Computer Opens Unmanned Store For Holiday 333
tomhudson writes "The Walkato Times in New Zealand is reporting that someone forgot to tell the computer not to unlock the supermarket on the Friday holiday. 'About half of the 24 people who came into the supermarket paid for their groceries using the self-scan service. The service stopped working after alcohol was scanned, requiring a staff member to check a customer's age before the system is unlocked.' The owner, Mr Miller, was quoted as saying 'I can certainly see the funny side of it... but I'd rather not have the publicity to be honest. It makes me look a bit of a dickhead.' Rather than take legal action, Mr Miller is hoping that the people who didn't pay will do the right thing."
Half Honest (Score:2)
That's about twice as many as I would expect! Good going.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well the numbers would make sense.
about 1/2 see this as a good steal and take advantage of it.
about 1/4 would see it as a trick where they could get in trouble later in life. (oh the cameras will get me, or if I do this now and abuse the system they will tighten the system down)
about 1/8 would see this as they will get in trouble after life (Religion is an attempt to keep society honest by removing the idea you can really get away with something if you don't get caught).
about 1/8 are just very honest people
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
1/2 of the people in the USA make money, the other 1/2 spend whatever they can get from the productive half. I'm guessing the numbers are not all that different in .nz so I'm not surprised the ratio worked out that way.
The non-productive half who sponge off the productive half probably see it as getting the middleman out of they way ... From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, etc.
Alternately it might be a mapping of peer pressure, 1/2 will zombie like copy whatever they see o
Re: (Score:3)
I went for some groceries yesterday evening. The total came to $59.xx and the clerk gave me $42.xx in change.
I looked at the two extra $1's and then at the receipt to double check her error. I handed the money back to the clerk and went on my way.
My point is that I am currently unemployed and "homeless" (currently staying with a friend). Sure, it would have been in my favor to just ignore her error and keep the extra two bucks. Under the circumstances, I gave it back because:
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you expect 1/4th to be honest people? I wouldn't trust anybody.
When you leave your desk to go home, do you lock all the drawers?
Less then half? (Score:3)
OK, this is somewhat off topic, but what the hey – it about honesty and controls.
I just heard a story about the person who ran the gift store at Kennedy Center. For those of you who don’t know, this is where the president goes when he wants to hear a little light opera or what not. The gift store was run by volunteers, mainly older retired people who like high culture. Not the profile of the average criminal. And yet people where ripping off the till right and left. A few dollars here to pay for
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That's about twice as many as I would expect! Good going.
I wonder how many of that half who didn't pay were trying to buy alcohol but had no one to authorize their purchase.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect that means a lot of them were too oblivious to even notice anything was off. Perhaps the normal staff tends to be 'away' from their post as a matter of course. :)
Only in NZ (Score:3, Funny)
What a fantastic official response. If only managers in America would openly admit to being the dickheads they are...
Eheh, managers (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about the people who stole groceries? What are they? 1 manager, how many thieving customers?
This is actually a useful social study and most liberals will NOT like the result. This "experiment" shows that a large number of people will ONLY obey the rules of society if somebody is standing behind them with a heavy stick.
Yes, a lot of people will behave. For the rest, we need armed police and guard dogs. Pity. If only there was some method of getting rid of the assholes. But we can't and so to counter 1 asshole, we need the entire justice system. (Because while not everyone paid, a few will also simply have left without taking anything)
If you ever handle an event or social place, you will know just how annoying the dickheads are, managers or otherwise. You can do so many things in a world without dickheads. For instance, you hate 3g coverage and price? No problem just use my Wifi. I don't mind you downloading email or browsing on it. Oh wait, I got to use a password because 1 dickhead in thousands will use it to break the law. No easy free roaming wifi for everyone else.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it that "most liberals will NOT like the result."? Isn't it is the *conservatives* who keep saying "we don't need more big government, we can self-regulate." ?
Re: (Score:3)
Whats the difference between a conservative and a liberal.
Liberals want the government to fix everyones problems.
Conservatives want the government to fix their problems. Everyone else is on their own.
dont believe me? Ask a conservative on SSN or medicare or farm subsidies or whatever government program they might get money from if they are ok losing their services. It is only the other guy who doesnt deserve it.
