Walmart Is Planning a Store Without Cashiers (recode.net) 190
According to Recode, Walmart's startup incubator is experimenting with a cashier-less store concept called Project Kepler, which "aims to reimagine the in-store shopping experience with the help of technologies like computer vision." The goal is reportedly the "creation of physical stores that would operate without checkout lines or cashiers -- in a similar fashion to Amazon's futuristic Amazon Go store." From the report: The Project Kepler project focused on the future of in-store shopping is being led by Mike Hanrahan, the co-founder and former chief technology officer for Jet.com, multiple sources tell Recode. It is located in Hoboken, N.J., where Jet is based. A Project Kepler job listing for a "computer vision engineer" says that the role will involve creating a "best-in-class consumer experience in the physical retail space." Amazon's Go concept uses a combination of sensors and cameras to track what each store shopper takes off of shelves so it can automatically bill them for their purchase without their having to stop to pay on the way out. The store's launch has been severely delayed, however, with reports that the technology did not work well when the store was crowded. Walmart is envisioning a similar system that would potentially eliminate the need for cashiers in stores outfitted with the technology. Walmart has more than two million employees worldwide, many of whom work at checkout.
It will work of course (Score:1)
If it has enough automated machine guns in the inside and outside.
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Or a Rambo like greeter who can improvise booby traps to hold off the zombie hordes.
"Project Kepler"? (Score:5, Funny)
I read that headline as "Project Klepto", honest to glub I did.
Re: I realize no one cares but (Score:3)
Are you four feet tall or something?
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This has not been my experience with Walmart which seems to vary widely by location from all the stories I've heard.
I do try to avoid it before midnight but even when I've gone during the day it doesn't take significantly longer (if at all) than other stores.
I usually shop between midnight and about 5 AM. It's just less crowded.
The only problem I've run into while trying to check out is that they do software updates at about 4 AM. Not every night of course but when they do update their registers the who
Please, OH PLEASE (Score:5, Funny)
Mount cameras everywhere and do an internet live feed. Peopleofwalmart will have a field day.
Direct Extraction of money from local economies (Score:5, Insightful)
Combined with robotic stockers, a walmart store will probably bring under two dozen jobs while destroying many more jobs.
In theory, it's good because it lowers prices. But once no one has money left, lower prices don't matter.
And walmart closes shop and moves on to extract money from another economy.
I'm not against it. But we need to seriously slow down automation or our entire way of life/system of government is at risk of collapsing into an autocratic oligarchy.
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Artificially inflated health care costs, corruption, run-away litigation, big-education and big college tuition bills without a skill, whining and the only thing available is a low wage position at Walmart and advocates throw a tantrum people should earn more?
Try reforming all of the above and then the wages will be more livable.
Until then, this is future.... and you can thank tech and Amazon. Of course I wouldn't want to go back.
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I'm not against it. But we need to seriously slow down automation or our entire way of life/system of government is at risk of collapsing into an autocratic oligarchy.
The USA has already been an autocratic oligarchy for its entire existence, it can't collapse into one.
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No kidding, people are NOT thinking this stuff through.
People without jobs have no money to spend...
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No kidding, people are NOT thinking this stuff through.
People without jobs have no money to spend...
Only as long as income is so tightly coupled with your job. Technologies such are this are likely what will start the process down basic income which is not tied to your job. Or a much more dystopian future if we choose to ignore those who are displaced.
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Hehehe, did you see the tax bill the nazipublicans just passed? I doubt the whole "basic income" will happen in ours or our children's lifetimes
Even this tax bill had elements of basic income, for parents anyway, when it increased refundable child tax credits. I find it likely that basic income will never be called basic income, but instead will simply be increased refundable tax credits. So arguably parents in 2018 will have a basic income of $116.67 per month per child.
With even conservatives using refundable tax credits to give aid to the poor, I see it likely this strategy will be expanded upon over the next couple decades. Over the next year w
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This is only unpopular because the media with their 90% left leaning coverage is working overtime to make it so.
