Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts
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The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up behind me and very persistently told me that I hadn't scanned something. Annoyed, I pointed on the screen where it showed I had. His eyes went wide, and he spun around, and quickly hurried away, no apology.
If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't code that intervention/confrontation as their mess-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still got dinged as suspicious, to cover their butts.
We do seem to have a lot of shoplifting here in recent years. And I have even recently seen a street person in a chain pharmacy here, simply tossing boxes of product off the shelves, into a dingy black trash bag, in the middle of the day. Somehow none of the usual employees around. Yet there's often employees moving to stand behind me at that same store, when I use their self-checkout. (Maybe my N95 mask is triggering some association with masked bandits, yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? But an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go when they have symptoms.)
They do not want to confront trash bag man for good reason. What happened is people who don't give a fuck and have no problem with using violence realized there's nothing stopping them from loading up bags of goods and walking out of the store. "Oh you want to stop me? just try mother fucker." Even so called security guards want no part of trash bag man because there is a high chance of violence and most humans do not want to engage with that. Never mind these guards are paid very little and are nothing more than security theater. Pull a gun and those guys are going to be no more a guard than the cashier or a person in line.
The stores are left to fend for themselves as cops these days seem to care less and less. So I am not surprised they are employing all sorts of janky tactics to prevent loss.
There are plenty of reliable young men who enjoy engaging in violence and will take low-paid jobs in store security. (There are many more who don't actively enjoy it, but don't mind engaging in it and consider being competent at violence an important part of being a man.)
The pharmacy gives its security guards instruction not to use violence because they don't want to get sued when a guard seriously injures a thief: it is impossible at the scale of a chain of stores to subdue and detain thieves without some risk of killing some thief or seriously injuring him.
I’d rather shop at a store that actually prevents theft, deterring future thieves from stealing. It will be a safer place to shop with lower prices.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-walgreens-manager-co...
Bit of an assumption there.
There is no easy answer for this breakdown. The cat is out of the bag and these losers aren't going to stop unless they are stopped and face real consequences. Though as you said, the stores do not want the liability of guards taking action so they are left with locking everything behind glass and deploying privacy invading surveillance. Of course that doesn't stop anything and quality of life goes down.
Not to be pedantic, but by definition it is, isn’t it?
But I agree with the sentiment that they are selecting the easiest targets.
(the offenders were caught by police later that day, so it really wasn't worth the trouble to run after them)
Perhaps it had something going for it that we lost when we decided to forsake it.
When I attended the same high school in the 00s, we once were put on a district-wide lockdown because some kid at the other high school all the way across town had inadvertently left his paintball gun in the back seat of his (locked) car—after a weekend of fun in the woods with his friends—in the school parking lot, and a security officer saw it.
Now, today, we get periodic local PSAs urging people to not leave firearms in their locked cars in their own driveways at night, because people are breaking into cars, stealing the guns, and using them to commit crimes.
I won't speculate on how we forsook it, but clearly something here has been forsaken. That the way things were a mere ~50 years ago seems unthinkably impossible today clearly speaks volumes.
Point being, willingness to engage in violence has nothing to do with it.
IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss. That's the tradeoff for replacing your employees with robots and forcing labor onto the consumer. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I suspect it just didn't make sense to have an employee outside smoking or sitting in the break room scrolling on a phone while the customers went through and maybe paid for their goods, when that employee could simply run the checkout counter.
I've been to like 4 different Dollar Generals in the last year. Every single one of them had the self checkout turned off.
>> IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss
I agree this is the logical conclusion, but obviously they're not going to accept it when you can throw a fraction of the labour savings to hire some cheap security theatre that reminds the honest people big brother is watching.
As soon as I got to the hotel and figured it out, I went back to correct the mistake--but imagine getting harassed or taken to the back for a careless error? I'm sure that happens more often than I hear about.
(PS I am genuinely surprised their weight sensor, that flags an attendant, didn't go off. That thing usually trips if you breathe on it funny.)
I can be through the whole process at CVS (with some random item like a birthday card) in about 30 seconds.
It's not really a secret that retail LP generally abuses their role across the board and allows prejudace to run rampant in its ranks, giving that it is almost entirely comprised of people from backgrounds that lack any higher education and recieved a few months training at best to do what they do. Heck, step in any active American mall and you will encounter mostly white men who didn't quite have the chutzpa for the police academy, but still carry the guilty-til-proven-otherwise attitude.
Source: I was LP briefly for TJX companies and left due to the rampant and accepted bigotry I encountered with them. In their case, it was that I was repeatedly told to target black women if I wanted to meet quota each month, since their own numbers said most apprehensions were black women and not one person in the LP heirarchy knew what confirmation bias or survivor bias was. Also, yes, they have quotas. I was put on their equivalent of a PIP the second month I was there for not meeting mine. We can rest assured that Kroger, Walmart, etc, use lots of the same tactics and quiet codes.
