
The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery (2018) - CraneWorm
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/stealing-from-self-checkout/550940/
======
jedberg
I must be a rube, because I've never stolen from one of those things. When it
makes a mistake I call the attendant to correct it. Mainly because I support
the idea of automation and want it to work well. Maybe it's just the
reliability engineer in me that wants to call out the bugs and have them
fixed. Or maybe it's the former security engineer in me who got paid to find
the flaws in these systems and my ethics demand I don't exploit them for
personal gain.

Honestly though I hope they don't go away just because everyone abuses them. I
really like the self checkout machines and being in control of how long the
transaction takes instead of up to the whims of which cashier I've chosen
(although if the markets would just do a little research on queuing theory and
make us all like up in one single line for the human cashiers, that wouldn't
be a problem).

~~~
koala_man
I hope society will one day reach a level of honesty and trust where we can
just leave stores unlocked and unattended at night.

~~~
jzwinck
It already has, in Singapore. There are Starbucks which close at night simply
by drawing a plastic chain across the storefront and emptying the cash
registers. I think they still lock the Frappuccino fridge, but no one knows
for sure because we don't go test it.

~~~
koala_man
The point would be that people could still come in and buy stuff with self
checkout. It doesn't sound like this is what that Starbucks intends you to do.

------
hirundo
I wanted to checkout at a Home Depot but there were no employees to be seen
and only self-checkout lanes open. I had some items I wanted help with and in
frustration asked the customer next to me, "does anybody work here?"

He said "I guess we do."

I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller
to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.

~~~
eternauta3k
> it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as
> cashier.

One argument against that is that if people are willing to provide that labor
freely, it's worth nothing.

Another argument: before supermarkets, you'd ask the clerk to get a list of
things from the shelves (which customers couldn't access). Now this labor is
done by customers. Self-checkout is just another change like that.

~~~
mikeash
Extending this: there are services that will deliver your groceries to your
house. If we go to a store and take things home ourselves, are we working for
free?

There’s no correct balance between customer labor and employee labor. Choose
what suits you. If your chose store forces you into an arrangement you don’t
like, choose a different one.

~~~
markovbot
That's not the same thing. Those services cost extra. If you go to the store
and take home the things yourself, you're avoiding paying the extra fee for
those services

~~~
mikeash
And if you use self checkout you’re avoiding waiting in a longer line for a
cashier.

~~~
mamon
Only in the beginning, when self checkout stations are being introduced and
most of the customers go to cashiers, out of habit.

Thing is: even a person that does self-checkout quite often is still much
slower than a cashier, who has 100x more practice. Also, when anything goes
wrong with self-checkout you typically need to wait for someone to get to you
and fix the issue - cashiers typically are able to fix their errors
themselves.

So, in the end the lines will be longer, because of less skilled people doing
the work.

~~~
kalleboo
Since self checkouts are cheaper to operate and take less space, it's
compensated by there being more of them. Our supermarket replaced 2 checkout
lanes with 6 self-checkouts in the same space with half the staff.

------
nathanaldensr
What really irritates me about shoplifting is that _the honest among us
subsidize the criminals_. Inevitably, retailers and grocers raise prices due
to increased theft, encouraging _more_ theft, in a vicious spiral (I don't
have proof of this; rather, it's an intuition). Also reminds me of drug use in
sports.

~~~
dredmorbius
Or the stores withdraw from that region. See: food deserts.

~~~
gruez
> See: food deserts.

they seem to be mostly as a result of lack of demand, not lack of supply.

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/po...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/political-
incorrect-paper-day-food-deserts.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
Multiple factors contribute. Paul Baran, inventor of packet-switched networks,
added a footnote to a 1968 monograph noting that his parents' inner-city
Philadelphia fire insurance had just been cancelled.

The unavailability, or high cost, of insurance may prove fatal to both
homeownership and businesses.

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3780.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3780.html)
(footnote, p. 7)

Note too that Marginal Revolution, based at George Mason University, pushes an
explicitly libertarian, market. fundamentalist, ideology. Cowan and Taborrok
occasionally break type, but the exceptions prove the rule.

I'd need to review the article in depth, but an immediate observation is that
in a media-saturated, advertising-filled world, demand is anything but
exogenous.

------
MarkSweep
> Shopping can be quite boring because it’s such a routine, and this is a way
> to make the routine more interesting.

Maybe there is an opportunity here to somehow make shopping or self-checkout
more thrilling and thus reduce shoplifting. Maybe add some features from a
slot machine and give random discount or free items. Gamify the checkout
experience so people want to buy more.

