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Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s to c/technology

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Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech::When Walmart's anti-theft self-checkout tech alerts an employee of a missed scan, it can cause some uncomfortable situations.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

All the retail shops that were built 20+ years ago have a ton of un-peopled check-out stands. My local grocery store. My bank branches. The hardware store.

Companies have reduced their staffing to two or three checkers and a self-checkout line.

We're doing the work for them. They're hoarding the profits. It's a mess.

My local BofA branch has twelve or thirteen checker stations and I've never seen more than two people at the counter. I don't know when the branch was built, but it was clearly at a time when the semblance of customer service existed. Now, long lines and poor service are normalized and the idea that you'd shop around for a better experience is non-existent.

[–] Pieisawesome 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They were never intended to have 100% of the teller/check stands open.

It’s for surge and holidays, if you go in on Black Friday or other super busy times, you’ll see a vast majority opened.

It also makes counting easier, if 1 person uses a drawer and it’s off, it’s easier to hold a person accountable, rather than if 5 people used it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

As someone who used to have to fix tills, this is both true and not right.

Yes most larger retailers have more tills then they plan on having open outside of say Xmas, and also to allow for some to be down and not effect over all sales. But also no (started years ago) that you will see even on the most busy days of the year most of the lanes open.

I would say about 10 years ago with express and self checkout the big retailers gave up on hiring enough people to use all the forward tills and I think moved to the idea that people will wait on those busy days. I watched stores be built with less and less lane capacity and have less and less dedicated cashiers. Like a lot of companies retail giants see payroll a tempting place to make cuts on and after covid they have learned (hopefully incorrectly) that people will put up with a lot more BS then was expected years ago.