.
One time at the grocery store I watched a cashier clock out, shop for herself, then check out at the self checkout (!). I wonder if she recognized the irony.
Aldi really annoyed me by showing live video on the self checkout screen with the notice "Monitoring In Progress". Then I realized Walmart and many others have a camera notch on their monitors, too, so perhaps I should thank Aldi for at least being honest?
Anybody using facial recognition or similar may know me very well by now. I'm the guy in the mask who flips them off.
False positive their ass into a cell and I'll guarantee you this garbage will stop fast.
That really winds me up too - it shows such contempt for legitimate customers.
Also, the HD nearest me has no fewer than 10 ALPRs in their parking lot. They've made absolutely sure that you're gonna get into the database.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
There is a bit of a spate here in the UK where just walk in, literally empty shelves into bags and walk out. Some security guards or assistants try to intervene, but apparently some security guards (e.g. ones at apple stores) are told not to try and intervene so really what's the point?
The plot twist for this though is that the police are increasingly using "facial recognition vans" to spot people walking around in town centers and apprehending them for thefts from stores, sometimes months previously since they have CCTV footage of them doing it. One hopes there is more evidence than just a hit on the facial ID database as we all know how inaccurate and biased they can be.
That expensive 30 dollar bottle of shampoo for example, in the handbag, and just checkout the other items like normal.
I worked at a place where we could easily track people through the store. Not ID them, but if at any point we clicked on a person, and we could see from entering the store until exiting the store everywhere they passed. shoplifting is super easy to prove after the fact, just hard to do whilst they are still in the store
Anyone rubbing two brain cells together could deduce that they're using facial recognition.
So you are 100% correct - the article is badly written because it doesn't give that context to how people use the legal system to determine whether or not there is a case to be had.
Absolute proof it could never happen? No, but we don’t need that.
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/asda-iss...
Home depot goes out of the way to make its cameras visible. There is a large "camera" sign, bright light to catch your attention, a visible display to show it's not a fake, and sometimes even a motion activated chime. I assume the green square around the face is the next step in a game.
Exactly - these checkout monitors are positioned so you can see you're being filmed. I'm surprised the purpose of this is unclear to anyone.
A few days later I get an email "your item hasn't been picked up and you've been refunded."
Apparently if you scan an item and pay for it in the store they still expect you to wait for their staff to approve you, or something. It wasn't clear.
This was also only necessary because they didn't accept Apple pay so I had no way of paying for my items except through the app.
>The registers is not where they need to be combating theft.
There is plenty of theft happening at the self-checkout registers as well, as it's very easy to do.
The charitable view is someone is opening the packaging to e.g. make sure that the thread is the right size (in the UK especially we suffer from annoying mixture of old legacy imperial measurement era pipes/threads/etc as well as metric).
The unchartiable view is they are opening the packet and stealing the bit they need/lost/broke 45 minutes earlier and need to finish the job.
I have lived in neighborhoods where theft is unheard of, and I have lived in neighborhoods where I checked to make sure each item hadn't been opened before putting them in my cart.
also locked cabinets... cause me to not buy whatever is in them.
Gets to me the worst when I'm on my 3rd Home Depot trip of the day BEEP looking through a box of pipe fittings that is filled with everything _except_ the fitting matching the label on the box BEEP okay.. the Home Depot website says it's in stock at the one 20 minutes up the store BEEP but, that's what it said about BEEP the stock at this store so.. but hmm BEEP maybe I could combine these two other fittings and save a BEEP ... trip to the other store, okay I'll look here for... BEEP hmm, the two fittings I would need to combine also aren't in the right BEEP box, but... it looks like maybe there's some that someone put back into a BEEP different box? Oh, wait BEEP _none_ of these fittings are in their correct box? What!? BEEP
Sorry I've just never had anybody to talk with this about. I hate those things with a passion. Let me know if you'd like to start a support group.
There are fewer and fewer physical stores left that sell non-food for reasonable prices. Home Depot is often the only choice (at least in my area, the competitors, Lowes and Ace Hardwares, are more expensive, sell fewer things, and sometimes worse quality too)
In my local supermarket, the screen turns on and shows the face of the customer when they select "finish and pay", which I suspect is to give a "honesty nudge".
Using a Kroger self-checkout is tantamount to waterboarding. Hesitate for a quarter of a second before placing your item on the scale? Angry prompt. Put an item on the scanner (which itself is another scale) but it doesn't scan within half a second? Angry prompt. Get three angry prompts? Now you get a fourth angry prompt, except this one can only be dismissed by a staff member, and we've already established that they're few and far between.