Keep in mind the Individual Mandate does not go away until 2019. So nobody is really going to loose coverage this year. That is in there to force some action on fixing 0bamacare, which everyone knows is quite broken in that its not controlling costs; and has not actually met its coverage objectives.
This is real money for most of the middle class, who actually votes. The members of the middle cl
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Combined with robotic stockers, a walmart store will probably bring under two dozen jobs while destroying many more jobs.
I think the solution should be simple, taxation..... EG: Create local 30% Taxes on the gross sales of all Retail businesses that have a physical establishment, and 75% on the gross shipping revenues charged to customers for companies that deliver goods in state from an out-of-state location.
For EACH individual employee a retail business/delivery companies pays for working at t
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The problem is we have a bunch of ignorant do gooders trying to force the wages for employees up to a point where automation just becomes cheaper.
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How much productivity increases have there been in cashiering and bagging groceries?
Re: Direct Extraction of money from local economie (Score:2)
It's paradoxical to say that automation will eliminate as many jobs as most here predict. Think critically here: If nobody has enough money to consume, then there's nothing for automation to do.
More realistically, you'll probably see a massive change in how economies work, assuming that high unemployment lasts long term (historically, frictional unemployment doesn't last very long.)
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Not really paradoxical. The answer is automation will increase productivity to the point where most people don't need to work 40+ hours a week to generate enough wealth to enable them to consume as much as they need, and as much as a lot of people even want to.
The only problem is we have a lot of antiquated rules that say stuff like 32+ hours is a full time employee and those are the ones who get benefits. We have a tiny as compared to what it should be individual insurance market because of a bunch of an
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Not really paradoxical. The answer is automation will increase productivity to the point where most people don't need to work 40+ hours a week to generate enough wealth to enable them to consume as much as they need, and as much as a lot of people even want to.
That is a viable outcome; one among many (hence my comment about a big shift in how economies work) but what is paradoxical is the assumption that automation will just make everybody unable to afford anything. It just doesn't make any logical sense to have an outcome where people are too poor to afford what is produced by automation; after all, the endgame of automation is to make everything less expensive and more practical.
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I'm sure long before that happens, hackers will realize that if they can cut off external communication to a store, then an employeeless store at 3am represents a day's worth of cash taking.....
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There's a limit to the demand for people to do interpretative dance about the benefits of architecture, though.
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Every task is either trivial or useless from a cosmological viewpoint.
In the long run we are all dead.
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I think there is some truth to that but it will take time to reallocate the economy in that direction.
Current estimates are for 38% of the jobs going away over less than 20 years.
Already, kids go deep into debt for degrees which were valuable when they started but worthless when they graduate.
So we should lower the cost of training, retraining, and education- and perhaps restructure them to take fewer years.
And when 3 million truckers lose their jobs almost over night (3-5 year period), it's going to be rea
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Already kids go deep into debt for degrees which are worthless when they start. Very few people are affected by shifts in the economy in the 4 years (becoming increasingly 5 years) while they are in school. Most of them might start in a useful degree, then decide they are lazy, unintelligent, or just to drunk to complete that degree and drop to something easier like political science or underwater basket weaving to come home with a degree.
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And when 3 million truckers lose their jobs almost over night (3-5 year period), it's going to be really hard to employ them quickly. Some will never work effectively again.
If the implementation of autonomous trucking is too hasty, there will indeed be many millions of jobs lost, and not all of them will be truck drivers. Fuel sales are typically minimal profit for all except the government, and roadside truck stops and service stations make a good bit of their present business off the human needs of the drivers.
Gradually inserting this (admittedly more efficient) form of transport would have the benefit of easing the transition. If it is implemented too quickly, many who do l
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While true, at least for now, they'll still have to have employees to plug the power cord into the fully automated rigs, and they can make up the difference by choosin
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Perhaps a few: replacing and even airing up tires, topping off fluids, cleaning senor/camera lenses, and making repairs once on-board diagnostics determine a fault has occurred.
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I know, right? Why would anyone insist that a company act ethically?
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
People have much less ethical concerns to fool machines then they have with people. So people are going to try to trick the system much more often than they would with people there.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
And if you combine that with the tendency of Walmart to attract people who go shopping in their pyjamas, or underwear, and who have no problems with relieving themselves in the aisles.. as Opportunist pointed out above, this is going to make.. interesting television, if nothing else.