1. Social media today has strong mob behavior, which is one of the reasons I often default to not naming when you want to talk about a more general problem. In this case, it would probably be OK, but I defaulted to not. Think of it like a blame-free post-mortem for the org to learn from.
2. I don't want to invite more grief from elements the stores and their bureaucratic mechanisms, if the mention of them online percolates up to corporate. The-coverup-is-worse-than-the-crime is a commonplace thing in corporate hierarchies, and if we're talking about a potentially dim/petty/underhanded person with access to power (e.g., the high-tech systems including features like facerec and maintaining profiles of ordinary people, and some data shared between companies) that could be a whole lot of grief for you. You can possibly eventually find out what happened, and sue, but the harm to you will be done, so better to just stay off the radar of sketchy employees of stores you frequent.
not that i'm that surprised, but still shocking to read such things in 2025.
Without snark I think we're on a site where being anti-corporate could hurt someones stock investments, naming companies is seen as rude.
Is this a new jobs program? I've been seeing a lot of these middle aged/elderly guys with "Loss Prevention" on their shirts walking the aisles aimlessly in supermarkets and department stores. What's the point really when there are cameras everywhere?
The innovation of having customers grab their own stuff without supervision was required for all these massive super stores.
We shouldn’t compare the status quo of self-service with some shoplifting to an imaginary ideal of self-service with no shoplifting. We should compare it against the actual alternative of stores bottlenecked by clerks that can only serve one customer at a time (or at least stores small enough that a clerk can watch everybody doing their self-service). You have to pay those clerks!
Stealing is wrong. But some loss is a cost of doing business. People shouldn’t get irrationally obsessed about it, to the point where they think society is crumbling or whatever. Or make LP so annoying that they scare off normal customers.
The modern version of an old time "full service" store is an e-commerce warehouse in an exurb with quick delivery and that actually works just fine for a lot of things. It's a big component of why the retail sector has been struggling over the past decade.
It might be worth thinking about how these costs are accounted for. In the case of the big store, loss is taken by the store (of course they pass that along as higher prices, but it is ultimately the store’s problem). For deliveries, a good chunk of easy theft (stealing off your porch) is the customer’s problem usually. There’s some unfortunate socioeconomic crosstab there, I think: if you live in a nice neighborhood, theft is less of a problem. If you work from home, you can probably set things up to not leave a package out for too long.
Seems like the burden is falling most squarely on people who live in tough neighborhoods and have to actually go to work.
In some places Amazon has (had?) these self-service lockers where you could pick up your purchases. (Might have been a very college-town centric solution, or something?). It could be nice to see that standardized and spread out.
There is a whole business model built around being a package receiver for folks who don't want deliveries left on their doorstep. Most private PO box companies will receive packages for you, and there are apps that allow any business with a physical location to act as a package receiver for a fee per delivery. Often it is more convenient than residential delivery since you won't get delivery drivers falsely claiming they attempted delivery. When I used to travel a lot, I had a service that would receive mail and packages, and hold them until I was back in town. I think it was ~$10 month and well worth it.
At a lot of the stores that offer it, the curbside pickup is hopping. Tons of associates constantly wheeling out cartloads of merchandise to an ever-rotating group of cars. More and more people opt for the curbside experience it seems, which is pretty much the full-service experience just more asynchronously. I do it from time to time, but typically not for grocery items as I usually don't like the experience of substitutions or the app saying they have something when they really don't.
Grocery stores have a low profit margin. In 2020 it was 3%. In 2024 it was 1.6%. That is not a good number. Assume this number is two times worse in California or other areas with spontaneous looting. Lots of empty shelves with pictures of products you can pick up at the counter.
https://www.fmi.org/our-research/food-industry-facts/grocery...
Go outside and touch grass
I was accused of not paying for certain items at a grocery store recently, and I explained that I bought those at another store. The LP person didn’t even ask to check the receipt from the other store. I proceeded with packing my groceries and went home.
I wonder if we can recognize that store people would want to reconfirm if we have correctly paid for the things we thought we bought, and we just answer them. No need to assume ill intent.
Perhaps loss prevention should look at management for the stolen money
However I suspect it's also an outdated claim. Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded. In the past five years it has increased 100%+ in many areas. It has almost been normalized where some groups will proudly boast about how they've scammed and stole, especially at self checkouts.
I have zero problem with max enforcement. I'm not a thief and if you have a thousand AI cameras tracking my every move through the store, I simply do not care. I also don't see a particularly slippery slope about systems that highlight the frequent thieves. Further I appreciate that retail operates at a pretty thin margin, so every penny they save (both on labour and by catching/preventing thefts) is actually good for law abiding society. So more of it, please.
You can't, resources are limited.
>Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded.
I don't know that that's true. Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.
https://counciloncj.org/shoplifting-trends-what-you-need-to-...
Regulatory authorities and courts enforce against wage theft. Shoplifting enforcement is mostly up to businesses.
>Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Shoplifting reports to police were down in some cities (albeit up in others), but that doesn't necessarily track the actual data.
https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/shoplifting-inci...
