A former supermarket worker has shared an experience on Reddit about a customer who tried to trick the self-checkout machine, but failed big time. The store associate had worked in retail for seven years, and four to five of those years were spent running the self-checkout at a grocery store.
She had witnessed several customers try to steal items at the self-checkout kiosks, but she was able to stop them. However, one woman and her mother tried to deceive the machine in a way that the worker had never seen before. The daughter was using the machine, and the mother was handing her the items. They would weigh the items and enter the code for bananas, regardless of what they were buying.
The Self-Check Scam That Almost Got Away
The worker, who was monitoring their activity, approached them and said that nothing in their bags had been scanned, but the customer refused to change her version. She argued that she was scanning items, and actually, there were numerous products in the screen as scanned. But, there was a little something that didn’t match.
The worker cancelled the order and called the manager, who spoke to the customers. The manager agreed on cancelling their order, and the customer and her mother moved to another machine. The worker continued to monitor their activities and saw the daughter scan one item and then try to add three more items to the bag without scanning them. The worker locked the machine and called the manager back.
Tricking the Self-Checkout Machines Is Now More Complicated Than Ever
The customer and her mother returned to the store two to three times a week for months, but never tried to deceive the self-checkout kiosks again by scanning the same banana barcode over and over. Instead, they would scan one item and then try to put multiple items in the bag without scanning them.
“I would like to add at this point the woman’s mother has not said a single word. She’s just kind of acting like nothing is even happening. The daughter is very upset, but doesn’t make a scene or raise her voice. Just keeps saying this like, ‘Just let me do it myself.’ ‘Why are you taking so long?’ ‘I know what I’m doing!’.”
“When I stopped her she just looked confused than the daughter would come over and re scan the item for her. It was always stupid things to like a can of soda or a bag of chips,” the worker stated.
“The daughter would always try to steal more expensive meat or seafood. After they would almost always go to the lottery machine behind me and buy a bunch of tickets then leave,” she added.
“I told the managers and security every time this happened, but they never did anything about it. I eventually stopped working self-checkout and moved around to different departments in the store.”
For the woman and her daughter, the story ends bad: the police were called, and they were both arrested.
The incident shows that retail workers are trained to be vigilant and will not let customers steal items from the store. The worker’s diligence and dedication to her job are commendable, and she deserves recognition for her efforts to prevent shoplifting.