Self Checkout Leads to Help Yourself

In our society, we lock our doors at night! We set our alarms when we go to bed, when we are alone and when we leave. The news is filled with horror stories of home invasions! Motion detectors can be found in some of our yards to alert us to a trespasser and we now have to shred our mail and protect ourselves against identity theft! Why in the world then would a retail store allow people to self-checkout? Why would a retail store set starving consumers up to fail in a desperate economy?  I personally detest self-checkout and avoid it at all costs. I have even gone as far as leaving my products and taking my business to a competitor if there was no human to check me out. When did the retail world think they were so high on the retail chain that we would shop with them, spend our gas, money & time and not expect to be thanked by a warm, smiling human?

Items found in your food and retail stores have UPC Numbers, bar scan codes and so on. Inventory specialists and purchasing clerks spend hours balancing inventory and often the weight of an item confirms the code. Anyone who has used this service knows how extremely sensitive the scales are and often just moving an item to the side or even removing the bag causes the computer to stop what it’s doing, announce to you to return the item to the bagging area or wait for assistance from store personnel. Generally, there is a clerk within range to quickly bypass the computer, without asking what is wrong and allow you to proceed.

When did we start trusting each other enough to stop holding one another accountable? The code you entered says you got the small lemons, but how does the retailer know you didn’t get the large lemons and are paying the small lemon price? Think about it.

Scenario One: Small lemons are code # 7797 and are 3 for $1. However; large lemons are code #9777 and they are $.98 each. So you go to checkout, you put in the code and that determines how the computer will process the item transaction. If 10 people a day by large lemons, same quantity for the small lemon price, the store loses $58.20 a day. That is a weekly loss of $407.40 and this does not include any tax. A weekly salary at $8.00 an hour would have cost the company $320.00.

Scenario two: A mother needs to buy warm jogging pants for her little boys, it’s winter. She is a single mom and is living on only her unemployment income. She sees that infant pants are only $2.99 a pair but the youth size is $5.99 a pair. She is a good woman, but is now tempted to go to self-checkout, scan the infant pant bar code 5 times, placing the items in the bag. She has actually only bought one pair of infant pants at $2.99 and helped herself to four pairs of the youth size. Saving her $3.00 a pair! This is a loss of $12.00 for the store. Again, if 10 people do that, it is a daily loss of $120.00. Weekly, it would cost the store $840.00. You do the math…

Scenario three: Five self-check-out lanes are open. It has been a busy day and Wendy is the head cashier at a busy self-checkout lane. Her one year old is teething and kept her up all night. It seems like every 2 to 3 transactions for the self-checkout an error comes up and the beeping never stops! Wendy is tired and simply walks over to the customer, clears the transactions and the customer continues to scan and bag their items. Wendy never noticed that only 2 pillows were scanned, leaving the other 6 in the cart.

So listen up Big Retail Chains! You are NOT saving money! You are part of the problem! Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to give someone a job, (unemployment is still at 11%), putting accountability back into place (we all need it) and take care of the consumer? Perhaps you would prefer to look back a decade from now and wonder why your retail store is filing bankruptcy? Oh, that explains why internet sales are up and your store is closing!