I haven't heard of a short-term Cerebral Palsy, but then again I'm not an expert.
We also live in a world where companies believe its perfectly fine to capture biometric data without disclosure or consent, despite the laws in many places saying directly to the contrary, and you don't have a choice because they fired all the cashiers.
When you bring it up they say, that's 15 levels above me (the store manager) we don't have a choice, its all up to corporate, this isn't happening, oh that green border it is, I'll make sure to forward your feedback to corporate (I won't buy anything from you, or come to your store if you do this).
The companies involved are running not on profit from sales, but rather from something else. I wonder what that could possibly be. This is what happens under monopoly, and this is how monopoly fails.
Is the company one of those companies who have been silently nationalized? Do they run on laundered promises from government instead? (money-printing).
This seems likely given they aren't changing their direction despite drops in sales.
so you're complaining, but also defending the position of the companies and intentionally refusing to name them.
its like you dont know you're in a class war here, and you'll be sick of these increasingly authoritarian practices until you fight back.
The LP guy caught a few non-employee shoplifters, but there kept being more loss until eventually an employee - one who had been there a long time - stole something on camera. It turned out to be the employee who had installed all of the cameras, but apparently he just got brazen/sloppy.
After that he got arrested and I never saw him again, and a few months later the LP guy moved on because the store's losses had dropped to more acceptable levels.
A couple of years later, the store closed down.
Did I just step into a time portal to 2022? Have you... been in a coma for the past several years? haha
I have a duty to my family to protect them, and if that means wearing a mask to reduce my risk of getting covid, then their safety overrules my own comfort.
I have a duty to protect my fellow citizens. Some of them are also vulnerable to covid, though I don't know them personally.
The scientific proof of association between school (esp school start) and the spread of disease goes back over 100 years. I see no reason it would be different for covid, perhaps even stronger for covid where many college age people would be asymptomatic or low symtpoms.
Most people no longer wear masks in stores here, but there are some. And some employees do as well. Including the person at/near the customer service desk of the grocery I mentioned, I think the last 2 times I was in there.
There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) which can intervene with your self-checkout process to "remind" you that you didn't actually scan everything.
In any case, the plaintiff will most likely be able to take the case to discovery.
[1] https://lewisbrisbois.com/newsroom/legal-alerts/2024-bipa-de...
[2] https://alcatraz.ai/blog/face-authentication-vs-face-recogni...
I'm not sure where I would find the data to back this up, but since it seems like an across-the-board change I imagine the labor savings have proven to outweigh (heh) the inventory shrinkage.
To me, the Uniqlo system where everything has an RFID tag and the machine just automatically scans the contents of your basket is the platonic ideal but I know that comes with issues of its own in different retail contexts.
Yes, I want 2 boxes of cereal.
I just find it easier to go to a cashier.
Wastes a lot of time for those of us working with >=2 hands.
They aren't allowed to use it and instead are required to physically walk up, move the customer out of the way, and push the same button on your screen.
WalMart has two popular designs within my city (not sure if one is just un-updated, yet¿) — their type which accepts half dollars is my favorite cash design.
I have seen designs which don't weigh each item, allowing simultaneous scanning... that also call an attendant to verify if it thinks you snuck an item by (then plays a loop/clip of its alleged violation).
Personally, I have a family member that works as attendant to a dozen self-checkouts... and it seems like it would make more corporate sense to have more human checkers and only allow cash with them.
This premise assumes two things for it to be true:
1. These stores have the technology to detect when you started a checkout transaction with an item, but said item was not scanned. 2. These stores have the additional technology to detect the cost of this item (afterall, if they're aiming for a threshold then they have to have some sort of monetary figure here).
I don't doubt that machine learning object detection can say, track a banana versus an apple. But I sincerely doubt its reliable enough where it can classify Mandarin oranges versus regular oranges. If the tech was reliable enough to do EITHER of these two technical abilities (let alone both of them at the same time), then the grocery would simply employ this technology as part of the self checkout process itself. Screw prosecuting people, just have them use this wizzbang auto detection self checkout where no scanning is needed.
Finally, I sincerely doubt that even with enough instances that you'd be successful in a prosecution that you actually could prove intent to shoplift versus say the much more likely fact that you forgot to scan an item or poorly scanned it. Again, to prove a serious intent then would subsequently have to build some sort of pattern analysis (i.e. you always stole expensive cheese or something) to make it obvious.
Has there been even a single prosecuted case someone can actually point to? It really doesnt make sense. I also could see this being thrown out because an argument could be made that the company sitting back and letting this continue to occur without intervention is tacitly allowing it to continue and thus sets a precedence that its allowable.
That's a new one. It's clever but I feel guilty having laughed.
I remember one I saw where the guy was filling two shopping carts with laptops at each Walmart, each one so high he could barely see over them. Then pushing the two carts out through the tire shop area. Did this at multiple stores. Walmart only called the cops once it was over $60K estimated loss.