I've given up on actually bagging my items while checking out. I can't rearrange anything in the bags, or move the bags, without the checkout machine throwing a hissy fit. So no, it's not actually faster, because I have to bag everything after paying for it. It totally breaks the pipeline of the checkout.
- Real estate: Self-checkout takes minimal floor space. Stores can fit ~10 stations in the area of 2 cashier lanes. Even if you hire more cashiers, there’s no room to add lanes.
- Demand vs. staffing: Checkout demand is dynamic, staffing is static. You can’t instantly add cashiers during a rush, and you don’t want them idle when it’s slow. Self-checkout stations are basically ~free to run.
- Cart size: Trader Joe’s works without self-checkout because their stores are small, carts are tiny, and checkouts max ~20 items. Their cashier lanes are smaller but occupy a bigger share of store space than Walmart or Kroger. In big stores with huge carts, no one wants to be stuck behind a full cart. Once you pick a lane, you’re locked in even if another line moves faster, whereas self checkout lanes are serviced by all machines.
But in the big stores with huge inventories, no one wants to wait behind a person with a huge cart and once you commit to a lane, you're stuck, even if someone else finishes faster.
It's just a wireless barcode scanner on a table with a receipt printer and a payment terminal. The screen shows everything you've scanned with pictures! and legible product descriptions, which makes it really easy to make sure you scanned everything correctly.
HyVee actually removed all self-checkouts. This sucks because they had awesome self-checkouts with conveyor belts.
Also, the last time I went to my local Costco, you were no longer permitted to check yourself out at the self-checkouts. They didn't remove them, but they had started using them as cashier-staffed checkouts.
A lot of retailers have dumped NCR and gone in-house for their self checkout software packages now and made it so much better. Home Depot took their custom point-of-sale and built their own self checkout frontend on top of it to allow all checkout lanes to “convert” to self checkout.
Target also did the same, dumping NCR’s software and rolling in-house software on top of the hardware to make it Not Suck.
... except at the "PRO" checkouts. Which are actually just ordinary check-out lanes. Anybody can go through them. The signs mean nothing whatsoever.
I never go through their self-checkouts unless I've only got one or two pre-packaged items. I usually park on the "PRO" side, enter through those doors, check out on that side, and leave through those doors.
I'm pretty sure this is illegal. All businesses need to accept cash somewhere, somehow. I am curious what would happen if you forced the issue and announced to the attendant that you intend to pay in cash.
That depends on where you are. In NYC, businesses have been required to accept cash in person since 2020[0]. In 2025, New York State[1] followed suit.
[0] https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3...
[1] https://qns.com/2025/06/cash-payments-to-protect-unbanked-sh...
The only store where I insist on paying cash is (maybe not surprisingly) Home Depot, because they have this odd, shameless practice of tying your in-store purchases with your web account, and sending emails in response. No thank you.
However, where a store might be spying on me when I'm just doing my shopping, it's guaranteed they're spying on me if I'm using self-checkout.
Honestly, though, the privacy invasion is only part of why I don't do self-checkout. Another major part is that I don't want to risk the store thinking that I stole something from them.
(Conveniently, I live in a large-enough city for there to be plenty of other options. Including small or high-touch stores, which do not have self-checkout.)
When a corporation lies for profit and gets caught, it is merely a "mistake" and no criminal charges are filed.
Individuals aren't afforded the same privilege.
I don't see the point in campaigning against things like this, because it only protects bad people. If the government wants to get you, they won't use home depot to do it, they'll just take you from your house or shoot you in the street. If they want to spy on you, they'll break into your house and put microphones under your carpet and cameras in your walls.
If we actually had cameras like this everywhere, there would be so much less crime. Instead of the drug addict robbing twenty shops a day, they'd be arrested in the second shop.
If you don't want that to happen, give cashiers their jobs back, you greedy bastards.
It's a lousy deal for everyone except the business.
If it's super fast, it's just for a few items, and a cashier would've been just as fast. If it's for a lot of items, there's a decent chance I have to look up some codes or something; which a cashier is better and faster at.
The trade off of self checkout is cost savings for the business. These savings are not passed on to me. Therefore, I don't give a flying rat's ass about them.
I'm with OP. If I'm working for the business, they will compensate me. Willingly or unwillingly.
