Who would've thought that rolling out self-checkout kiosks while promoting crime would result in more theft?
Now stores are scaling back on these self-checkout lanes, with Walmart becoming the most recent retailer to begin ditching them due to theft.
Nothing to worry about here, folks. We're totally not entering late-stage civilization collapse.
Walmart is joining the ranks of retailers rethinking self-checkout, with the industry giant in the process of removing the self-service lanes at a store in Missouri.
The return to registers staffed by humans at the Walmart store in Shrewsbury, a suburb of St. Louis, comes a month after Target announced only those buying 10 items or less could use the self-checkout lane at its stores, and Dollar General reduced self-checkout at thousands of its locations. The latter removed the option entirely at 300 locations most-impacted by shoplifting.
Have you ever seen people talk about shopping carts as the litmus test for society?
I wonder what removing these self-checkout lanes means.
But don't worry. The news says crime is down, folks. Move right along. This is just another right-wing propaganda story to get Biden defeated in 2024. Bidenomics is totally working!
Self-checkout increased in popularity among retailers and customers during the pandemic, allowing shoppers to limit their contact with others and helping to relieve a labor shortage that made staffing registers more difficult.
Still, as the pandemic wound down, many shoppers returned to their former habits, and the appeal of self-checkout lost some of its allure …
Still, rising theft — part of what retailers call "shrink" — is the primary reason self-checkout is being ditched in some stores and restricted in others, according to Saunders.
"Self-checkout is an area of the store people can steal things," said the analyst, who noted that shoppers also make genuine mistakes, such as not scanning items properly. "Retailers are very actively trying to reduce it, or in Target's case put more restrictions around self-checkout to try to reduce the losses they incur from it."
And just like that, the self-checkout lanes are slowly disappearing like Marty McFly and his family in Back to the Future!
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