Self Checkouts are not even self checkout anymore. You go up and scan your stuff then 2 times out of 3 someone has to come over and approve that you scanned everything. At that point just open the normal lanes back up
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
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I literally stopped shopping at Kroger over this. If you're gonna accuse me of stealing every third item I scan because I use a reusable shopping bag instead of the single-use plastic ones, you aren't getting my business.
I think the only one more over it than me was the poor associate who had to keep signing in to watch videos of me scanning stuff.
It's so annoying. I'll scan something big and the computer is OUT LOUD saying at me "BAG YOUR ITEM" like NO! I DONT WANT TO!
The grocery store nearest my house (QFC, a slightly nicer Kroger-owned regional chain) has tiny trays for the bagging area. Anything more bulky than a gallon of milk and a bag of apples turns into a weird game of Jenga.
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And the supermarket systems still don't get right the prices for fruits. Which means you have to call another employee to enter the price for you.
I've walked out of Walmart before over wrong prices. I was just there to look at the camping section and see if they had any deals. There was a cooler on sale for 10$. I go scan it. 30$. I just left it there at the self checkout and went home.
9 times out of 10 if you ask the attendant for help they'll honor the price if there was a signage error.
I know but it's walmart. The attendant is handling 30+ self checkouts and I'm not waiting 10 minutes.
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What is wild about all this is looking back to the old social contract and how it basically made this ~~fobitted~~ forbidden.
The best example is the movie minority report in which they had a fool proof way to 100% of the time predict the future.
I won’t spoil the movie, but the whole premise was that even if there was one instance of it making a mistake, and a innocent person was put on ice by mistake, then the whole thing had to be shut down.
And in today’s reality: all of big tech’s new tools make mistakes constantly, sometimes more than getting things right, and it’s still full steam ahead on the rollout.
MFW dystopian movies were too optimistic
I mean, even in that one case, it was accurate, just not in the way they thought.
Same can be said for the death penalty, but the GOP and even a lot of Democrats are for it. Even though they're are actual past cases of killing innocent people.
kill the fuckers in charge or you're rolling the ~~dice~~ chamber every day.
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The AI gets to accuse you based on a bad guess, while you have to file paperwork and surrender more personal data to prove you didn’t steal a pack of vitamins. »Innocent until proven guilty« is now a premium feature.
Innocent until proven guilty was always the highest tier wealthy only premium. Everyone else is expected to plea bargain down to a crime they didn't commit.
if you’re a billionaire you can be proven guilty and still be considered innocent
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You write just one book about a labyrinthine bureacracy and people use your name to curse organisational dysfunction forever.
A situations like this makes me use a form of Malapropism one would expect of a Dickensian society to bring about almost Orwellian situation. Makes you wonder when someone will use Chekhov’s Gun before it all gets Bowdlerized. Alas this Machiavellian paragraph is reminiscent of a Lovecraftian creature.
But seriously, that paragraph above reads like the scene in Blackadder when they meet the writer of the Dictionary.
Poor Machiavelli too. Everyone goes on about how he faked his death and “dark triad” traits, and he was just some bloke taking the piss out of the government.
I think that guy might have been trolling. He was imprisoned by the Medici family, amd then ended up writing a book to give advice to the princes? I think it could have been intentionally bad advice, especially after reading Sun Tsu.
I'm actually wandering if what he wrote in his book wasn't exactly what the Prince already did.
Because that sounds just like the greatest way to arse kiss a powerful person without being too crude and obvious, in order to get yourself a rich patron.
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When I worked at Lowe's they could tell the instant shoplifters pulled into the parking lot. They even had nicknames for the repeat offenders.
"Heads up, Dumb and Dumber just pulled in, no doubt headed for lumber."
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Kafkaesque nightmares
I gotta read something besides The Metamorphasis because all I associate with that phrase is physical body horror of becoming a bug. Somehow I don't think that's what they meant here.
Kafka was most famous for pointing out that our current society is built on bureaucracy unto death. For instance how he have to fill out insurance forms while dying of cancer.
Kafka has written other stories, the author might have had The Trial (Der Process) in mind.
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Can we actually see the reports? Not saying it can't happen but using AI in articles creates lots of views. Is "Home Bargin" the only store doing this? Is it only in the UK? This is really poor reporting here.
Anecdotally my wife keeps getting flagged by Walmart and they have to come watch her bag at the self checkout every time she uses one. So far no where else, just there. She uses them many other places, so she’s not acting suspicious or using it wrong.
Please stop shopping at places that treat you as if you are a criminal. Self checkouts are already customer hostile but essentially being treated as a potential shoplifter for using one should cause you to take your business elsewhere if at all feasible.
I don’t know their specific situation, but Walmart is often the only viable option for many lower population areas or late-night needs. A large part of Walmart’s expansion strategy is moving into a small town, then under-pricing all of their stuff at a loss. They keep selling things at a loss until all of the other local shops close, because they can’t compete with Walmart’s lower prices. Then once all of the local competition is run out of town, Walmart jacks their prices up because they’re the only option in town.
They’re also often one of the only grocers that stays open late. This means they’re often the only viable option for third-shift workers, because the alternative would be waking up at their equivalent of 2AM to go grocery shopping.
Are Walmarts open at 2AM again? Most of them around here stopped doing 24 hours during COVID and never went back.
Fast Food too.
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I worked at my local Goodwill (they're split up by region). We kept a close eye on known shoplifters, but we couldn't say anything and even my boss couldn't say anything unless he literally saw them conceal the object then walk out of the store and never broke eye contact. They said the store could get sued if we stopped them and they had ditched the contraband in the moment we looked away.
I don't see why the stores discussed here should be treated differently. Someone needs to sue these surveillance stores until they stop automating false accusations.
This is a great way for people to lesen how this technology can be used negatively. Get the backlash early before it has completely infected everything.
~~Someone must have been telling lies about~~ Some slop machine must have misidentified Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.