Some self checkouts are better than others the worst ones are the ones that don’t let you take your items off the scale after scanning and then they throw an error for you to put them back.
I’ve also never felt treated like cattle but I’d figure a checkout with a cashier is more cattle like since you are being funneled through a tight space one after the other vs an open space like self checkouts.
Many stores near me appeared to cut cashiers before they added self-checkouts. If anything, adding self-checkouts increased the number of available options to get out of the store faster.
I'd place my bets on curbside pickup getting pushed more before cashiers get added given how popular it's become as an option.
Only in recent years have self-checkouts started appearing in any significant number, and the formula hasn't changed. I guess theoretically stores might be able to cut back on employees, but it would be literally one or two people at most.
Of all of this hassle, the cashier merely handles a single step. You already do all the work.
I'm not sure what you mean by "treated like cattle". I haven't really had a bad experience with self-checkout, granted, we probably don't live in the same country / culture.
The receipt checking happens with the cashier as well, just implicitly. If anything, they are treated badly, with having to stand most of the time in the US. Absolutely unnecessary.
Facial recognition I don't like either, but stores (and others) will do that anyways, with self-checkout being, at most, an excuse to develop/improve/deploy such systems. Theft would be a problem/excuse anyways for stores, and advertising is a pretty big trojan horse in this regard as well. Self-checkout doesn't make a difference here.
(This is getting tangential, but I do exactly what you describe, and I really appreciate that I can do it on my terms, without having to accommodate three other people: the one in front of me, the cashier, and the one next in line.)
Uh, no? Ralphs absolutely has a full order and pay online thing, then you just drive to the store and get your groceries delivered to your car. I used it just yesterday as I can't go anywhere after my oral surgery.
Not sure what stores you're going to go but this is nowhere near my experience.
Not only do I have the muscle memory, still after 30 years, I also have the added incentive of knowing the value of my own time, not being fatigued from hours of work, the ability pre-position items in the cart at an optimal orientation for handling and scanning, and foreknowledge of what items I have and a plan for how best to bag them that was made prior to my arrival at self-checkout.
So, yeah, I scan faster.
Much faster.
edit: oh man this has brought up a bunch of frustrations. Why do customers just pile shit on the counter? When I interact with a cashier, like at a gas station on a long road trip, every item I place on the counter has the barcodes oriented towards the person, so they can just "zap zap zap zap" the items rapid-fire without handling them. My bag (I live in a civilized state that has banned plastic bags) is ready and waiting, items are organized and presented in an order that make sense for ease of bagging. My payment method is ready. The experience is efficient and quick.
It takes no mental effort to do any of this and yet I am constantly stuck behind people who act as though they are purchasing things for the first time in their entire lives and the process is as foreign to them as communicating in the language of an extraterrestrial intelligence is to me.
But to answer your question, after a year I use those 30 extra minutes to play Sonic the Hedgehog six or seven times, nibbling on an ice cream sandwich between acts and zones, a sandwich that eventually melts and makes a great mess of things including all over my Genesis controller, which I clean in the kitchen while looking out the window over the sink.
Also the only place truly training cashiers, AFAICT, is Aldi's.
Their self-checkouts used to be slow because the registers would verify the weight of items on the scale (the surface where you bag it) before letting you put it in the cart. If it didn't like the weight it would force you to put it back in the bag. I don't think they do this anymore. Asset protection can view a camera pointed at the scanner and bags if they think you're stealing.
Furthermore, it's hard for Walmart to retain people, so cashiers are treated like a dump stat. They won't really dedicate people to checking out anymore unless that's all they can do, e.g. elderly, so someone who's a cashier all day tends to be slow because they're accomodating that person. So you could be the fastest cashier in the world but it won't mean anything as far as raises, etc. Your fast cashiers are often pulled off and stocking unless its super busy.
(I wish I was kidding; discounters that squeeze costs everywhere including cashier throughput seem to be the exception in retail.)
Even aside from the line, the only thing clerks are sometimes faster at in my experience is ringing up fresh produce where codes have to be typed in (these codes are usually on a label on the produce, but if not you have to go through a lookup procedure if you haven't memorized the code).
Supermarkets usually have old slow people running them. The only time I don't use self checkout is when I have alcohol, and it is slower every single time than doing it myself.
Personally, I'm faster at scanning items than most cashiers are. I used to work in retail, though, so maybe that's just me.