Also if you're stealing as an immigrant, you should be deported without any questions asked.
And even if it is true, I still don't see why premeditated charge stacking should be allowed. If someone comes into the store that they know will steal, they should be banned from the store and arrested for trespassing then and there. Shitty criminal justice policies does not justify creative abuses of the law by corporations or prosecutors. Having 25% of the world prison population, along with all the costs that go along with it does not benefit us, it only hurts us. And it has repeatedly been shown that stiffer criminal charges do not prevent crime, if it did the US would be one of the safest 1st world countries, not the most dangerous 1st world country by a large margin that makes countries without actual functioning government seem peaceful.
Firstly, stores don't "press charges." A store may report a crime, but it is the state that "presses charges" and prosecutes alleged criminal activity, not the store.
Secondly, in the US, we have statutes of limitation[0] which limit the time in which criminal charges can be brought. These vary by state and by offense, but IIUC Petit (sometimes referred to as 'Petty') Theft usually has a one or two year statute of limitations.
I bring that up as, again IIUC, other countries (notably the UK) do not have such limitations.
IANAL, but I'm not sure if multiple petit thefts (usually misdemeanors) can be aggregated into a single charge of grand theft[0] (a felony). I'd expect that also varies by state. YMMV.
[0] Once again, this varies by state, but petit theft (larceny) is typically charged for stuff valued at less than $5,000.00, while grand larceny is for stuff valued at USD5,000.00 or more.
Most professional cashiers are only trained in one merchant's POS. Suddenly, me a layman consumer is supposed to be a flawless operator of every variant of self-checkout POS that I encounter. It's a bit crazy to me that a court would side with a merchant unless some egregious evidence or pattern had could be demonstrated.
I am pretty sure the evidence shows the opposite.
Having a hidden social credit system hidden and managed by a private actor seems like the worst way of doing it.
I'm not sure if you have been to an American jail but they do not set folks on the straight path. They are basically Crime University, and the folks on the inside trade all kinds of information about how to crime more effectively, where to crime, what tactics police use and what neighborhoods are safest or most dangerous for police activity.
I was thrown in lockup for a weekend for not changing my tags after moving and letting it escalate out of control and what I saw in that inner city lockup truly shocked me. Folks had incredible amounts of illegal goods on them (despite having been searched and thrown in jail) and were openly performing transactions, sharing "industry secrets" and coordinating for future work once they were out.
If you have spent any time in an American jail or prison, I think you would be disabused of the notion that you can simply lock a criminal up for a few months and "fix" them. I would suggest that it's the opposite, a few months in jail turns a newbie criminal into a true amateur or journeyman with networking, education and future opportunities.
This feels like it should be illegal. Holding back on reporting or prosecuting until you think you're more likely to get a conviction or a bigger conviction, feels close to entrapment.
To do otherwise is just unnecessarily vindictive, showing that it's the punishment that matters more than the prevention.
A year ago my wallet was stolen. The guy went on a shopping spree until my cc companies started denying charges. In each store he made sure to spend less than $500, so individually there was no crime worth reporting. I did file it as $2k+ of stolen goods but afaik the cops never pursued it and the thief got away with it.
The point is that from the store’s point of view the only way to prevent it is to wait for it to be a crime the SA will prosecute. It’s honestly shocking to me that people in these comments rush to defend thieves stealing power tools and stuff from Home Depot. There’s no argument to be made about them “stealing food for their staving families” this is very clearly purely about crimes of opportunity by selfish degenerates who have no interest whatsoever in the betterment of society.
And btw, it’s possible that Home Depot does report every crime, but the only time anything happens is once it reaches that threshold that progressive SAs determine is worth prosecuting.
Hah. I had pretty good evidence when it came to my stolen laptop and iPhone when I was given a lead to the person selling them on eBay (essentially, someone bought the phone on eBay, tried to convince me to unlock it, and when I refused and the seller refused to take it as a return, he said "I know the real owners info and I'm giving him your info").
His eBay page was a treasure trove. Probably 100+ phones for sale, most "without charger". Same, 50+ laptops, "no chargers or accessories".
Contacted the police.
"He probably didn't steal them himself" - Uhh, isn't selling knowingly stolen property still a crime?
"..."
They could not possibly have cared less.
In Texas the felony limit is $2,500. Is stealing $1000 on Monday, $1000 on Tuesday, and $1000 on Wednesday really so much better than stealing $3,000 on Monday?
It doesn't feel close to entrapment at all.
Maybe you could argue they aren't doing their best to minimise losses and such aren't eligible for a full recovery of their losses, but not that the perpetrator didn't commit the offense.
I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.
You don’t want to pay people to do that and put yourself in a higher theft situation, then you haggle the customer even more by treating them like a criminal.
I had one of these happen at a self checkout the other day where the system did object tracking and it turns out I had many duplicate items to scan so I used the same item scan code to save time even though its weight system forces me to do one at a time I can at least have a prealigned code handy. I ended up doing some tricky hand switching between items (crossing over) while doing it quickly and that tripped up the object tracking system, so an employee came over and reviewed the video of my checkout right in front of me… at a grocery store for a $2 item.
