My grocery store replaced all cashiers with self-checkout kiosks last month, and the theft went insane

I work at a Safeway in Portland, Oregon, and corporate swapped out 8 human cashiers for 12 self-checkout kiosks thinking it would save money. But last week our store lost over $3,000 in stolen items because people just walk out after skipping the scan step. Now they're hiring back 4 cashiers anyway, which proves automation backfired hard. Has anyone else seen stores reverse their AI plans like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

riverh491mo ago

Jumped into this exact mess at a store I used to manage in Seattle. We cut down to 4 cashiers and put in 10 kiosks, and within two weeks our loss prevention numbers were brutal. People would scan a bag of chips but toss a steak in without scanning it, or they'd just lean over and hit "skip item" for half their cart. We even caught a guy pretending his phone was the scanner and just walking out. What finally worked for us was having one employee stand near the kiosks watching, not to help but just to be visible and say "hey, make sure you scan everything." The theft dropped by like 70% in a month because people felt watched. We also put those cheap convex mirrors up above the kiosks so they could see themselves, which made folks think twice.

grant4781mo ago

That "pretending his phone was the scanner" thing is wild, but honestly I think the real issue is how many people see self checkout as just a game to beat. @riverh49 your mirror idea is genius because it changes the psychology from "how do I cheat the system" to "how do I not look like a thief.

wyatt1351mo ago

That's brutal, $3,000 in a week is a lot. You mentioned people just walk out after skipping the scan step, so do you think the problem is more about the kiosks being easy to cheat or is it that customers just feel less guilty stealing from a machine than a person?