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I long for the days when grocery lines are unnecessary, self-checkout lines are unnecessary, and you can just scan-to-buy items as you go. Enforcement might be
by jonnathanson 16y ago
I long for the days when grocery lines are unnecessary, self-checkout lines are unnecessary, and you can just scan-to-buy items as you go. Enforcement might be an issue, though. Heh.
- rlpb 16y agoSafeway experimented with that here (UK) about fifteen years ago. I used it. It worked, but I don't think it saved that much time, since shoppers are much slower at doing the scanning. For enforcement they used sampling: at payment time, you were sometimes required to have your items scanned by a cashier anyway. The theory was that the more reliable you showed yourself to be, the less likely you were to be selected. I haven't seen back to the store that they trialled it in recently, but I guess that it didn't work for some reason since it has not become widespread.
- jonnathanson 16y agoInteresting. I wonder if this kind of system will make a comeback as RFIDs, QR codes, digital payment systems, and smartphones get more ubiquitous.