SPEND $100 TO EARN $10. BIG BOX THINKING! ISN'T THIS A LOSS? DOESN'T IT MEAN YOU LOSE MONEY? NOT ACCORDING TO BIG BOX THINKING!

 THE MAX ALLEN REPORT

Volume #10161110                            October 16, 2023

BIG BOX STORES' STUPIDITY & GREED

Replacing people with self-check hasn't worked out too well.

When big box stores like Walmart went to self-check it was thought [God knows what moron thought it would work] that it would cut costs by firing thousands of cashiers nationwide.  They thought [here comes that moron again] people would be on the honour system, and nobody would cheat in the self-check lanes.  Well, they thought wrong!

Click here: https://nypost.com/2023/10/13/walmarts-bid-to-cutdown-on-shoplifting-at-self-checkout-leads-to-surge-in-hostile-encounters/

Especially in heavily minority populated areas, the theft [they call it 'shrinkage'] has more than quintupled [that means it's gone up by over 500%] as the self-check lanes invite theft of all kinds.

● There's the favourite old standby of simply not scanning everything that goes into the basket.  It'd work, but it's easy to get caught which is why only the really stupid do this.  When they walk out with a basket heaping with goods and pay only $10, something's gone wrong and it doesn't take a rocket scientist or account to figure out there's theft afoot.

● There's using an old receipt from a large purchase.  Many people just drop these on the ground as they leave the store so they're easy to get.  A thief simply picks up one dropped by someone with a lot of stuff, then he or she enters the store and fills a basket with stuff, scans a couple of things [when the lanes are full the one lone-gunman on patrol can't keep track of everyone] and walks out the door.  The Walmart rubber-guns see the receipt and, unable to read really well in English, lets it go.  The fault here is that you might run into an English speaking Native American with something better than a public school education, in which case you're busted!

● Then there's the cool and nearly unpredictable way of simply entering the wrong code when buying fruits and vegetables.  A bag of honey crisp apples may sell for notably less than a bag of Fuji or some other apples so you just enter the wrong code.  Easy?  Yes.  Mis-scanning also happens when you get your hands on a barcode for an item that isn't exactly as it seems.  How about buying a television set and scanning a barcode from a smaller model?  Einstein at the self-checkout isn't going to know a 50" from a 15" television; he or she just sees the code and that it's paid for.  Oh, how do you get the code?  I'll leave that up to your imagination and your mobile phone.

There's an answer to all of this and it seems to have completely slipped by the narrow-shouldered thimble-brained executives in the Ivory Tower of Bentonville and Boise.  That is the fact that hiring cashiers, training and paying them well, and eliminating self-checkout would reduce shrinkage to a fraction of what it has become.  Your friendly neighbourhood cashier has the ability to see that there are two watermelons and a DVD player under the shopping cart.  He or she deals with customer's one-at-a-time instead of standing watch over as many as a dozen people at once.

Yes, hired help is expensive, but so is the loss of goods to the unscrupulous who simply don't adhere to the 'honour system' of self-checkout.  People without honour will always beat 'honour' systems.

I'm Max, and that's the way I see it!