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."
Re:It's Surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Good thing it's in New Zealand.
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: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...
Video (Score:3, Informative)
Link [tvnz.co.nz]
Includes some CCTV footage.