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Let's be honest here. I've seen people going shopping in pyjama's or underwear at Winn-Dixie's, Sweetbay, and Meijer in the US just as often as Walmart. Hell when Zellers existed here in Canada, you'd see the same thing along with Target(during the buyout) and in the US too.
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Studies on this across the world have shown that retail theft works out to a little over double the baseline when self-checkout stores are used, and drops back down to close to the baseline when random inspection is included. No doubt that cashier free will be higher but that depends on what kind of oversight they use.
The Amazon method seems to use sensors to identify what the person has taken reducing the amount of control a person has on the payment process.
My local self-checkout service will flag up a ra
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In Thailand are super markets where the whole bag is cross checked with your recipe.
No idea what they fear: weather the cashier is corrupt or whether you have stolen something.
Of course they don't check everyone but it is a huge percentage.
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Stores do that here as well. Some WMs have someone at the exit who will go through and check receipts, just like is done at Costco. If a WM has all automated checkouts, one can be 100% sure there would be a loss prevention guy at the entrance.
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Every time I've been leaving a Costco, the receipt check has been trivial. Glance at the receipt and the cart, presumably to see if the receipt is long enough to be plausible for how full the cart is, mark the receipt, and go.
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I'm amazed at how many people don't get this.
Back when I actually bought stuff at a local technology store instead of online, there was often a long (10+) line of sheeple waiting to get their receipts checked. I would routinely just walk right by the line carrying my bag full of things I had just bought and leave the store and was never challenged. I assumed others in the line would see what I did and exit the line and leave the store just as I did. However, I started glancing back after I had walked throug
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People may be more willing to fool machines, but will they be as able to fool machines in the near future? Ringing up honeycrisp apples as java apples is easy enough now, but what about when the AI saw you picking out honeycrisp apples? It doesn't even have to be perfect, just good enough to flag you as suspicious so one of the few remaining employees can verify.
My guess is that these automated systems will be much better at reducing shrinkage than human employees are in the very near future.
The wage savings will make up for the shinkage (Score:2)
self checkout not promising. (Score:2, Interesting)
I tried Walmart's self-checkout lane once. After scanning about 50 items and putting them on the scale, it suddenly decides that a can of cashews is not heavy enough and no progress is possible. I had to call in a human cashier just to abort the process and go to a proper checkout lane.
If the self-checkout is anything to go by, avoid this new cashierless store in much that same manner that a plague would.
Same in the UK (Score:2)
With any sufficiently large number of items you can almost gaurantee the self checkout will complain at some point and require a member of staff to put in an override code.
Quite why these checkouts require you to put the damn things in the bagging area to be weighed is a mystery to me - if you're going to steal something you're not going to scan it in the first place, it'll go straight from trolley to bag!
The assumptions these systems make and the constant faults they exhibit lead me to believe they were de
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designed by idiots and coded by minimum wage morons presumably somewhere in asia.
Why Asia? You can find minimum wage morons anywhere, especially in 'Murica.
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With any sufficiently large number of items you can almost gaurantee the self checkout will complain at some point and require a member of staff to put in an override code.
I generally only use self checkouts if I have less than 6 items, nothing requiring weighing like loose vegetables, and nothing like alcohol that requires checking anyway. Otherwise, it's quicker to use a human cashier.
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If a single item that couldn't detect the weight of it caused you to have to go to an entirely new line there is only one possible answer out of three options:
(1) you're over 60;
(2) you're a retard; or
(3) warlmart's self checkout software is so bad that a single incorrectly weighted item causes it to delete all progress up to that point with no chance of recovery.
Given you post on slashdot I think that rules out you being over 60. So I'll let readers who are more familiar than me with walmart's self checkou
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If a single item that couldn't detect the weight of it caused you to have to go to an entirely new line there is only one possible answer out of three options: (1) you're over 60; (2) you're a retard; or (3) warlmart's self checkout software is so bad that a single incorrectly weighted item causes it to delete all progress up to that point with no chance of recovery.
