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'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology (www.bbc.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 36 points 2 years ago (13 children)

Here in Finland handheld scanners have been getting added to more shops, you grab one, scan and bag as you go, and at the end you return the scanner and pay it all at once.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    One of the regional grocery stores in my part of the US has these (if you have an account). Before I did online ordering with curbside pickup, this was how I shopped. I didn't understand why it wasn't more popular. It made checking out so quick. Every twenty or so trips I'd be randomly "audited," where some poor employee had to rifle through my bags to double check I wasn't stealing anything.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    The chance to be randomly audited would put me off from ever using it again. Specially when you know that randomly = you look brown or immigrant most of times.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    At Giant, I'm pretty sure it's decided by the system based on some algorithm, not the employee. The one time I was audited, we were in the store for a long time and had removed a few items from the cart after adding them.

    The audit consisted of the employee scanning ten random items and confirming we had scanned them too.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    When I was using food stamps/EBT, I was audited every time I used the hand scanner at Stop and Shop. Luckily, I don't have to use food stamps anymore.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Ah, yes, yes. We're not racist, it's the system! It's an algorithm! I never heard that one before. It's also a sustym that randomly checks you at the airport.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It all depends on how truly random the system is. Each checkout (or ticket, or whatever) assigned a random number between 1 and 20, with 20 meaning audit? That's non-discriminatory. But it's also not tuned for the purpose of finding shoplifters (etc).

    When you start adding criteria, they are often at least correlated with discrimination. Food stamps were mentioned elsewhere. Flight history to/from a list of hostile countries for airports. The list goes on. Technically not based on things like race, but it's a paper-thin distinction in some cases.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    How do you know there's not someone looking at se purity cameras triggering random audits?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    We have both happen, sometimes combined or scan with phone. I've seen some of the American systems, with sensors and weights and speakers (with some voice lines), those are creepy to me.

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