~~~
_nhynes
My guess is that expected payout would be too low to keep opportunistic
shoplifters from doing their thing since most self-checkouters who aren't
stealing would also get the discount. Otherwise this is a great idea.

~~~
H8crilA
Lotto disagrees. In fact super rare wins make them perceived as so much more
valuable (and so much more an object of envy if it happens so that your friend
wins at the self checkout).

Precise measurements are needed, this would be a cool psychology project to
work on in some big chain.

------
alkonaut
In all stores I know, there are randomized inspection of say every 30
customers. Missed something tiny and you might be reprimanded and you’ll get
tighter inspections for many months to come (until you had several inspections
without issue). If you are found to have made some kind of fraud that is
obviously a mistake then you’ll be stripped of the “privilege” of self-
checkout as well as probably reported to police and likely other stores.

To ensure self checkout is a “privilege” stores must ensure there are rebates
available only to self checkout customers, and that lines at the traditional
checkout are long enough to make self checkout significantly faster.

~~~
jedberg
Do you happen to live in Europe? I've only ever seen the inspections in
Europe.

~~~
alkonaut
Yes. The article mentions various “fraud detection” schemes in place (weight
etc) but I don’t get why random checks aren’t just used instead, or in
addition?

~~~
DanBC
In England you can't search people just because you want to.

~~~
alkonaut
It’s not a search of a person’s things after leaving the checkout. It’s a
manual audit taking place with a random probability. You aren’t being
“searched” because the transaction isn’t completed yet. In the traditional
checkout people are asksed to put their not yet purchased items on a conveyor
too. I’m sure you agree that’s not “searching” them.

Note: in most places such as grocery stores, customers scan items while
picking them using a handheld scanner while putting things in their cart. Then
you just pay for the total at the checkout, at which point the register could
randomly decide to give you an audit. If you don’t agree to ever being
subjected to that, your only choice is to use traditional checkout.

In other places (perhaps most notably IKEA) items are self-scanned at checkout
time.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> “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.”

I find the twisted reasoning in this comment shocking and I don't really know
what to say. It is a kind of twisted reasoning that I've only seen in people
who were high on strong narcotics and were carried away by waves of wishful
thinking and delusions, or, again, extreme persecution complex.

Yes- it is possible to make this connection: that because you are scanning
your own shopping you are being charged to work at the store. However, you are
not being charged to scan your items. You are charged to buy the items you
scan. There is no extra charge for using the self-checkout (not anywhere I
know of anyway). Indeed, the store may be making an extra profit by not having
to pay as many cashiers. But, stores are always finding ways to make extra
profit, for example by offering you a discount on certain items, on certain
days, etc. Are you more morally justified than usual to shoplift because a
store has a discount on Swiss cheese this week? They _are_ making you pick up
the swiss cheese and take it to the till (automated or not). Are they charging
you to move items around the store?

Like I say- this makes no sense. It is quintessential procrustean logic:
stretching and reducing the meaning of words until they fit your preconceived
reasoning.

P.S. I spent so much time on this crap instead of dismissing it shallowly
because dang gets sad when people don't show intellectual cuiriosity.

~~~
kalleboo
> _They are making you pick up the swiss cheese and take it to the till
> (automated or not). Are they charging you to move items around the store?_

Until the Piggly Wiggly supermarket introduced the self-serve concept in 1916,
you would go up to a counter and tell a clerk what food items you wanted, and
they would get them for you. So your analogy really is the 1920's version of
the self-checkout!

~~~
tempguy9999
I didn't know this, thanks! However it reminds me of something similar that
happened ~25 years ago in a UK town where I lived.

We had a long power cut that went on for many days. The supermarkets shut at
first because, why not. As things went on they had customers to serve so they
had to sell, I remember that tesco set up a table at the store entrance with
the shop manager and a few assistants. You told them what you wanted, the
assistants got it. They took cash only [0]. It worked.

Tangential to the article, what would happen today? People are carrying
much(?) less cash, card only point of sales terminals are blooming, I just 2
days ago went to top up a spare mobile phone and the vodaphone store told me
they'd no longer take cash.

Notes & coins don't need electricity to be acceptable. We may be creating a
very fragile alternative because things like comms and power look increasingly
reliable so why lean on them ever harder, but they will go down someday, that
I guarantee, and the harder we lean on these things, they harder they will
drop us when they vanish.

And we may have short power cuts due to human nature but there are things like
solar storms. We know they are coming but aren't prepared for them. So what
then?

[0] which they must have got from somewhere. I don't remember how the banks
were operating.

~~~
mindslight
For quite some time, stores did retain the ability to run offline carbon-copy
based credit card transactions. I've definitely seen this occur more recently
than one would imagine, at least within the past decade.