Given you post on slashdot I think that rules out you being over 60. So I'll let readers who are more familiar than me with walmart's self checkouts to determine whether or not you're a retard.
I'm glad Australia has such wonderful effective self checkout lines. But over here, I've had the same problem. And I'm not over 60, not a retard, and yes - the self checkout software is so bad that no more progress is possible without human intervention.
But you see, the problem is that there are no humans available most of the time to intervene. They are busy doing other important things like checking their Instagram or fixing the other five checkouts stalled for "are you over 21" purchases of wine, s
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Human intervention is frequently required over here as well. However unlike America we don't have our minimum wage be under the poverty line, so our humans actually do come and help. I have never once seen them on their phone. Your problems say a lot more about your culture then they do the software used.
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Unlike the OP, I can go through the self checkout with those tampons and not have to ask someone with an IQ over 10 on how to pay for it.
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That's not fair. Millennials didn't invent thinking the entire world is about you. Older generations have plenty of those people. We elected one for President.
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Had this problem a lot early on in the rollout by Coles and Woolworths in Australia, but over a year or so they made them far more forgiving. Never have a problem with them complaining about extra/missing weight any more.
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The (poor) assumption is that a would be shoplifter would transfer the item to the scale to make it look like part of everything else they are buying without scanning.
However as of late none of the self checkout lanes seem to be so picky about the weight. Either they got better at it or stopped bothering. The other day my daughter sad on the bagging area but it didn't complain, so I'm guessing a lot of places just disable that feature.
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When the Walmart near me first installed self-checkout the scales were terribly sensitive and for the first month or two I had to call an employee over at least once to override it. Even something as simple as moving an item from one bag to another would cause a problem.
They improved them and now I hardly ever have that problem.
I've never had to go from a self-checkout to an employee assisted checkout though.
I scan and bag my groceries faster than they do anyway. It makes sense when you consider that I
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have the exact opposite of your experience. A walmart near me before self-checkout always had 3-4 cashiers in middle of day and was perpetually backed up into the nearest merchandise island.
In the last two years, it downed it to 2 regular cashiers and a person manning 8 self checkouts. The human cashiers are always backed up with at least 3-4 customers in line but the self-checkout usually has 1-2 free and if not, I waited max 2 minutes.
I love self-checkout.
Re: They almost have them already (Score:2)
My experience has been similar. Given how long the checkout lines are at Walmart, I assumed they had been experimenting with this already.
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Unless self checkouts pass on their cost reduction to me I'm not using them.
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Re:They almost have them already (Score:5, Insightful)
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Self scanning is generally slower than having a cashier, but there's usually no line.
I use self checkout a lot, so I might actually be competitive with an average cashier. The problem is that the stupid verification scale can't keep up with throwing things in the bag quickly, and the penalty for a weighing error is a big time delay, so it still ends up being quite a bit slower per item. Nevertheless, it's better than waiting in line for a cashier for up to a couple of dozen items; with more than that, the c
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It's a shame when your customers are faster and more adept at scanning merchandise than your paid employees.
There's probably a fair amount of selection bias in your conclusion. The people who know that the self-checkout system will have trouble with their items are more likely to go a regular checkout line, while people who don't expect any problems are more likely to use the self-checkout.
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Who says they're not trained? Consider the clientele of walmart. I'm sure a significant percentage are trained in using a cash register.
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The idea of customers checking out their own items is great in theory, but it just doesn't work that well most of the time.
Why? You made an observation about one shop but stopped there. I counter that with experiences from Australia and Europe where the self checkout lines are far faster and more actively used. So why doesn't it work well in your scenario?
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The vast majority of Walmart shoppers have an IQ somewhere south of a piece of burnt toast. The automatic checkouts confuse and frighten them.
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The easy solution there is make sure the people don't do the complicated stuff at the checkout. At my local store I take the scanner with me as I walk around. I can waste space in my stupor all I wont without holding up anyone.
The checkout process is literally:
1. Put handscanner in the dock.
2. Scan the barcode on my client card.
3. Hold my debit card next to the pin terminal (bonus points if it's above a certain limit I may need to enter a pin code).
