
The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery - IntronExon
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/stealing-from-self-checkout/550940/?single_page=true
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mrguyorama
The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially
slowed down they are

I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to
be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including
handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep
up, no matter the size of the order.

Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize more than one scan
every ten seconds. I wish I could just log into one of the main, unused lanes
and scan myself out. It would take significantly less time.

The banana trick shows that the security implemented in self checkout is
simply a sham. Just open them up completely and let us go through them at a
higher throughput. You can probably eliminate yet another cashier at that
point.

~~~
grawprog
I think you should have to take a simple intelligence test as you walk into a
store. If you refuse or fail you don't get to use the self checkout. This
should be a very very simple test like being able to read a number properly
and pick something out of a list....when I stand there watching people use
those machines I really feel like 90% of them would fail.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's right, it's the _users_ who are stupid, and not the designers who
didn't focus enough on the UX.

~~~
grawprog
Ya sometimes it really is the users that are stupid. There are just some
things some people shouldn't use. That's just the way of the world. If someone
has trouble checking their email or doing basic computer tasks or even what
should be simple life tasks, chances are they will struggle with a self
checkout and no amount of good ux wil change that. Some people just can't or
won't learn such things.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Okay. And I get that your original comment was mostly in jest. But ... to what
end, exactly? Fine; some people can't use self-checkout counters. But there
are typically multiple counters, and nearly every one I've ever seen used
operated on a British queue-based system instead of a line, so one person
taking a long to check out shouldn't slow you down significantly.

And I don't even think I agree with your premise, anyway. If Amazon can work
out the kinks out of their magic-zero-checkout stores, then that's the best UX
experience.

~~~
grawprog
I think you're just upset cause you'd fail the test. It's cool most stores
still have cashiers to assist you.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. If you
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us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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pavel_lishin
> _“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a
> total moron,” reads one of the more militant comments in a Reddit discussion
> on the subject. “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.”_

That's the most entitled thing I've read all year, but I look forward to the
next 11 months.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's the most morally bankrupt thing I've read all year, and, IIRC, beats
anything I read last year.

~~~
brador
If you ask on the thievery forums they argue it is rightous and equivalent to
the corporation minimizing their tax bill, at the significant cost to
societies health and wellbeing, to enrich shareholders.

It could be argued that they are correct.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That makes it equivalent. _It doesn 't make it righteous._ In fact, the way
they talk about the corporations doing things "at the significant cost to
societies health and wellbeing" shows that they know what the corporations are
doing is morally wrong. Arguing that it's equivalent just shows that this is
also morally wrong.

There is no sane argument for "righteous" for this behavior.

~~~
brador
Was Robin Hood righteous? One could see similarities in their tales. Robbing
the rich (shareholders, corporations, “elites”) to give to the “poor” (lower
classes, themselves). Just at a higher abstraction.

The difference is the thiefs action is illegal, the corp actions legal but
hated by the masses (who it could be argued don’t understand the nuances of
tax accounting), but who should hold power in a democracy.

It is what it is, and those forums are growing at an exponential rate as the
punishments disappear. Worrying.

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creep
I find the pseudo-moralizing about law-abiding citizens to be rather grating.

If a stranger in front of me dropped a $20 bill I would certainly let them
know. However, that doesn't mean I am a law-abiding citizen. My empathy does
not prevent me from stealing from grocery chains, whether faced with a human
cashier or a machine. My morality is not based on law, nor should law equate
to morality in all cases.

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rhplus
I was expecting the “banana trick” to be the case where dropping the leading 9
from the item code will ring up organic produce as the cheaper regular version
(9nnnn vs nnnn).

~~~
bvinc
I admit, I use this banana trick. It's the only way that I shoplift. I place
down organic bananas, but using the touchscreen I navigate through "Select by
Picture" -> "Fruits" -> "Bananas".