I haven't ever experienced a receipt check while using self-checkout. If I did, I'd stop visiting that store. That's a bright red line for me. To my partner's chagrin, it's one of the reasons I won't go into Costco.
While self-checkout is less private in a lot of ways (see article) I value it because I have social anxiety and would prefer to avoid too much (or too little!) smalltalk with cashiers -- especially about the items I'm buying.
Not self checkout related, but the Kroger stores by me have all started having security guards check receipts before you can leave the store. They do this whether or not you do self checkout. Accordingly, I have stopped patronizing those stores because I refuse to spend my money at a business that treats me like a criminal. I sympathize in that they are trying to stop theft, but I'm not going to put up with that particular method of deterrence.
They got rid of it eventually and I started shopping there again, but if they start doing receipt checks they're back on the shit list.
Besides, most places nowadays you have to explicitly ask for a receipt or press extra buttons within a 5-second time window to get one.
When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only.
Last year I went to get some low voltage wire. I walked for several aisles in both directions to find someone to open the cage. Not a soul. So I reached behind the cage and pulled it out, went to self checkout, began paying with cash. The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day. Associate casually went to another register and got me change. When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental.
I discovered a smaller local hardware store and go there. The employees constantly ask you if you need help which is the complete opposite of home depot.
Under no circumstance will I shop at Home Depot again.
(And, today I drove by that HD and noticed they installed multiple ALPR.)
I think you're being paranoid.
I also think you're being paranoid.
In contrast the local hardware store succeeded in using its employees as both a deterrent to theft and being welcoming to its customers.
https://www.securityinformed.com/news/co-855-ga-co-1753-ga.2...
Maybe the cop was parked out of the way eating his lunch.
A lot of retailers do that now. They match first 6/last 4 in store against your online account to match receipts up. Walmart is a big one now with that implemented across their self-checkouts (and eventually pushed onto the registers with their new software/hardware upgrade push).
> The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day.
Slightly makes sense if they haven’t loaded every machine up with a full cash load. Plus some lanes might “accidentally” be turned on without any cash in them and not put into a “cards only” state.
Picture this. Guy comes home late at night. Outdoor light is on. He goes in and presses he light switch. No lights come on but the fuse blows and now the outdoor light is gone.
What does he do?
The answer is that you have no idea based on only that information. It's tempting to think he'll do what my friends and I would do: find the fusebox and investigate.
But the thing is, his crazy ex's crazy boyfriend threatened yesterday to kill him. This guy is bolting, not looking for the fusebox.
The last two visits revealed the complete elimination of checkout lines and the appearance of a new cluster of self service registers with a new orientation perpendicular to the old lines. As I stood before the register, looking at the large monitor, I watched my dehumanized face beleaguered by green lines. I realized it had no other purpose but to foist an impression of my dirty face toward me, conveying my position as a filthy, groveling consumer pestering them with my petty needs. The camera could easily do its work without the hostile display, but then the customer may get away with a sense of dignity, which to them would be a form of shoplifting, or squandered neuromarketing potential.
During each visit, I make it a point to express my contempt for this to any ostensibly human employees nearby. I do so respectfully, yet their pride as high priests of home improvement and the glorious providence of private equity that blesses their sacred mission always results in perceived offense. Despite prefacing my grievance as not directed personally at them, the allure of indignance prevails and I always walk away as the bad guy who dared piss on their holy gilded ground.
Their use of cameras bothers me for different reasons, but I'm glad to fan the flames.
I look at myself and go "damn that's one sexy dude I'm gonna jut out my chin and stand up straight so if anyone looks at this, they fall in love with me".
Also, the staff doesn't identify as anything except someone trying to make it through their day.
Or perhaps it's truly pure gratitude and warm hearted loyalty for having a job, any job, which our future suggests won't be very common soon.
On a more serious note, I don't think it's terribly valid to dismiss these behaviors (Home Despot mug shaming, not zealous employee bots) as nothing more than a fun opportunity to admire one's reflection. It may not by itself be a keystone stride on the path of anomie, but it's a stride indeed and I don't want that kind of society. Maybe you do. Home Depot and Blackrock certainly do. I don't.
If you think the company has contempt for you then you might try to see what they put new employees through. If you feel lucky just to be able to complete your transaction then you shouldn't have to wonder hard what it's like to feel lucky just to receive a paycheck without any notes or veiled corporate threats attached.
The gamification of society has reduced us all to cattle.