Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

>There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”

So, here's the link to that particular reddit gem, in case you want to read it in all its glory:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/comments/56saoh/selfche...

I'm... almost sympathetic to an argument that amounts to the frustrating/dark side of automated assistance, which is probably something the audience here would do well to consider. I get frustrated with tech too and sometimes want a way around it.

But I wish that discussion was still active so I could reply... WTF, man. They're offering an automated way to complete a purchase, and it's not like you got paid to interact with the checkout cashier before. But let's say you see it that way. Let's assume that cashier was costing the store $25/hr (maybe), so the 6 minutes (maybe) they worked on your purchase might be worth up to $2.50. Are you scrupulously making sure you only evened the score/took the store to the tune of ten quarters?

Unless you can't for some reason, pay for your groceries, don't inflate the prices everyone else has to pay to offset the cost of "external shrinkage," and keep society in the crucial resource of trust.

To be honest, I prefer to use an automated checkout. With a cashier, I'm always stressed because I have to put the items in the bag as quickly as they scan them, to avoid delaying the queue and wasting the cashier's time. In the automated checkout however, I can take my time to organise the bag and pay when I'm ready.

Why was this downvoted? By Americans who have never experienced this?

It depends on the automated checkout. In the Washington, D.C. area (U.S.), Giant Foods installed automated checkouts that are the same "length" as a regular checkout. You scan your items, put them on the belt, and they go to the bagging area at the end -- you can't bag them as you scan them. Once you're done, you're rushing to bag items as someone else decides to start scanning their items and send them down the belt, mingling with your items.

At Harris Teeter, on the other hand, you scanned an item and put it in the bag. You could load the bag as you wished.

Wow that subreddit is just on a whole another level of projections. Posts often refer to Company X/Y/Z mistreating their employee so much that I have to teach them a lesson!

Seriously, that doesn't justify your action to steal. You stealing (in peace time) is just you being a scum.

You can read that user's other comments for other gems, such as "why are gay people bad employees" and "why are women so messy".

This is the rhetorical trick of "just asking questions" and it's nasty.

Yes - but in that user's case, it wasn't a rhetorical question. The gay coworker post had examples of some gay people he worked with he didn't approve of, and he vehemently argued in the comments, too.

25 usd / hour? More like 10 usd, at least in the UK

2.5x salary is a reasonable estimate of the cost of an employee. So $25/hr isn't that high for a total cost. Probably high for the US, it depends on the store, and an $8/hr job would result in lower end costs especially for part-timers without benefits (health insurance).

“Fringe” rate in the organization I’m in is less than 50% so 150% for a cashier is a stretch. To figure the cost that high you’d have to add some things like some fraction of their supervisor’s pay (which would be unfair because they’d have to be there anyway).

He's factoring in employee overhead. Entry-level employees in most of the US only take home around $7-10/hr before tax.

>don't inflate the prices everyone else has to pay to offset the cost of "external shrinkage"

In most cases (and almost always at stores with automated checkouts), the retailer is already charging the most they think they can to make the most profit. It's just supply and demand, the higher the price, the less people will buy it (and vice versa), so the retailer will almost always charge the price such that the number of people that will buy it times the price of the item is the highest. (This is ignoring loss leaders, etc).

If shoplifting were to suddenly stop overnight, do you think the stores would lower their prices?

(not saying that makes shoplifting okay)

>If shoplifting were to suddenly stop overnight, do you think the stores would lower their prices?

Supermarkets might be a special case here. The margins are super thin and people tend to be very sensitive to the cost of food for some reason. So, yes, the stores would probably lower their prices.

On the other hand these same thieves could choose to shop at a place with a person attending the register and probably paying slightly more to enable the store to hire this cashier.

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