Re:Eheh, managers (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to be pretty cynical about humanity until I worked in a grocery store in the hood once in college. I was expecting to encounter a lot of thieves and miscellaneous punks, but they were actually very rare (even in one of the shittiest neighborhoods in town). I encountered WAY more people who would point out to me that I gave them too much change than who were out to steal or con. I had many a gang-banger tell me when I had undercharged them and many people who would offer to pay for something even if they dropped it.
People are actually, by and large, a pretty decent lot. And that's true pretty much anywhere you go, I suspect.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
-1, Troll.
Trying to ignite a political flame war with a idiotic screed about how a slow news day story proves liberals are wrong about supposedly not wanting the rule of law? Your trolling is far too obvious. Try a little subtlety next time.
Re:Eheh, managers (Score:4, Interesting)
This is actually a useful social study and most liberals will NOT like the result. This "experiment" shows that a large number of people will ONLY obey the rules of society if somebody is standing behind them with a heavy stick.
You're making an implication that this means that we have to stand behind them with a heavy stick to obey. The German Bahn system works by letting pretty much anyone on board. If it's ICE, or regional then you're probably going to have your ticket checked by an attendant... the punishment for boarding without a ticket? Buying a ticket. What happens if you just happen to be in the bathroom when they pass? Nothing.
If you're using the S-Bahns, or U-Bahns, or Straßebahns, then you're less likely to get checked, but the costs go up equivalently. The fee for using the S-Bahns/U-Bahns without a ticket? About 40€, which puts it at the same cost as a month-long ticket.
The advantages of this system are: no annoying turnstiles that don't let you through unless you have a ticket, no need to hire armed guards to patrol the facilities looking for people trying to beat the system, and while sure, some people get through without paying, and perhaps even ride a lot without paying, those that you do catch end up paying for a monthly ticket anyways, so you still get the funding that you need to keep operating, and the person learns a lesson in social responsibility...
And of course, even if you do stand behind them with a big stick, you're never going to completely stop everyone from ever committing a crime... that's simply a fact... and of course, the wonderful lesson here is: only a police state will stand behind you all the time with a big stick threatening to use it if you break the law... because only in a police state do they feel the need to ensure that people don't ever break the law in the first place.
Re: (Score:3)
This is more of a cultural issue. I bet in Germany the % of those paying would be a lot higher, unlike in the anglo-saxon counterpart countries.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, as noted in the summary (you didn't even read the summary?) the system stopped working when someone scanned an alcoholic beverage, as this requires a human to manually verify the id. It might actually have been that everyone who walked in the store at least tried to be honest, but just couldn't pay because the machine was "broken".
Reminds me of Clerks a bit, I must say
Re: (Score:2)
I was surprised to see 'dickhead' in an official response. Is it a less vulgar term in NZ than in the US?
Re: (Score:2)
Honesty vs Convienience (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
To not walk out of a store with unpaid-for products is a tough choice? How so? Unless there was some kind of life threatening emergency, I wouldn't even consider stealing. That half... HALF of the people that went into the store would walk out without paying is really disappointing.
Re: (Score:2)
I once ate lunch at a 'greasy spoon' at the local general aviation airport before taking my plane out for some practice around the pattern. I forgot to pay for the meal (you have to go up to the resister to pay) on the way out because my mind was too involved with my pre-flight requirements. On the way out of the airport I stopped back in to the restaurant to pay the bill (a bit red in the face), also left a big tip!
Re: (Score:2)
The people who opted not to pay probably don't own their own planes.
Not saying that makes it right by any means, just that your experience may not be representative.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite the same thing, but I'd liken it to iTunes. iTunes basically took off not because people really wanted to pay for music very badly, but because they made getting legitimate music easier than pirating it, and price it such that paying really wasn't a huge deal. Getting caught doing this wasn't a huge detterent because almost no one ever got caught.
In the same light, many people might not have an issue paying for the groceries (even if they could take them without being caught) if it was quick and
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't take much to shuffle the basket aside, perhaps replace the refrigerated/frozen food items so they don't spoil and head out.
It may be inconvenient to go to another store, but I'm not the type of person who would steal for convenience's sake.
