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That's exactly how it works in the Netherlands, you just scan your items and go. There are no weight checks and you can scan items more than once and edit and r
by radarsat1 3y ago
That's exactly how it works in the Netherlands, you just scan your items and go. There are no weight checks and you can scan items more than once and edit and remove things from the list. Apart from getting a poorly executed random check sometimes (which is far from effective for the purpose of avoiding theft imho) it actually works really well.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI believe the difference is living in a high trust society.
- dahfizz 3y agoEnjoy your homogenous, high trust society. We are all jealous.
- Freak_NL 3y agoNah, don't worry. Theft at self checkouts is turning into a national hobby¹. 1: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/01/05/de-diefstalcijfers-stijgen-wat-kunnen-supermarkten-daartege-doen-a4186135 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/01/05/de-diefstalcijfers-stij...
- Pepe1vo 3y agoEvery time I read one of these articles the naivety and tone-deafness from supermarkets over these self-checkouts amazes me. "In order to make more money we made customers self-report their purchases during a cost-of-living crisis while we were booking record high profits and now these customers are _under reporting_ their purchases, how dare they!!" They should've seen this coming from miles away.
- icoder 3y agoThe way you phrase it (but maybe I get you wrong) suggests that the customers are somehow in their (moral if not lawful) right to do this because of previous policies from the supermarkets. They (supermarkets) may have been wrong, but so is stealing. They don't cancel each other out, nor do two wrongs become a right. I'd say stealing is always a net negative effect for the whole. But if you're saying that the entire context explains a lot of the behaviour, and could possibly be predicted, then yes I agree.
- arp242 3y ago> booking record high profits According to the opening paragraph of that article that's doesn't seem to be the case. €80 million in profit (with €100 million theft) is not all that much.
- david-gpu 3y ago> Enjoy your homogenous, high trust society "Homogeneous" in what way? Because in my experience the sort of "homogeneity" that leads to high trust is that of wealth/income, and it requires a generous social net.
- selfmodruntime 3y agoTurns out, like almost all things, homogeneity has positive aspects, too. Weirdly enough, this almost seems like forbidden knowledge depending on what political side you are on. Also, as Denmark recently discovered, homogeneity is not simply dependent on a social safety net but exists within a symbiotic relationship with the latter.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoOne of the biggest hurdles to getting a social safety net past public perception in the US is that people are easily swayed against it if they're told that people of other races will benefit from it. A certain portion of the population automatically sorts any public benefit into a weird racial zero-sum game, where any support given to <people of that race> is a dollar specifically taken away from <people of my race>. It's a big part of why we've historically had such a hard time implementing any sort of reasonable social benefits, and why the much lauded Nordic countries started cutting down on theirs the second they got a significant (racially different) refugee population.
- Slamidan 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoMost ways, as the research of Robert Putnam has documented well. https://wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/downside-diversity https://wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/downside-diversity
- owlninja 3y agoSam's Club does this in the US and it is great.
- logicchains 3y agoDubai also has self-checkout machines that don't require you to weigh anything, just scan and go, and it's an extremely heterogeneous, low-trust society. People are just very afraid of the police and being deported.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoSeems to work similarly in Singapore. Low trust can work when there are harsh punishments for violations. But do we really want to live in that type of society?
- polski-g 3y agoDo I want to live in a society in which criminals suffer the consequences of their crime? Is this a serious question?
- arp242 3y agoExcept it's neither homogenous nor high trust.
- alexanderchr 3y agoIt's not exactly Japan-level high trust, but it is compared to most other countries in the world.
- arp242 3y agoIt really depends; in some areas it's exceedingly low-trust, almost paranoid. In some other areas it's probably not too bad. Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933489 I used to live in Indonesia and things are much more "high trust" in many aspects. On the other hand Indonesia also has a lot of problems with corruption and that sort of thing. "High trust/low trust" is too simplistic. I don't have 200 other countries to compare it to, but by and large, Western countries are much less high-trust in many areas than people assume. This often becomes painfully obvious once you stray outside of the "standard happy path".
