My grocery store has an app that lets me scan as I go through the store, then just pay in about 10 seconds at the self-checkout. I'd love to know what that has done to shrink numbers.

How many cameras are there in the store?

I don't usually pay much attention to self-checkout (call me a luddite, but I find regular checkout to go faster and with less hassle), but the other day when standing in a queue, I looked at the ceiling and saw a ton of cameras - one camera per self-checkout station, + some extra in the general area. Additionally, each checkout station used a big tablet as its main display, and each of those tablets had the usual built-in selfie camera - I'd be surprised if these cameras didn't take photos of customers using the stations.

I was using the self checkout the other day and scanned some item and put it in my bag. A store employee came over and told me it didn't scan. Hmmm? I looked at the screen and yes, the item was listed on there. She checked some handheld she was using and it wasn't showing up on _her_ list. So she could somehow see what I was scanning and apparently was watching to make sure I wasn't stealing anything? It was kindof odd.

> How many cameras are there in the store?

Quite a few, but I don't know that they're gonna help if I scan the small steak but put the giant one in my bag. Again, the scanning isn't happening at the self-checkout. They just get used for payment.

I can also void out an expensive item mid-shop. Unless someone's getting a real-time ping with my exact current location in the store in the security office when I do that, no one's gonna be checking.

Most of the cameras in the store are for (a) customer service or (b) organized crime tracking.

For (a), if a customer comes in with an odd return scenario / complaint, a fair number boil down to "what actually happened when they were originally here?" Camera provides documentation of that, and asset protection can review, and the make things right. E.g. the "bought thing, but didn't make it into my bag" scenario.

For (b), it's post-hoc identification & ad-hoc warning. Organized theft rings typically hit multiple stores in an area. Retail has gotten very good at sharing snapshots of individuals very quickly in those scenarios. And it's worth it, because a single organized theft incident will be a couple orders of magnitude larger than all your common theft for a month. E.g. $10,000 worth of product vs $100.

Having a trained cashier quickly scan your items for you does indeed beat fumbling with the scanning process while the GLaDOS built into the register judges you for not doing it properly.

Yes. And then you look at it funny and it exclaims, "unrecognized item in the bagging area", and asks you to assume the party escort submission position, while it fetches the party associate clerk.

That's why the app is nice; it's on my phone, I do it as I go along, and there's no scale involved. Faster than both self-checkout and cashier, in my experience, especially on a busy day.

Bagging as you go. Yay Future!!

I've been thinking about this ever since my closest supermarket got the same app system. Anti-theft seems to be done by random audits of scanning 3-4 items. I've had this 3 times out of the 20 or so times I've used it.

In that regard, it seems more risky to try any funny business with it. With the traditional self scans, cameras aside, it's quite easy to fool them, and they are reliable and predictable machines. I'm sure it would be easy to slip something at the bottom of your bag, but if you get caught on an audit, I'm sure it sets a flag to audit you more often.

The scan-at-end checkouts can be used without identity, where as the scan-as-you go, at least for my supermarket, you have to log into an account linked to your identity before it's used. This may deter a lot of casual theft.

My local Costco has finally added self-checkout registers. I noticed that the receipt is a different color than the ones you would normally get if you went to a cashier. I assume the exit people who check your receipt look more closely when it's a self-checkout one.

Also, the workers who load your cart at Costco seem to be trained to pack it for easier/faster scanability by the exit-check people. Plus IIRC the receipts split anything they leave on the bottom rack of the cart into a separate section. Neither of those things happen with self-checkout, I suppose (I've not used the self-checkout yet, because the regular checkout is so fast at Costco and they're well-staffed enough that I haven't wanted to)

I'd expect pretty much any move to make the customers do work that paid employees used to, increases customer theft (which, as noted elsewhere in this thread, is far from the only threat—employees, including managers and security, steal lots).

I mean, consider a classic old-school store (talking pre-supermarkets and pre-big-box stores) where a clerk would fetch what you wanted. Much harder to steal there. Save money by not paying enough clerks to handle that and making customers pick out their own stuff, and now customers can/do steal more.

Same with stuff like self-checkout, I'd expect. Might also increase the rate of honest mistakes resulting in accidental theft, though I've seen so damn many of those errors from paid clerks that I wouldn't bet on it.