Don't forget what one would lose by making it out with a basket of unpaid goods, on different levels of ethics:
1: If someone has so poor ethics that they steal the relatively small cost of food and other grocery store goods, how can one ever trust that individual
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While that would make sense if you knew that there was no way to pay ahead of time, by the time I'm done looking at items, deciding what I want to eat, and picking it up, I may have spent 30 minutes. It's an implicit bargin that I would be allowed to purchase t
Re: (Score:2)
If there is a price difference between what is on the shelf and what the computer rang it up as, I'd say the computer probably has the more up-to-date price. That doesn't mean they get to list one price on the sh
Re: (Score:2)
I tried to buy something once through a self-scanner, and it rang up a remarkably lower price than it should have. I completed the checkout, paid, and then went to customer service to explain the issue. The customer service clerk looked at me as if I had nine heads, especially after scanning the item and seeing that the barcode scan gave the same price that my receipt said I'd paid. She then said something like, "no, you paid for this", clearly not understanding my motivation for mentioning it, so I left.
I don't know about where you live, but where I do, once you've paid for the item, they can't change the price on you and insist you give them more money. However, they must fix it if they overcharged you (and give you extra money as well) due to the Michigan Pricing and Advertising of Consumer Items Act [mi.gov]. Granted, said Act is being replaced with an updated version [michigan.gov] later this year to address automated systems like the one in question.
Heck, the retailers I worked for in the early 2000s, unless there was a hu
Free Beer!!! (Score:2)
So after the Zombie uprising I won't have to break into places because they now open themselves regardless of if anyone is there to watch over them?
Re: (Score:2)
No - rather you won't be save inside modern shopping malls because it's going to unlock and let all the zombies in :).
My thought has always been that I'll just hangout in my attic in the event of a zombie apocalypse. I could make access (cutting a hole) to the roof if need be to get away - there is no way up into the attic without pulling down a draw string that can easily be retracted - AND I could "borrow" into my pantry to retrieve groceries as needed (assuming I didn't have time to move all the canned
Re: (Score:2)
(and in reality the bag is more just for "general purpose emergency use" than for zombies)
It would be better to make it a multipurpose apocalypse bag. Silver bullets will still kill zombies (if you shoot them in the head), but will also work on other supernatural creatures, etc. Multi-purpose in your "go bag" is always a good thing.
I recommend a six-demon bag, too. :)
Be careful to not misinterpret (Score:5, Insightful)
About half of the 24 people who came into the supermarket paid for their groceries using the self-scan service
Note that this doesn't say that all 24 people who came into the supermarket took anything in the first place. I can easily see some going in and filling the shopping cart, but then noticing that registers are unmanned and leaving the cart in the shop (if e.g. the person doesn't feel like using self-checkout, or doesn't know how).
It would be interesting to know how many actually didn't pay for something that they took.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yeah. That's a good point. Some did just stroll out with merchandise, though.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll bet they counted the people using CCTV footage, so they would know exactly how many people there were and whether they paid, and whether they left their merchandise behind. My question is, were there 24 customers total, or were there only 24 customers who left with goods?
My hypothetical fantasy: there were 12 people who paid at the self-checkout, 6 who made it to the register and abandoned their goods, 3 who took their shopping with them without paying, and two who tried to lift everything they coul
Re: (Score:2)
I'll bet they counted the people using CCTV footage, so they would know exactly how many people there were and whether they paid, and whether they left their merchandise behind. My question is, were there 24 customers total, or were there only 24 customers who left with goods?
Per TFA, the store opened at 8am, and was closed at 9:20am. Given that it is a holiday, I wouldn't expect many people trying to shop around at this time, so 24 customers sounds legit.
But yeah, it's clear from TFA that they have all records from cameras, so they know exactly how many there are. It's just that it's not in the article (or worded such that it is unclear).
Video (Score:3, Informative)
Link [tvnz.co.nz]
Includes some CCTV footage.
Re:Video (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks! This has the missing bit - specifically, there is a mention that "over 50 people" visited the store. So then 24 is likely to be the number of those who actually took something.
Another interesting thing in the report is that store owner agreed to release CCTV footage to the TV network only on the condition that they blur the faces of all customers - even those who can be seen not paying in the video. It's a good thing to see such respectful attitude towards privacy, especially when the owner has all reasons to not be polite towards those people.
Re:Be careful to not misinterpret (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
In point of fact, a poorly-thought-out system cost them profits. If the store requires that someone be there to cash out customers, why not just leave the door locks manual and give the management staff who will be there during store hours keys to the doors?
Besides, it's pretty clear that the loss of profits had a great deal to do with no one being there to take the money from at least half of the potential customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only that but maybe some people really needed milk for their Easter Feast or baby formula but the automated register had stop working. So they'll come in on Monday and pay for the food.