The anti consumer sentiment is high for an economy based so highly off consumerism.
I've seen this sentiment in recent years, but with respect to time, self-checkout was always faster than human cashiers. You didn't need to wait while the cashiers did procedures like counting the money in the drawer and waiting for a supervisor to sign-off on it. The lines were unified so that your line was served by 4-8 checkouts rather than 1 cashier (or 2 as is the case with walmart). That meant that any issue with a particular customer e.g. arguing over pricing presented on the shelf vs on the system, needing to send someone out to verify the shelf, didn't affect the time you needed to wait as much. They were a very positive thing for customers when they were introduced.
Basically, instead of having to get in a line of 3-6 people and having to wait for each of those to be served before you by one cashier, you just instantly check-out with usually no line.
With respect to labor, it's basically the same. That's unless, in your part of the world, they let you use the self-checkout with huge quantities of groceries that need bagging. In my experience, there's (always?) a limit on the number of items for self-checkout.
The trust is the key. If we are trusted, Home Depot should not be secretly keeping tabs on us...
Where I am there is a limit that many people ignore and I have almost never seen any employee try to enforce
Also like the other response, I hadn't heard of explicit limits either, as long as everything fits on the bagging scale.
Yikes, the entitlement. Should they also have someone push your cart around the store and load it for you?
If you don't like it, you have the freedom of association to use a different store.
Life goes by fast. I’d rather spend those small minutes lost with my loved ones or back to doing things I enjoy more. Over my lifetime that’s a lot of time.
I only shop in person at Whole Foods because it’s two blocks away. Every Tuesday they have some nice discounts and it’s fun to walk the aisles. Otherwise I just deliver groceries from Costco every 2 weeks or my Amazon prime subscriptions.
Why continue purposefully at a disadvantage? Makes no sense.
Even setting that aside, if you're so into min-maxing your free time that you can list waiting in line at the grocery store as one of your biggest regrets in life, then you gotta recognize how privileged a life you lead.
Well... that's because capitalism incentivizes us to do it wrong. Instead of the dreams of the early sci-fi writers getting real - aka, robots and automation do the majority of the work, leaving humans time to socialize - we have it even worse nowadays, with even with the work force of women added to the labor pool, there still are constant political pushes to expand working hours or to even make it legal to hire children again.
If the profits from productivity gains over the last decades would have been distributed to the workers, either in terms of purchasing power or in free time, we wouldn't be in this entire mess.
When a job doesn't need people, keeping a person there is not some kind of noble gesture. It's annoying.
On top of that I don't want to be in a position where I get accused of shoplifting when I forgot to scan something. I'm simply not trained on the 7+ different self-checkout terminals they have around here.
There are - currently - three-hUndred-and--fifty-seven -- people - inthequeue. Please wait
What exactly do you mean?
That the companies moved to self checkout because they couldn't get the staff?
Or people prefer self checkout because the manned tills are few in number?
The first is very very hard to believe
Like imagine being in the era when electricity was becoming more prevalent and I’m sure some people were complaining about some ideal then as well.
That said I do agree that self checkouts should not be using methods beyond what’s reasonably necessary.
I'm all for more efficiency. Me fumbling with self-checkout is the opposite of efficiency.
What's that? I should learn to do it better? How much would that cost in terms of both time and money? Multiply that by several hundred million, as compared with a few hundred thousand cashiers.
You're saying that (x)250,000,000 < (x)500,000, where x = the cost in time and money to become proficient in checking stuff out. Is that correct?
If so, your math seems a little off. AFAICT, the only folks who get the benefit of this "efficiency" are the store owners who, instead of paying folks to do the job, makes the customer do it instead.
What's that? Those savings are passed along to the customer? Give me even one example of this being the case. I've certainly never seen it.
Without me, there'd be no cart gatherer jobs.
I once said this without stating it as a joke, but was surprised to find people enthusiastically agreeing with me. /s
Even if this suit fails, the store is vulnerable to continuous repeats by other parties. Written consent from each customer is the only viable protection. So the BIPA law may mean that face detection, not just recognition, is not practical in Illinois.
Answer: File a lawsuit and use discovery to find out.
If I don't determine this is a face that I've seen before, I've not recognized the face (maybe I have recognized that there is a face there).
To recognize entails re-cognizing: knowing again what was previously known. Simply noticing that something is a face does not satisfy that; it is only detecting. Without linking it to prior knowledge, recognition hasn’t occurred.
Is a picture of a face count as "biometric" information? I strongly doubt it and suspect this case will be thrown out.
Wren Solutions / Costar seem to be the main vendors of these “public view monitors” — such as the PVM10-B-2086.
https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609...