I don't know if this is still a thing, as cards are no longer coming with the
raised characters required to take an imprint. But perhaps the imprint is no
longer necessary, and simply writing the information suffices.

There are (obviously) more avenues for fraud without online verification, but
the techniques of fraudsters are no longer optimized for running physical
cards either.

The more significant thing that we've lost is a cashier/manager being able to
exercise some level of intelligent oversight to judge whether a transaction is
likely to be fraudulent. But then again, perhaps a store being cleaned out of
its entire inventory of eg Tide because of a long term power outage isn't that
big of a deal either.

------
Animats
The machine learning solution:

* LaneHawk - identifies items in bottom of car [1]

* Everseen - watches object move through a checkout [2] and reports if they are not scanned. In use at Walmart and "5 of the 10 top retailers" now.

* StopLift - also watches checkouts. Recently purchased by NCR.

This problem is on its way to being solved.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYd7CcInZ28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYd7CcInZ28)
[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/20/18693324/walmart-ai-
camer...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/20/18693324/walmart-ai-camera-
computer-vision-tracking-theft) [3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VR2z2n5Ec](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VR2z2n5Ec)

~~~
nzjrs
False positives and the human reaction to being accused of theft will kill
these. Honestly a sticker that says "automated theft detection system in
operation" will be more effective

~~~
sippeangelo
Works about as well as you'd expect:
[http://vm.tiktok.com/RWpGfb/](http://vm.tiktok.com/RWpGfb/)

------
joshmn
Reminds me of the drama surrounding Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam after he
penned "How To Steal From Whole Foods".

[https://thoughtcatalog.com/mahbod-moghadam/2014/11/how-to-
st...](https://thoughtcatalog.com/mahbod-moghadam/2014/11/how-to-steal-from-
whole-foods/)

~~~
gjs278
do you have the original copy?

~~~
kevingrahl
Internet Archive to the rescue:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20141117023310/https://thoughtca...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141117023310/https://thoughtcatalog.com/mahbod-
moghadam/2014/11/how-to-steal-from-whole-foods/)

------
isoprophlex
I'm not sure if the money my supermarket saves by getting rid of humans (and
the humans' incomes) translates to cheaper groceries for me.

I'd believe it if there were somehow a fine for using a human checkout. But
there isn't.

So every once in a while four bell pepper somehow scan as three. Accidents
happen, full plausible deniability.

~~~
Shivetya
I am all for these setups because I can check out faster in many cases and I
can bag it as I want it bagged. saving money or not its the convenience which
sold me

~~~
itronitron
> I can bag it as I want it bagged

This exactly, in the US the norm is for cashiers (or baggers) to put just 2 or
3 items in a single plastic bag, and if you bring your own reusable bag they
usually have no idea how to deal with that, unless you get a pro-level cashier
who will then pack things in nicely.

------
SubiculumCode
Retail is a major source of employment in America for those without technical
skills. The increase in automation at the checkstand are forcing people out of
one of the few jobs they can get. I like automation, but we need to do
something for the middle aged mom/dad who is not likely to ever be trained to
be a coder or technician. It is time for a universal basic income. Or they
could just thieve from the robots to make ends meet.

------
2bitencryption
I did once abuse the self-checkout myself, but I felt justified:

The tag on the shelf said the crackers were buy-one-get-one-free. But when I
rang them both up, it charged for both. Instead of calling an attendant, I
just voided one of them but walked out with it. I'm basically a criminal
mastermind.

~~~
zintrilisqo
It's not worth it. Imagine if they posted video of you on their FB. Many
wouldn't believe your justification. You should have just voided both of them
and left them there.

~~~
dgzl
> Imagine if they posted video of you on their FB

For crackers? I think people would be more upset with the store than the
shopper.

~~~
MisterTea
The people will likely rally around the poor shopper being oppressed by the
soulless corporate entity.

~~~
coldtea
And they would be right...

~~~
dgzl
In the store's perspective, the case was theft. They couldn't tell the machine
wasn't taking the proper discount, and they likely wouldn't do the research to
uncover the truth.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292254)

------
itronitron
If 850K is the amount of shrinkage for 21M of in-store sales then a store that
delivers groceries can offset the cost of delivery due to the corresponding
reduction in shrinkage.

~~~
javadocmd
What they didn't report is the corresponding decrease in labor costs. If they
save 1M in labor to lose 850K, they're still ahead.

------
provolone
To avoid false accusations of theft, avoid self-checkout. YMMV.

I understand that people are abusing the system. I can accept that the store
has an interest in loss prevention. But I'll never feel comfortable with being
checked up on. As a stubborn person, I'll have to start shopping somewhere
else when this happens. This means a less convenient location. Where's the
time savings in that?

