This article appears in the March 2018 print edition with the headline “The Banana Trick.The Big Eyes big launch is fast approaching, and now they are doing all that they can to give back to the people with their BIGGEST giveaway yet. These can be risk-taking, stimulation-seeking people.” According to this theory, some Type Ts become base jumpers or Mafia hit men, while others settle for swiping Brie and organic tomatoes from Safeway. Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University, says that many supermarket thieves have what he calls Type-T (as in “thrill”) personalities: “Shopping can be quite boring because it’s such a routine, and this is a way to make the routine more interesting. Which isn’t to say that all shoppers feel equally empowered. “This apparently empowers people to shoplift.” They would chase behind you to return the $20 bill you dropped, because you’re a person and you would miss that $20.” A robot cashier, though, changes the equation: It “gives the false impression of anonymity,” Staib says. “Most shoplifters are in fact otherwise law-abiding citizens. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.” Barbara Staib, the director of communications of the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention, believes that self-checkouts tempt people who are already predisposed to shoplifting, by allowing them to rationalize their behavior. “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period.
“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. Perhaps it’s not surprising that some people steal from machines more readily than from human cashiers. Why We Think Cats Are Psychopaths Sarah Zhang In 2015, the threshold was raised yet again, to $100. In 2012, for example, the Dallas Police Department enacted a new policy: Officers would no longer routinely respond to shoplifting calls for boosts amounting to less than $50. Even if a manager wants to press charges, many police departments can’t be bothered with supermarket theft. In some places, meanwhile, the likelihood of being punished for petty shoplifting is decreasing. Worldwide, self-checkout terminals are expected to number 325,000 by next year, up from 191,000 in 2013. Whether out of social responsibility or frustration with shrinkage, some retailers, including Albertsons, Big Y Supermarket, Pavilions, and Vons, have scaled back or eliminated self-scanning, at least in some stores. In their zeal to cut labor costs, the study said, supermarkets could be seen as having created “a crime-generating environment” that promotes profit “above social responsibility.” As one retail employee told the researchers, “People who traditionally don’t intend to steal … when I buy 20, I can get five for free.” The authors further proposed that retailers bore some blame for the problem. Rather than walk into a store intending to take something, a shopper might, at the end of a trip, decide that a discount is in order. The Leicester researchers concluded that the ease of theft is likely inspiring people who might not otherwise steal to do so. After auditing 1 million self-checkout transactions over the course of a year, totaling $21 million in sales, they found that nearly $850,000 worth of goods left the store without being scanned and paid for. A 2015 study of self-checkouts with handheld scanners, conducted by criminologists at the University of Leicester, also found evidence of widespread theft. More than half of those people said they gamed the system because detection by store security was unlikely. When Voucher Codes Pro, a company that offers coupons to internet shoppers, surveyed 2,634 people, nearly 20 percent admitted to having stolen at the self-checkout in the past. How common are self-scanning scams? If anonymous online questionnaires are any indication, very common. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
0 kommentar(er)