“Face Detection Boxes (Neon Green, Front and Side Detection)”
In some stores here in the UK they have CCTV with a sort of attention getting dancing LED light ring around the lens which I assume is there to a) trick you into looking straight at it (and so get a clear shot of your face) and b) remind people that cameras are there doing something.
Aldi really annoyed me by showing live video on the self checkout screen with the notice "Monitoring In Progress". Then I realized Walmart and many others have a camera notch on their monitors, too, so perhaps I should thank Aldi for at least being honest?
Anybody using facial recognition or similar may know me very well by now. I'm the guy in the mask who flips them off.
False positive their ass into a cell and I'll guarantee you this garbage will stop fast.
That really winds me up too - it shows such contempt for legitimate customers.
One time at the grocery store I watched a cashier clock out, shop for herself, then check out at the self checkout (!). I wonder if she recognized the irony.
Also, the HD nearest me has no fewer than 10 ALPRs in their parking lot. They've made absolutely sure that you're gonna get into the database.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
There is a bit of a spate here in the UK where just walk in, literally empty shelves into bags and walk out. Some security guards or assistants try to intervene, but apparently some security guards (e.g. ones at apple stores) are told not to try and intervene so really what's the point?
The plot twist for this though is that the police are increasingly using "facial recognition vans" to spot people walking around in town centers and apprehending them for thefts from stores, sometimes months previously since they have CCTV footage of them doing it. One hopes there is more evidence than just a hit on the facial ID database as we all know how inaccurate and biased they can be.
That expensive 30 dollar bottle of shampoo for example, in the handbag, and just checkout the other items like normal.
I worked at a place where we could easily track people through the store. Not ID them, but if at any point we clicked on a person, and we could see from entering the store until exiting the store everywhere they passed. shoplifting is super easy to prove after the fact, just hard to do whilst they are still in the store
So you are 100% correct - the article is badly written because it doesn't give that context to how people use the legal system to determine whether or not there is a case to be had.
Absolute proof it could never happen? No, but we don’t need that.
Anyone rubbing two brain cells together could deduce that they're using facial recognition.
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/asda-iss...
Home depot goes out of the way to make its cameras visible. There is a large "camera" sign, bright light to catch your attention, a visible display to show it's not a fake, and sometimes even a motion activated chime. I assume the green square around the face is the next step in a game.
Exactly - these checkout monitors are positioned so you can see you're being filmed. I'm surprised the purpose of this is unclear to anyone.
A few days later I get an email "your item hasn't been picked up and you've been refunded."
Apparently if you scan an item and pay for it in the store they still expect you to wait for their staff to approve you, or something. It wasn't clear.
This was also only necessary because they didn't accept Apple pay so I had no way of paying for my items except through the app.
>The registers is not where they need to be combating theft.
There is plenty of theft happening at the self-checkout registers as well, as it's very easy to do.
The charitable view is someone is opening the packaging to e.g. make sure that the thread is the right size (in the UK especially we suffer from annoying mixture of old legacy imperial measurement era pipes/threads/etc as well as metric).
The unchartiable view is they are opening the packet and stealing the bit they need/lost/broke 45 minutes earlier and need to finish the job.
I have lived in neighborhoods where theft is unheard of, and I have lived in neighborhoods where I checked to make sure each item hadn't been opened before putting them in my cart.
also locked cabinets... cause me to not buy whatever is in them.
Gets to me the worst when I'm on my 3rd Home Depot trip of the day BEEP looking through a box of pipe fittings that is filled with everything _except_ the fitting matching the label on the box BEEP okay.. the Home Depot website says it's in stock at the one 20 minutes up the store BEEP but, that's what it said about BEEP the stock at this store so.. but hmm BEEP maybe I could combine these two other fittings and save a BEEP ... trip to the other store, okay I'll look here for... BEEP hmm, the two fittings I would need to combine also aren't in the right BEEP box, but... it looks like maybe there's some that someone put back into a BEEP different box? Oh, wait BEEP _none_ of these fittings are in their correct box? What!? BEEP
Sorry I've just never had anybody to talk with this about. I hate those things with a passion. Let me know if you'd like to start a support group.
In my local supermarket, the screen turns on and shows the face of the customer when they select "finish and pay", which I suspect is to give a "honesty nudge".
Using a Kroger self-checkout is tantamount to waterboarding. Hesitate for a quarter of a second before placing your item on the scale? Angry prompt. Put an item on the scanner (which itself is another scale) but it doesn't scan within half a second? Angry prompt. Get three angry prompts? Now you get a fourth angry prompt, except this one can only be dismissed by a staff member, and we've already established that they're few and far between.
I've given up on actually bagging my items while checking out. I can't rearrange anything in the bags, or move the bags, without the checkout machine throwing a hissy fit. So no, it's not actually faster, because I have to bag everything after paying for it. It totally breaks the pipeline of the checkout.
It's just a wireless barcode scanner on a table with a receipt printer and a payment terminal. The screen shows everything you've scanned with pictures! and legible product descriptions, which makes it really easy to make sure you scanned everything correctly.