I'm sure there were other shops around that could have sold them those items. Hell I work in a very small town (population is roughly 6,000) and there are no less than 5 grocery stores in town to choose from (plus a myriad of smaller stores that also carry necessities like baby formula and eggs). I don't think "it was an emergency" will hold up.
More would have paid if checkouts didn't lock (Score:3)
So I infer from the description that if those first customers did not lock up all the checkouts by scanning in Alcohol perhaps more of the later customers could have also paid for their purchases.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Not that I agree with not paying in any way, but I'm curious: would you consider it necessary for them to put all their merchandise back before they leave? Or can they just leave the cart at the front and walk out? What about any refrigerated items? Should they be responsible for those if they leave the cart and they spoil? What if the person is managing a small child or two? Maybe they don't have time to put everything back. Maybe they or a loved one have a medical condition that requires them to get
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point, what if you really needed that butter, couldn't pay because the register was locked, and planned to return on Monday with cash? Is that so bad?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fascinating (Score:2)
From all of the claims the *AA made, I would have expected an empty store and 0 paying customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Well it's not America. Just look how long it look for looting to start in Japan, compared to Katrina. Cultures with history and a lack of diversity seem to get along much better.
Re: (Score:2)
If this were to happen in Japan, they'd have 90% or more that would have paid. They are a society that loves rules and order and (to an extent) they still believe in personal honor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's worth noting that 'looting' usually follows something pretty big and serious happening. Otherwise all shopping centers would require armed security at all times.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that once there's no security and some people realize that they can take without being punished, that releases a flood of people who will overwhelm anyone but armed security.
It's not just that, there's always something like a natural disaster motivating it. Again, if it were just as simple as you're saying, it'd be a huge free-for-all.
Brillant (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight... Somebody designed and built a computer-controlled lock system (that apparently also turns on the self-checkouts), and didn't think something like this would happen?
Would it be that hard to have an "unlock" button to pair with the computer's instructions? When the store's supposed to be locked, the button would do nothing. Between zero and five minutes after the scheduled opening, it unlocks the doors. Five minutes after opening time, a nice reminder sounds. After ten minutes, the computer could assume human error, and stop trying to unlock the doors.
Developing and installing the system would likely cost a trivial amount compared to the risk of leaving a store unlocked and unattended all day.
Kudos to the store owner (Score:2)
In a world where the increasing response to our own stupidity is to litigate, kudos to the store owner for admitting a screw-up and taking responsibility.
Double kudos to the folks who actually paid.
Shame on the folks who stole. Double shame on them for not calling authorities when the store was unmanned. That's more than groceries.. what if the owner was being held at gun point in the back? Of course, can't expect people to actually do the *right thing*, now can we?
Re: (Score:3)
It suggests that dishonesty is the status quo, and that honesty is some self-sacrificing act of heroism.
It must be fun living in utopia but you stated the state of the world and its affairs correctly.
No employees in the store? (Score:2)
Hell, I'd pay extra for that level of service at most of the grocery stores around me!
In Related News... (Score:5, Insightful)
In related news, grocery supermarket chain Pack-N-Save has announced they will be laying off 75% of their workforce. After a one-day experiment to test customer honesty and self-checkout systems, the chain discovered it would be cheaper to fire all of their checkout employees and let customers do it themselves.
Other retail chains are expected to follow suit sometime later this year.
Did they make a profit? (Score:2)
Given that they didn't have to pay any human staff, and 50% of customers paid, did they make or lose money? Also, if the automated teller hadn't of shutdown due to alcohol being purchased, would the number of paying customer have been much higher?
What I don't get... (Score:2)
Why would they have an automated system that opens the store without any operator intervention? I mean, I could understand if they had a system that went through the process of turning everything on and unlocking all the doors once there was someone there to turn a key or something... But to have it just automatically open the store at 8am every morning? The flaw in their system is so painfully obvious.
Watch out, you're next (Score:2)
This is a chilling sign of the times, shows that an non-managed store could do sales... so with that PHBs may decide maybe only half the staff is really necessary or just a few attendants. Yeah, more layoffs, that will fix the economy*.
(*economy == business profits)
Re:It's Surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Good thing it's in New Zealand.
Re:It's Surprising (Score:4, Funny)
Just because it's in New Zealand doesn't mean that the people who paid weren't American. After all, we're known world round for honesty and contributing to the less fortunate. That's why our prison rate is so amazingly low. Umm, right?