Even www.peopleofwalmart.com legends could figure this out.
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It's called "line-rushing" in the walmart term. They've been testing them in a bunch of places in Canada and the US. There's no cashier in several of the cases, but there's a person who pre-scan's everything for you while you're waiting and then you take the scanner with you plug it into the terminal and that's it. All totaled up and you just pay for it instead of unloading/loading it back into the cart. But unless walmart gives me a 10% discount like fast food chains and other stores are doing in Canada
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I refuse to use self-checkout unless they provide me a 15% discount for doing their job for them.
Want shorter lines? Do like you did, and don't shop there. Unfortunately, WalMart surely doesn't see that. Get two shopping carts full of perishables. Stand in the long line. Give up and walk out of the store. Now they have a direct loss that they can attribute to their long lines.
Of course, in the event of long but fast lines, make sure you're willing to buy those groceries. Don't just randomly abandon carts
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Want my business? Then make it convenient for me to shop in your store.
If you live in the sticks, Wal-Mart makes it inconvenient for you not to shop in their store, by killing other stores.
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I rarely go in Walmart, but the last time I did I saw four self-checkouts and only two human cashiers. The rest of the checkouts were unused and the lines were really backed up. I didn't buy anything, just turned around and walked out.
The idea of customers checking out their own items is great in theory, but it just doesn't work that well most of the time.
Unfortunately I have to shop at Walmart at times because Target keeps closing stores that are close to me and sometimes Target simply doesn't have what I need to buy. Your experience is pretty typical of most Walmarts, but I've never been to one where they didn't at least hve 2 checkout lines open with a human cashier. Those do get backed up. Walmart attracts a lot of low income, price conscious shoppers and they tend to not be the smartest people, which is a big part of why they have low incomes. My ex
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I'll gladly stand in line to get money, but I'll be damned if I stand in line to give money.
So you'd gladly stand in line to sell something (get money) but not to buy something (give money)? Why? What's the difference?
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I see other stores doing this too like Home Depot/Lowes. :(
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If you're job can be done with a shell script, it's time to upgrade your skills.
Best in class? (Score:1)
When I think of Walmart I do not think of "best in class" for anything.
Waitrose... (Score:2)
...supermarkets in the UK have had remote hand-held bar code readers for its customers for the last couple of decades. You scan your shopping and then either take in home yourself or leave it at customer service, who'll deliver it for free the next day. No need for guards on the doors or people spying on them because, as it turns out, their customers are pretty honest and trustworthy.
Why not just have a virtual store app? (Score:2)
Stores are expensive. You could replace them with smartphone-vending kiosks and delivery cabinets which are unlocked by smartphone. The app would let you flip through pages of aisles and you'd drag them around and pinch to zoom to look at the products on each aisle. Sell, negotiate for, or otherwise apportion "shelf space" on the app the same way you do real shelf space. Wal-Mart already has a functioning website, so this would be a relatively minor revision. That gets you entirely out of the "people of Wal
I already shop at one of these (Score:2)
It's holiday season and the store, in Big Box Row next to a Home Depot and a Kroger, is packed. It has about thirty checkout stations up front, but only two are ever manned (okay, personned). The customers are stacked in line for those and the self-check area.
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That's one store I won't be shopping at. (Score:3)
Already, there are a disturbing number of "self check-out lanes" popping up at various stores.
I (and many others) avoid those lanes, no matter what the wait, for a lane with an actual cashier. To me, I am supporting a job. A legitimate, one-on-one job. I have seen that there is an attendant at the self-checkout lanes, but they are responsible for 6 or more kiosks. That's one person doing the work of 6 (at least).
If such a store in my area were to open (or convert to) such a setup, I'd be hard pressed to patronize that place.
What next? We unload the trailer for them too? Maybe stock the shelves? "If you put two on the shelf for every one you take, we'll give you a discount"?
Not for me, thank you.
Re:That's one store I won't be shopping at. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't you save yourself 15 minutes use the self checkout lane and give some homeless guy in the street $5 instead?