... except at the "PRO" checkouts. Which are actually just ordinary check-out lanes. Anybody can go through them. The signs mean nothing whatsoever.
I never go through their self-checkouts unless I've only got one or two pre-packaged items. I usually park on the "PRO" side, enter through those doors, check out on that side, and leave through those doors.
However, where a store might be spying on me when I'm just doing my shopping, it's guaranteed they're spying on me if I'm using self-checkout.
Honestly, though, the privacy invasion is only part of why I don't do self-checkout. Another major part is that I don't want to risk the store thinking that I stole something from them.
(Conveniently, I live in a large-enough city for there to be plenty of other options. Including small or high-touch stores, which do not have self-checkout.)
When a corporation lies for profit and gets caught, it is merely a "mistake" and no criminal charges are filed.
Individuals aren't afforded the same privilege.
I don't see the point in campaigning against things like this, because it only protects bad people. If the government wants to get you, they won't use home depot to do it, they'll just take you from your house or shoot you in the street. If they want to spy on you, they'll break into your house and put microphones under your carpet and cameras in your walls.
If we actually had cameras like this everywhere, there would be so much less crime. Instead of the drug addict robbing twenty shops a day, they'd be arrested in the second shop.
If you don't want that to happen, give cashiers their jobs back, you greedy bastards.
It's a lousy deal for everyone except the business.
If it's super fast, it's just for a few items, and a cashier would've been just as fast. If it's for a lot of items, there's a decent chance I have to look up some codes or something; which a cashier is better and faster at.
The trade off of self checkout is cost savings for the business. These savings are not passed on to me. Therefore, I don't give a flying rat's ass about them.
I'm with OP. If I'm working for the business, they will compensate me. Willingly or unwillingly.
Some self checkouts are better than others the worst ones are the ones that don’t let you take your items off the scale after scanning and then they throw an error for you to put them back.
I’ve also never felt treated like cattle but I’d figure a checkout with a cashier is more cattle like since you are being funneled through a tight space one after the other vs an open space like self checkouts.
Many stores near me appeared to cut cashiers before they added self-checkouts. If anything, adding self-checkouts increased the number of available options to get out of the store faster.
I'd place my bets on curbside pickup getting pushed more before cashiers get added given how popular it's become as an option.
Of all of this hassle, the cashier merely handles a single step. You already do all the work.
I'm not sure what you mean by "treated like cattle". I haven't really had a bad experience with self-checkout, granted, we probably don't live in the same country / culture.
The receipt checking happens with the cashier as well, just implicitly. If anything, they are treated badly, with having to stand most of the time in the US. Absolutely unnecessary.
Facial recognition I don't like either, but stores (and others) will do that anyways, with self-checkout being, at most, an excuse to develop/improve/deploy such systems. Theft would be a problem/excuse anyways for stores, and advertising is a pretty big trojan horse in this regard as well. Self-checkout doesn't make a difference here.
(This is getting tangential, but I do exactly what you describe, and I really appreciate that I can do it on my terms, without having to accommodate three other people: the one in front of me, the cashier, and the one next in line.)
Uh, no? Ralphs absolutely has a full order and pay online thing, then you just drive to the store and get your groceries delivered to your car. I used it just yesterday as I can't go anywhere after my oral surgery.
Not sure what stores you're going to go but this is nowhere near my experience.
Not only do I have the muscle memory, still after 30 years, I also have the added incentive of knowing the value of my own time, not being fatigued from hours of work, the ability pre-position items in the cart at an optimal orientation for handling and scanning, and foreknowledge of what items I have and a plan for how best to bag them that was made prior to my arrival at self-checkout.
So, yeah, I scan faster.
Much faster.
edit: oh man this has brought up a bunch of frustrations. Why do customers just pile shit on the counter? When I interact with a cashier, like at a gas station on a long road trip, every item I place on the counter has the barcodes oriented towards the person, so they can just "zap zap zap zap" the items rapid-fire without handling them. My bag (I live in a civilized state that has banned plastic bags) is ready and waiting, items are organized and presented in an order that make sense for ease of bagging. My payment method is ready. The experience is efficient and quick.
It takes no mental effort to do any of this and yet I am constantly stuck behind people who act as though they are purchasing things for the first time in their entire lives and the process is as foreign to them as communicating in the language of an extraterrestrial intelligence is to me.
Also the only place truly training cashiers, AFAICT, is Aldi's.
Their self-checkouts used to be slow because the registers would verify the weight of items on the scale (the surface where you bag it) before letting you put it in the cart. If it didn't like the weight it would force you to put it back in the bag. I don't think they do this anymore. Asset protection can view a camera pointed at the scanner and bags if they think you're stealing.
Furthermore, it's hard for Walmart to retain people, so cashiers are treated like a dump stat. They won't really dedicate people to checking out anymore unless that's all they can do, e.g. elderly, so someone who's a cashier all day tends to be slow because they're accomodating that person. So you could be the fastest cashier in the world but it won't mean anything as far as raises, etc. Your fast cashiers are often pulled off and stocking unless its super busy.