Many here bring their politically charged economic analysis into it. For me
I've always wanted to just get home without any undue awkward/impolite
scenarios. Nor do I want to navigate the menu system for produce.

Waiting in a longer line is relatively cheap for the peace of mind gained.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17785132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17785132)

~~~
michaelmrose
Are you also one of those who get annoyed when people look in containers you
purchase or count the goods you present for purchase?

Paying attention is the only way to insure accurate transactions.

~~~
provolone
no

------
rumcajz
> A robot cashier, though, changes the equation: It “gives the false
> impression of anonymity,”

OTOH, a human cashier gives the false impression of personhood to a
corporation.

------
WalterBright
I like the self-checkout because it enables me to get rid of a fistful of
change without annoying the cashier.

------
millstone
What level of shoplifting do the Amazon Go stores encounter? A lot less I
would guess.

Napster was "overcut" by the iTunes Music Store, and then streaming finished
off music piracy. You really can combat stealing through better purchasing
experiences.

~~~
nfoz
Napster was shutdown for copyright infringement in 2001.

The iTunes Music Store opened in 2003.

The convenient-online-store model only succeeded because of the success of the
legal attacks against file-sharing.

------
jl2718
This is depressing. When I lose faith in humanity, I look to self-checkout as
proof that we are all good.

Also, as a side note, I’ve come to believe that moral maturation is a far
longer process than physical, pedagogical, or even professional.

------
nkozyra
Harder to do with human cashiers, I imagine this is a wholly budgeted
phenomenon

------
SlayAe
> the ease of theft is likely inspiring people who might not otherwise steal
> to do so

it means that the only reason that these people don't steal, is that they
think they won't cet away with it.

------
gsliepen
The banana trick works almost equally well when a cashier is checking your
product. Mainly because nowadays, they just mindlessly scan all the products
on the belt, and do little actual checking. This clip describing shopping at
the Dutch Albert Heijn supermarkets isn't far from the truth:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWB_ev0dK8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWB_ev0dK8o)

------
superkuh
I just chose not to use self-checkouts. If a store only has them I don't go
there. It's easy and sends a clearer (and more clearly ethical) message.

~~~
michaelmrose
Why don't you present your cart to the cashier and ask them to check you out.

The process of paying is identical after all.

~~~
superkuh
It's not quite the same if you pay for groceries with your own money (cash)
instead of having some giant corp. promise to pay the grocer in a couple days
(credit card).

Plus I wouldn't want to support any store that didn't have at least a couple
real check-out lanes.

------
TeeWEE
At my supermarket they sample people going through self-checkout. So people
dont shoplift, the chance of beign caught is high.

------
throwaway07Ju19
“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.”

The above sentiment is the basis of one of my favorite comedy bits by Bill
Burr:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w)

~~~
throwawaysixthg
I've never told anyone this, but Bill's next bit in that clip about customer
service, I actually did that last year.

I had this big mess with my whole flight itinerary, and I was stuck at an
airport for like 30 hours with nothing to do.

I got the airline's customer service on the phone. They were refusing to
compensate me, I was livid but I just did exactly what Bill said: Don't curse
and they can't hang up.

I talked really, really slowly. The intercoms in the airport would sound off
periodically and I'd just wait until they stopped then ask the rep to repeat
himself. So he'd repeat a point that he already made like 15 times. And I'd
just keep feigning that I misunderstood the point he was trying to make.

I just kept talking in an infinite circle about common law, and the implied
covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and running through all these
increasingly ridiculous hypothetical scenarios of overbooking and flight
delays and which party should be liable in those scenarios and for what
reason, and on and on...

Bill is right about them not being allowed to hang up. I had him on the phone
for over an hour.

He kept it together for a while, but toward the end I could tell that he was
starting to crack. Then he made some unprompted comment about how he didn't
care because he was getting paid to deal with me, and shortly after that, the
line just abruptly cut off mid-sentence.

I got a callback the next morning offering me a $200 airline certificate, a
hotel voucher, and a meal voucher.

True story.

At the time I was just really angry about my travel getting screwed up, and
especially about not having a place to sleep, and being stuck in an airport
terminal. And all that anger just channeled into this game of calmly wasting
that guy's time.

But in hindsight, what I did was a very unjustified and shitty thing to do,
and I was rewarded handsomely for it. And that guy may have been reprimanded
through no fault of his own. I don't feel great about it and won't be doing it
again.

------
coretx
Many such systems are easily exploitable by means of simply bruteforcing them
by EAN code.

------
thrax
Funny timing, because a GOP candidate looking to unseat Ilhan Omar, was just
busted for serial shoplifting at a Target.