You're not supporting anything really. The shop will make it gradually less convenient for you to line up and the stuff will be reduced anyway. They see the cost benefit there already, and shoppers see the low shelf prices. All you're doing is punishing yourself for no gain.
This is how they want to compete with Aldi? (Score:2)
Checkout at Aldi is a breeze. The checkers are lightning fast.
There's no need for self checkout, or machine vision, or any other bells or whistles.
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How is this different from today? (Score:2)
I am unable to find a cashier at Walmart. They have like 30 lanes, but no one cashiers are eve manning them. I've often wondered why they even bother to build the lanes at all.
I remember (Score:2)
Years and Years ago there was an IBM Super Bowl ad.
The actor works his way thru a store stuffing items into his leather coat. You are made to assume he shoplifting. He than walks strait out the door and we are somehow informed he has paid for everything, some RFID scanner has identified him and all the items he has taken and will send him the bill.
Obviously there are all kinds of huge privacy problems with that. It was the 90's though and the general public was not yet even remotely cognizant of what pri
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You can't be bothered to interact with a cashier? Are you lazy or an asshole or both?
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No I can't be bothered and its not because I am lazy or asshole thank you very much. It has everything to do with the changing economy. Most retails stores are empty most of the time so that have cut everything to skeleton crews; at least if you are in a smallish town of 20K or so. There will two employees on duty at your local Staples for example.
Normally this is fine, you are the only one in the store! However like a lot of us I tend to want to shop say before Christmas when literally everyone else do
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Ohh, the 90's...such a time for optimism.
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Grab 'n' tab (Score:2)
" ....uses a combination of sensors and cameras to track what each store shopper takes off of shelves so it can automatically bill them for their purchase without their having to stop to pay on the way out."
So what if you take an item off the shelf to examine it, the sensor/camera records that action, then you put it back because it's not exactly what you were looking for (the ingredients listed something you're allergic to for example) and the camera or sensor fails, for any number of possible reasons, to detect that it's put back? You just walk out of the store and get your bill later? There was no mention here of any method whereby you verify your purchases before you leave.
I suppose one good outcome is,
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I suppose one good outcome is, it would deter people from removing items from one shelf and then later dropping them off on the wrong shelf. That's inconsiderate to other shoppers and store employees alike, I hate when people do that, it's lazy and ignorant.
Agreed, but it does give me a chuckle to see the can of baked beans in the bread isle.
What about mistakes (Score:2)
Have they not learned (Score:2)
I remember Walmart tried this a few years ago (perhaps a decade or so) when RFID tags became prevalent. Between the cost of the RFID tags and system and the losses due to the amount of stuff that wasn't correctly scanned, they stopped doing that really fast.
Just one thing. (Score:2)
They need to be able to run kiosk maintenance in a staggered/staged manner.
Because, right now, it takes roughly 30 minutes to do it on extant kiosks. Yet they only leave one or maybe (if we're lucky) two regular registers open.
Or worse, have to do register maintenance simultaneously...
If they're doing register-less stores, they need to be able to keep banks of them up and running while maintaining others.
If someone is just late-shopping for a shirt or socks, they can just drop them and go.
When someone is s
US Tax cut investments (Score:2)
I just heard on the radio how US companies will use their new US corporate tax break to invest in their employees, and in new technologies. It was followed by an announcement by a few corporations that they will raise their minimum wages and give employees $1000 bonuses.
I bet that in 10 years those investments will go into technology that eliminates employees. And the money they spent on increased wages and bonuses will be an argument in favor of those investments. Of course, the reality is that this was
I didn't think it was possible... (Score:2)
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Everything stops until the lone employee can scurry over and key in an approval. She also has to be called has produce or something very light, like a packet of gravy browning, which after being scanned will elicit "Unexpected item in bagging area!"
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I imagine that for most of the time Walmart will know who you are before you even walk through the front door. Facial recognition will just be another data point to confirm your identity, along with the electronic signature of your mobile phone and all the other data from 'trusted partners' that you have no control over but make modern life convenient.
If the system does require valid proof of age, Real ID federal requirements should make it easy to be able to recognize state issue ID and OCR from that. So