You stroll into your favorite food-jobber, looking to pick up a few things on your way home from work. Lots of people are on their way home from work. There are lines at every register and someone is in the self-checkout with $600-worth of groceries, beginning what will eventually become a 30-minute stop-start process that could have been handled in a five minutes by even the most incompetent cashier.
I usually go to one of two cashiers because they are faster and actually know what they are doing. I will always return to them simply to save time.
The system sounds costly. It’s merely another version of the “inventory robots” that never gained traction. They’ll end up spending six figures per store on hardware that constantly triggers false alerts until they eventually shut it down. Weren’t groceries supposed to be fully NFC by now, allowing you to scan everything at once on your way to the door?
The managers know who’s gonna steal. They see them sweet-talking and complaining about fixed income.