Warning: I thought the new 'smart' checkout at my grocery store was a total gimmick

You know those self-checkout lanes with the cameras overhead that track what you put in your bag? The one at my local store in Springfield got an update last month. I figured it was just more tech to mess up and slow me down, honestly. But I gave it a shot because the regular lines were packed. To my surprise, it actually worked perfectly. It caught when I accidentally double-scanned a can of soup and flagged it on the screen right away, and it didn't freeze up once. Now I'm torn, because on one hand, it's a smooth experience when it works. On the other, it feels like a step toward no human cashiers at all, and I've seen older folks really struggle with it. Has anyone else had a good experience with this stuff that made you change your mind about a 'bad' design?

2 comments

2 Comments

lily_young598d ago

My cousin works at a Target in Ohio, and she told me they track how often the system flags a "non-scan." If it happens a lot to one person, a manager gets an alert. It's not just about mistakes, it's building a profile. That privacy trade-off for convenience creeps me out a bit.

emma_ramirez8d agoMost Upvoted

That part about building a profile is really what gets me, @lily_young59. Does your cousin know what they do with that profile once it's made? Like, is it just for internal loss prevention, or could it get shared or affect someone's ability to use self-checkout later? It feels like there's this whole hidden system making guesses about people.