- netsharc 3y agoWhenever I see anyone use "homogeneous" in this context I always consider them a racist... Meanwhile Netherlands elected an anti-immigration right-wing government in their last elections: https://time.com/6339173/dutch-election-results-geert-wilders-far-right-netherlands-europe/ https://time.com/6339173/dutch-election-results-geert-wilder...
- sime2009 3y ago23% did, just to be clear.
- selfmodruntime 3y agoBeing conservative on immigration (and in general) is not necessarily the product of racism.
- hgomersall 3y agoThis exists to some extent in the UK with the self scan widgets. Waitrose had it before self checkouts. It works really well.
- Tor3 3y agoSame around here. Self-checkouts is hugely successful. I'm much slower going through the scan procedure than the person working at the conveyor belt is.. but that's more than offset by the fact that there are a large number of self-checkout counters and I don't have to queue up (for the most part). The only time I use the old non-self-checkout counter is when there are no customers and the person at the checkout looks bored. Then I go there.
- nicolas_t 3y agoThis is the same here in Hong Kong. There are no weight checks and self checkouts are rather efficient. That said I barely use them mostly due to ideological reasons. I don't like to live in a society that completely does away with human contact and until society is really built around a UBI, I think cutting away unskilled jobs is not necessarily positive for society.
- podgietaru 3y agoThat’s not the full story though because there are random spot checks and they’re very very annoying when they happen.
- Mo3 3y agoAnnoying? A person comes and scans a few of the items on the counter, then leaves again. If that is already annoying to you, you must live a very stressed life
- camgunz 3y agoIt's super annoying. We'll often have groceries for the next few days, which includes a lot of baby food. So yeah, they're scanning like 40 items, and we have to repack the bag to not squash produce/bread and such. Another related problem is that you physically can't leave the store unless you buy something and get a receipt to scan. You have to tailgate someone with a receipt, or hop the turnstyle, etc. Hope you're not in a wheelchair and change your mind / the store's out of what you were looking for!
- gilbertbw 3y agoIn Waitrose (UK) stores at least this is not the case. When you are spot checked the staff member spot checks that a few things in your trolley have been scanned. They tend to check some higher value goods like alcohol. Also those stores, at least where I live, have no physical barrier to exit.
- SamCritch 3y agoYeah, I think the UX here in the Netherlands is much simpler and easier than in other countries. When I go to the UK (e.g. Tesco Express) I have to select a bagging option, there's no "no bag" option at the beginning of the transaction even though I'm only buying a litre of milk, then when I put the carton down in the bagging area it triggers an alarm saying a store assistant is coming, but they never do because they're too busy serving all the other customers at the regular checkout. So I give up and try a different checkout, blocking the one I've just tried to use for 2 minutes. I posted about this on Linkedin too and got a few comments about the complexity in the UK, USA, France and elsewhere. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samcritchley_it-hasnt-delivered-the-spectacular-failure-activity-7153021608318631936-xZyg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samcritchley_it-hasnt-deliver...
- Jochim 3y agoWeird, I've never seen a self checkout in the UK that doesn't provide the option to select no bag or key in 0 bags.
- benoliver999 3y ago99% of the time I use the 'weigh your own bag' option it asks someone to approve my bag. It's annoying. Also, the 'bagging area' is on different sides in different shops. Also annoying.
- folmar 3y agoThat 2 minutes is nice, in Poland a checkout station that was abandoned is blocked until an assistant notices it, so more like 30 minutes.
- camgunz 3y agoYeah, but these checks are bonkers. Whenever we get one (maybe 2x a month) the store worker literally takes everything out of our bag and scans it again. It takes forever, and then we have to repack the bag. Don't get me wrong, I vastly prefer it to the scales in the US, but they're terrible and do nothing to prevent stealing (in fairness anecdata, but Jumbo reported they lost millions to stealing and I know multiple people who say they steal from Albert Heijn every time they go).
- arp242 3y agoThere is a lot of theft though, and since supermarkets typically have fairly small margins this is also really cutting in to profit margins. I'm not sure how it compares to the weigh-systems though.
- zilti 3y agoSame in Switzerland. I got so annoyed the first time I used a self-checkout in Germany.