I swear it trips at complete random. I’ll just be scanning my groceries and then all of a sudden “HELP IS ON THE WAY” and I have to stop what I’m doing to get a clerk to put in the unlock code. It happens every fucking time.
Decade old machines running some ancient version of windows embedded that needs to measure the precise weights of tens of thousands of products from hundreds of manufacturers who have no standardization or line of communication with the software developers while constantly changing the weight of the products which then also have individual variance for each item, plus the kinks of each individual machine’s sensors and the variance of the customers leaning things against walls, adding bags, kids touching scales etc. The clerk’s job is ofc to be an outlet for customer’s rage to insulate the management which means that the people with all the experience of the machine’s problems have by their job’s very nature no line of communication to send feedback to the developers or technicians if there even is any technicians working on these things after the point of installation.
I have never had this happen to me. I have shoplifted thousands of dollars in food. I have never purchased alcohol, though, so that may be why.
I also never actually scan anything purchased by weight, like produce. I just steal that shit.
I think the scales are too sensitive or something
It’s great for shop lifting ironically because they give off so many false positives - they’ve been training their staff to ignore the warning and just click the button to ignore the warning.
It’s this. My mom used to work at a grocery store and sometimes she’d have to cover the self checks, the scales are very sensitive.
“fraud” prevention
The trick is to have the clerk fix the machine once for a false error and then you put a bunch of unscanned items in the bagging area and when the clerk has to fix it again they don’t even look at what the issue is.
I didn’t get trained how to use this machine, I’m not being paid to do it right, the clerk approved my use of the machine - it ain’t stealing