Re: (Score:3)
Good thing this happened in NZ. Apparently in the US it is acceptable for people who leave a store without paying to be shot on sight [boingboing.net].
Re:It's Surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Right at opening the staff of various stores are often occupied with opening duties. Putting out new signs, fresh food in the deli, etc. I could easily see walking in, picking up a few items and going through the self-checkout without knowing the stores was otherwise empty. I mean, sure, I might clue in something is wrong when going through the checkout and seeing no cashiers, but hey the self-checkout is working so why worry about it...
Re: (Score:2)
Some people (including myself) have an extreme aversion to self-checkout systems, so I'd notice.
They're too damned temperamental for my tastes. They use scales to weigh the bags to make sure nothing that wasn't scanned ends up in the bag. Of course, if the original input weight was wrong, or (more likely) the scale is just being quirky, you get the prompt to wait for an associate to come over and verify your contents. Then there's the age-related prompts. Things like alcohol, sure, but then you have a m
Re: (Score:2)
It's Alive! (Score:2)
/. continues to chronicle the rise of SkyNet...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to think that there's a relation between "me being fired" and "the place going out of business a month later".
Re:It's Surprising (Score:5, Informative)
What does america have to do with it? This was in new zealand.
Also, the police were called due to reports of truckloads of groceries being removed. So while some people were honest, it appears the dishonest capitalized quickly.
From the article it appears it took less than an hour between someone realizing the store was unlocked an unattended to trying to run off with a pile of free food.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If you mean Christchurch, you are a bit late.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, then half of their customers would pay for things instead of 90% of them stealing things.
What bollocks, there is nothing other than greed/tight-fistedness which makes people illegally download music instead of paying for it. If a business sells its product for $x and you think that is too expensive, you don't fucking buy it.
Sorry, but people don't download stuff without paying as a political protest.
Re: (Score:2)
That is during the time that you could pay. Before the alcohol was scanned. More than half choose to pay.
After you could no longer pay the rate dropped of to 0%. But while you could pay I am guessing that significantly higher than 50% paid.
Now lets see how many people come back and pay later in the week.
Then with math and facts on your side you can say snide shit about things and have some actual knowledge.
Re: (Score:2)
(If we have one of the self checkout software developers here: PLEASE let me continue scanning and require the ID before I pay, instead of halting the entire process.)
I agree, that's one of the most annoying parts of the checkout scanner -- I generally want to scan alcohol first so I can put it in the bottom of the bag, but when I do that, I sit and wait helplessly for the single clerk that is manning 6 self-checkouts. Though the *most* annoying problem is when the scanner tells me I have to bag my item before continuing and I've already bagged it!
2 other pet peeves:
First, use image recognition to help identify fruits/vegetables (or at least narrow down the list) for tho
Re: (Score:2)
The ones near me have fixed both of your other pet peeves.
1. The numbers are on the items in the produce section. You can weigh them there, enter the code, and get a printed-out barcode to put on the bag. Then at the register you can treat them as any other pre-coded merchandise. Honest obviously applies.
2. Just after you start, before you scan the first item, there's a button on the screen that says "My Bag". Press that button, and the screen tells you to place your bags in the bagging area. There's a
Re: (Score:2)
Ahh, you must be in Europe -- my first encounter with weigh-produce-first was in an Irish supermarket when the bemused clerk had to send me back to weigh my produce. I've never seen a store in the USA that does that.
It definitely makes a lot of sense to do it that way -- it speeds the checkout line even for non-self-service lines.
The "My Bag" button sounds perfect, though requiring that someone verify the bag makes it less useful. In my store where the self-service attendant appears to always be busy,
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm honest (Score:4, Insightful)
Eww, replacing people with machines is desirable. It frees up the people to do something more important, instead of a tedious job of threshing grain, carrying buckets of water, digging trenches with shovels, or adding up columns of numbers. (Or writing variations of the same subroutine over and over -- yep, part of the job of a programmer is to replace himself.) The point of technological progress is to make things cheaper (which also often leads to making it practical to make things better) and ultimately, making things cheaper always comes down to not wasting peoples' time on tedious things that could be automated.
