Lori’s Blog

Shopping extreme November 7, 2006

Tell me if you know this one. There was a commerical.. oh, about a year or two ago, in which depicted a shady looking guy in a long coat entering a grocery store. The commerical pans to him picking off items in the store and stuffing them down his pants and in his coat, all while this overweight cop is munching on donuts near the exit, obviously oblivious to the happenings in the store. This supposed “robber” precedes to walk out of the store, passing through a metal dectector-like looking apparatus, and when he does, the cop stops him and simply hands him a receipt. I can’t find a link to the ad, but I certainly found an article that talks about a checkout machine quite similar to the one described above. The gorcery store Giant Eagle, you know, the store that invented fuel perks and makes us use our advantage card to receive 30 cents off mac and cheese, has recently implemented in five of its stores nationwide a checkout device that customers carry around while shopping. While putting goods in your cart, you can scan the items up pick up as you shop around, and the device will total up the amount. By the time you reach the counter, all you have to do is hand over the slip of paper with your total.  

This might sound pretty cool at first, but let’s think of the downfalls to using this device, shall we? First, we all know that in this world there are dishonest people. The kind of dishonest that would intentionally not scan items but walk out of the store with them nonetheless. The article doesn’t say, so it doesn’t mean that there aren’t precautions against it, but what would be stopping people from not scanning their items, specifically the ones that are small enough to just slip by, or the ones that are bought in multiples (where you buy 4 loaves of bread instead of 1 but only scan 1). I doubt that this device monitors your basket by weight or even individual surveillance. And I would hardly think that at the counter you would have to pull out everything in your cart, since that would defeat the purpose of scanning beforehand altogether. So it makes me question how Giant Eagle will prevent being ripped off if they are gun-ho about using this service in their stores. It just seems that they are actually trusting people (HA!) to be honest enough to scan ALL the items that are placed in their basket.

Now, I know this might be asking alot, but let’s just say that the people who shop at Giant Eagle and use this device scan all of their items. I don’t know if this is in all Giant Eagle stores, but there seems to be an increase in self checkouts in the one I shop in. And I can’t count how many times I have messed up on one of those things. It seems so easy when you approach it, but if you scan something and don’t put it on the belt IMMEDIATELY after you scan it, all hell breaks loose. Lights start flashing, this electronic woman’s voice keeps telling you to wait for assistance, and the people behind you start moving to another line. So, what I’m getting at, is how easy is this device in use? What if things go wrong while scanning? Does this mean that employees will have to seek you out in the aisles? All these questions lead me to assume that Giant Eagle would probably have to hire more manpower to assist with the usage of this device, which clearly is contradictory to what it is supposed to do (which is eliminate more employees). Hopefully, Giant Eagle will keep us all updated with the checkout system, and I have little doubt that the store will be able to work something out with the help of its fleet of Blue Knot professionals that introduced to us the sweetness of an advantage card.