(I wish I was kidding; discounters that squeeze costs everywhere including cashier throughput seem to be the exception in retail.)
Even aside from the line, the only thing clerks are sometimes faster at in my experience is ringing up fresh produce where codes have to be typed in (these codes are usually on a label on the produce, but if not you have to go through a lookup procedure if you haven't memorized the code).
Supermarkets usually have old slow people running them. The only time I don't use self checkout is when I have alcohol, and it is slower every single time than doing it myself.
Personally, I'm faster at scanning items than most cashiers are. I used to work in retail, though, so maybe that's just me.
I haven't ever experienced a receipt check while using self-checkout. If I did, I'd stop visiting that store. That's a bright red line for me. To my partner's chagrin, it's one of the reasons I won't go into Costco.
While self-checkout is less private in a lot of ways (see article) I value it because I have social anxiety and would prefer to avoid too much (or too little!) smalltalk with cashiers -- especially about the items I'm buying.
Not self checkout related, but the Kroger stores by me have all started having security guards check receipts before you can leave the store. They do this whether or not you do self checkout. Accordingly, I have stopped patronizing those stores because I refuse to spend my money at a business that treats me like a criminal. I sympathize in that they are trying to stop theft, but I'm not going to put up with that particular method of deterrence.
They got rid of it eventually and I started shopping there again, but if they start doing receipt checks they're back on the shit list.
When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only.
Last year I went to get some low voltage wire. I walked for several aisles in both directions to find someone to open the cage. Not a soul. So I reached behind the cage and pulled it out, went to self checkout, began paying with cash. The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day. Associate casually went to another register and got me change. When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental.
I discovered a smaller local hardware store and go there. The employees constantly ask you if you need help which is the complete opposite of home depot.
Under no circumstance will I shop at Home Depot again.
(And, today I drove by that HD and noticed they installed multiple ALPR.)
I think you're being paranoid.
I also think you're being paranoid.
In contrast the local hardware store succeeded in using its employees as both a deterrent to theft and being welcoming to its customers.
https://www.securityinformed.com/news/co-855-ga-co-1753-ga.2...
Maybe the cop was parked out of the way eating his lunch.
A lot of retailers do that now. They match first 6/last 4 in store against your online account to match receipts up. Walmart is a big one now with that implemented across their self-checkouts (and eventually pushed onto the registers with their new software/hardware upgrade push).
> The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day.
Slightly makes sense if they haven’t loaded every machine up with a full cash load. Plus some lanes might “accidentally” be turned on without any cash in them and not put into a “cards only” state.
Picture this. Guy comes home late at night. Outdoor light is on. He goes in and presses he light switch. No lights come on but the fuse blows and now the outdoor light is gone.
What does he do?
The answer is that you have no idea based on only that information. It's tempting to think he'll do what my friends and I would do: find the fusebox and investigate.
But the thing is, his crazy ex's crazy boyfriend threatened yesterday to kill him. This guy is bolting, not looking for the fusebox.
The last two visits revealed the complete elimination of checkout lines and the appearance of a new cluster of self service registers with a new orientation perpendicular to the old lines. As I stood before the register, looking at the large monitor, I watched my dehumanized face beleaguered by green lines. I realized it had no other purpose but to foist an impression of my dirty face toward me, conveying my position as a filthy, groveling consumer pestering them with my petty needs. The camera could easily do its work without the hostile display, but then the customer may get away with a sense of dignity, which to them would be a form of shoplifting, or squandered neuromarketing potential.
During each visit, I make it a point to express my contempt for this to any ostensibly human employees nearby. I do so respectfully, yet their pride as high priests of home improvement and the glorious providence of private equity that blesses their sacred mission always results in perceived offense. Despite prefacing my grievance as not directed personally at them, the allure of indignance prevails and I always walk away as the bad guy who dared piss on their holy gilded ground.
Their use of cameras bothers me for different reasons, but I'm glad to fan the flames.
I look at myself and go "damn that's one sexy dude I'm gonna jut out my chin and stand up straight so if anyone looks at this, they fall in love with me".
Also, the staff doesn't identify as anything except someone trying to make it through their day.
Or perhaps it's truly pure gratitude and warm hearted loyalty for having a job, any job, which our future suggests won't be very common soon.
On a more serious note, I don't think it's terribly valid to dismiss these behaviors (Home Despot mug shaming, not zealous employee bots) as nothing more than a fun opportunity to admire one's reflection. It may not by itself be a keystone stride on the path of anomie, but it's a stride indeed and I don't want that kind of society. Maybe you do. Home Depot and Blackrock certainly do. I don't.
If you think the company has contempt for you then you might try to see what they put new employees through. If you feel lucky just to be able to complete your transaction then you shouldn't have to wonder hard what it's like to feel lucky just to receive a paycheck without any notes or veiled corporate threats attached.
The gamification of society has reduced us all to cattle.