39 ms·

My local grocery store chain (Giant) recently closed off 1 of the two main openings to every store, and the self-checkout is now very annoying about "put the it

My local grocery store chain (Giant) recently closed off 1 of the two main openings to every store, and the self-checkout is now very annoying about "put the item in the bagging area". All of their solutions seem to be very anti-consumer, to the point where I now use instacart instead of going myself. I've also started ordering from a different grocery store. I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time.

CivBase 3y ago
Better yet they could hire cashiers. When self-checkout stations were introduced at my local grocier, they were a convenient way to checkout fast when you only had a few simple items. It was always a user-hostile experience, but it wasn't a big deal when you only had a few items. Now there are so few cashiers ever available that I'm regularly forced to use self checkout with a few dozen items. And the experience has only gotten worse.
nfriedly 3y ago
> I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time. Same, but that's expensive and these stores often operate on very thin margins. I worked at a k-mart when I was a teenager, 20-something years ago. The store had a problem with shoplifting and did hire a security guy to come in. He got some arrests for "petty" shoplifting, but it took something like a year to nail the big one. It turned out that the employee who had installed the cameras had been doing a ton of shoplifting. They eventually caught him because he made a mistake and did something on-camera. That solved the shoplifting problem, but the security guy probably cost more than they saved. At any rate, the store closed down a year or two later.
- sixothree 3y ago
  If the expense of hiring a few employees is greater than the cost of the loss from theft, then how big of a problem is this really?

39 ms·

My local grocery store chain (Giant) recently closed off 1 of the two main openings to every store, and the self-checkout is now very annoying about "put the it

by impostervt 3y ago

CivBase 3y ago
Better yet they could hire cashiers. When self-checkout stations were introduced at my local grocier, they were a convenient way to checkout fast when you only had a few simple items. It was always a user-hostile experience, but it wasn't a big deal when you only had a few items. Now there are so few cashiers ever available that I'm regularly forced to use self checkout with a few dozen items. And the experience has only gotten worse.
nfriedly 3y ago
> I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time. Same, but that's expensive and these stores often operate on very thin margins. I worked at a k-mart when I was a teenager, 20-something years ago. The store had a problem with shoplifting and did hire a security guy to come in. He got some arrests for "petty" shoplifting, but it took something like a year to nail the big one. It turned out that the employee who had installed the cameras had been doing a ton of shoplifting. They eventually caught him because he made a mistake and did something on-camera. That solved the shoplifting problem, but the security guy probably cost more than they saved. At any rate, the store closed down a year or two later.
- sixothree 3y ago
  If the expense of hiring a few employees is greater than the cost of the loss from theft, then how big of a problem is this really?