Grocery stores, home improvement stores and retail chains were all making room for those blinking green lanes of sweeping, modern shopping convenience (or so they said) – the self-checkouts where you become cashier and bagger.
If you’ve ever visited Target on a Sunday evening and have seen the snaking lane of self-checkout customers weaving into the store, you know.
But you may be seeing fewer of them in major retailers nowadays, and you can blame California’s retail crime wave.
This is a few days old but still worth a read. I don't think it's the organized mass thefts that are the issue, because those rarely involve point-of-sale stations. Those are grab-and-goes, increasingly with impunity.
The problem here is more about individual thefts that use the self-check stations as a cover. The perp scans a few items and pays for them, giving the impression of compliance, and then steals a cartful of products that they can sell online. If caught, they just claim that the register malfunctioned. I saw this exact sequence on On Patrol Live a few weeks ago, in fact, although in that case the woman claimed she'd paid through the WalMart app.
Retailers will likely still offer these, but only for small amounts -- 15 items or less, perhaps. The WalMart local to me has already made that a policy.
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