And yet, your conclusion is correct anyway. What's fucked up about self-checkout is that it isn't technological progress, because it doesn't replace a person with a machine; it just replaces a person with another person. And the new person (the customer) is less well practiced/skilled at the activity than the old person (checkout clerk). If anything, the expert is so good at the job that they're mentally on auto-pilot anyway, so you could even argue it replaces a (semi-) machine with a person, making it a technological regression. (Ah, the joys of externalizing costs.) It's sort of like they're un-invented the assembly line by selling assemble-it-yourself kits.
Re:I'm honest (Score:4, Insightful)
While I like the sentiment, I think you might be contributing to the problem in a way.
If we had systems such that we could routinely and easily replace some jobs with machines, and we actually deployed those systems as much as possible, we'd ultimately wind up hurrying along the day where we finally change our underlying systems to reflect the massive increases in productivity we have achieved.
I work a 40 hour week (usually more) as my mother did. Yet, because of advances in tech, I am vastly more productive than she was at her job. Even worse, proportionately to executive wages, I'm paid less than my mom was despite doing vastly more work and contributing more to the bottom line.
Once we hit a point where we have permanently high (25% or so) unemployment there will have to be a change to the way things run or there will be armed revolt. I say hurry that day along rather than artificially delaying it.
Also, I always get stuck behind someone who causes trouble and a delay when I don't use self checkout.
Re: (Score:3)
The broken window fallacy is when you destroy goods in order to stimulate the economy. Saying 'I will choose interactions that require human employees' is not the same thing at all.
In fact, the entire argument is stupid, as the breaking windows is correct, from the POV of what the parent is trying to do, which is keep people employed.
I love how so many people have internalized 'Everyone must do what is best of the economy' that they bring up the 'broken windows fallacy' in non-economic situations.
Breakin
Re: (Score:2)
Secondly, when I put my backpack on the bagging shelf before I start scanning anything, zero the bagging scale at that point and let me load my scanned items directly into my backpack.
Training people to put stuff on the shelf without paying for it is probably a bad habit to encourage. The other problem has to do with reliability... Those scales are dramatically less accurate than you probably think. Fundamentally, they act as lie detectors where they only pose a security threat to those who really believe in them. So your algorithm is pretty complicated, do you take the max seen or the min seen or... And how do you "really" know your zero is not drifting if you don't enforce at least
Re:I'm honest (Score:4, Informative)
The non-self service clerks have a handy paper flip-book that they can use (though they seem to remember almost all of them without looking them up).
I can assure you thru extensive personal experience, having worked my way thru school at a retail grocery store, that 99% of all produce dept sales come from 1% of the products. Bananas, Apples, lettuce, cucumbers, grapes, peppers, mushrooms, that's about it. Things like kiwi fruit are stocked for the "ambiance", virtually no one buys them, and they get tossed out as a decorative expense when they start looking bad. Ditto the coconuts, star fruit, etc. Furthermore, there may be 12 slightly different kinds of apples, all with very slightly different prices, but very often the same code will be used by lazy clerks. Finally, many produce depts operate on something remarkably like the salad bar model of you can buy as much as you want at a couple bucks per pound. I worked at a place that did crude unofficial audits of inventory using a flat rate per pound assumption... Also they trained us when receiving shipments from the warehouse to not waste time adding up values, but to go based on a typical dollar value per pallet. If it came from produce, ring it up as apples and you're pretty much close enough that no one will ever complain, neither management nor customers. Produce is not at all like the meat dept where you have a dynamic range of about 20 dB, from 25 cent/pound bones for dogs right next to 25 dollar/pound prime beef tenderloin...
Re: (Score:2)
The other way I've seen of addressing the produce problem is one where there's a camera above each scanner, so if you put your produce on the scanner, the cashier can look it up instead (there was a button to get their attention).
Most of the common produce codes are already known by the cashiers.
Re: (Score:2)
My god people, are your supermarket lines really that long? Wouldn't it be easier to avoid the self-checkouts when you have something that requires clerk verification or searching through a list of produce? In my experience self-checkouts are a net loss: they might save a couple minutes here and there when I can go through without a hitch, but more often than not it just takes longer than waiting in line -- poorly calibrated touch screens, "please bag item" requirements, produce selection, age verification
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Would you trust a store to access the DOL records?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hear their cakes are awesome
Also, show of hands, who read the parent quote with the GLaDOS voice in their head.
Re: (Score:3)
We are talking about a grocery store here. People do need to eat
The store was supposed to be CLOSED. How much outrage would you have felt because a grocery store was closed on a holiday when "People do need to eat"? I'm guessing zero. So your point is rather specious.