[HN Gopher] The Target forensics lab (2024)
___________________________________________________________________
The Target forensics lab (2024)
Author : jeromechoo
Score : 63 points
Date : 2026-01-07 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehorizonsun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehorizonsun.com)
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| This shows where their priorities lie. This is also the same
| company that got hacked and lost credit card data of customers
| through their HVAC system. Bet nothing has really changed there
| as far as cyber security goes.
| tencentshill wrote:
| At lease they have a vulnerability disclosure program.
| https://security.target.com/vdp/
| kotaKat wrote:
| A _lot_ has changed on the inside at Target since then. They've
| rolled the whole stack in house (even switching to Linux),
| locked down, and hardened a lot both inside and out.
|
| I was amused finding out that cashiers basically no longer sign
| onto the registers using the register. They sign onto a
| myDevice (a Zebra handheld) elsewhere and keep it with them,
| then use that to scan a rotating PDF417 on screen on the
| register to complete signon as a 2FA device.
|
| That's on top of a lot of built in POS restrictions now to
| limit where certain transactions (like gift card functions) are
| completable to avoid people trying to swipe devices or signons
| from outer area unattended registers.
| bombcar wrote:
| That signin via device is hilarious because it didn't work
| the last time I was there; the lady had to find someone else
| who could sign in for her because her device wasn't
| connecting or something.
| eichin wrote:
| I'm sure you meant the code was changing periodically, but
| now I'm expecting some pseudo-cyberpunk "rapidly spinning
| barcode" authenticator to show up in a movie...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Every retail business has a "priority" of preventing theft.
| When profit margins are 2%, it doesn't take much theft to put
| the business in the red.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Turnover dominates margins as a factor in physical retail
| profitability.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| a) that puts an upper cap on how much it makes sense to spend
| on theft prevention (notably target does not indicate how
| much money it spends on such activities)
|
| B) such activities can reduce revenues in the first place.
| For example I don't even bother going to retailers because
| they have so many obstacles with locked cabinets that online
| shopping is just a smoother experience.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The markup is around 30% or higher on each item (or at least
| that was the case back when I last studied business)
|
| I get there are overheads but that's spread across all
| products and supermarkets have _a lot_ of products.
|
| So you'd still have to have a lot of theft in a supermarket
| before you get close to a dent in those 2% margins.
|
| Edit: as an aside, this is also why high value items such as
| alcohol are usually at the back of the store. It's easier to
| identify and catch someone stealing if they've attempted to
| conceal a product for the entirely length of the shop.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| _" I get that there are overheads, but I'm just going to
| arbitrarily assume they are negligible to morally whitewash
| theft."_
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's not even remotely what I was saying.
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| ------
|
| My point is that shop lifting is small scale compared to
| legal sales. So for a supermarket to make a loss from
| shoplifting, they'd either have to see a significant jump
| in items stolen.
|
| This doesn't mean that I condone theft; it just means
| I've ran the operating costs and margins for running
| retail stores and thought I'd share that insight.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That wasn't what was said.
|
| Businesses price in shrinkage. The more theft occurs, the
| more employees they hire and the higher they mark up
| goods.
|
| There's a difference between having a 2% margin and
| having a 30% markup. Margin includes things like employee
| salaries, spoilage, theft. That's why buying goods in a
| remote location will often carry a high price tag. The
| store selling that produce needs to account for these
| things in order to stay afloat. So even though they are
| selling something for $10 that you can get in a city for
| $5 that doesn't mean they aren't making the same 2%
| margin.
| etchalon wrote:
| You understand that that 30% "markup" has to cover
| literally everything involved in running the store, right?
| The building, lights, shelves, labor, website, marketing,
| HVAC, etc etc etc
|
| A 30% markup spread across 1 product or 3000000 products is
| still a 30% markup.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yes, and you realize "theft" is a part of everything.
|
| I don't think the comment you responded to was arguing
| that theft was moral or companies were being greedy.
| Rather, just that 30% markup is typical and it takes a
| fair bit of theft before that starts closing the gaps on
| the margins.
| etchalon wrote:
| Then I think the parent comment lacks an understanding of
| the difference between gross and net margins.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That's an uncharitable reading of their comment.
| etchalon wrote:
| It's the only reasonable reading if someone is dismissing
| 2% loss due to theft for a retailer.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I wasn't dismissing theft and supermarkets do not have 2%
| of their stock lost through theft (if 1 in 50 items were
| already stolen then that supermarket is dysfunctional at
| preventing theft).
|
| Thus what you're describing simply has no basis in
| reality.
|
| Furthermore, you've completely misread every single
| comment in this thread and taken the least charitable
| conclusion from them.
| etchalon wrote:
| You seem to believe that when the industry says they
| suffer a 2% loss due to shrinkage, they mean 2% of their
| inventory. That 2% figure refers to gross sales, not item
| inventory losses.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| As I've already told you, the industry says they lose
| 1.6% to shrinkage and theft is just a subset of
| shrinkage.
|
| So your figures are flat out wrong.
|
| And I get it's a gross figure, I was just putting it into
| simple terms for you because you've managed to
| misunderstand every other comment thus far. I was hoping
| turning the figure into a fraction might help you
| understand the ridiculousness of your comments. It was
| meant as an illustration rather than a literal scenario.
|
| Anyway, like the other guy, I'm done chatting to you now.
| I've done business studies and worked in retail before
| moving to IT. Clearly you haven't. And if you're going to
| keep repeating incorrect figures then you're beyond
| reason anyway.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I literally said that.
|
| The part you missed is that supermarkets sell a
| significant amount of stock.
|
| If shop lifting is a serious enough problem in a
| particular store to make it financially unprofitable then
| there's more at play than just the theft:
|
| 1. The store isn't following best practices of having
| electronics tagged, and high value items at the back of
| the store.
|
| 2. The store isn't making enough legal sales. This could
| be for a multitude of reasons from the stores location to
| its cleanliness. Or maybe they're just stocking stuff
| people don't want to buy or at the prices they're
| advertised for
|
| 3. The overheads are unsustainable regardless of the
| sales. For example the land rental might be so high that
| the store wouldn't turn a profit with the types of
| products they're trying to sell.
|
| Shops also factor in loss of stock in their margins. Eg
| spoiled food, damaged products and theft. This actually
| comes to less than the cost of personal nor rental costs.
|
| There is still value in anti-theft measures. But that
| doesn't mean that the GPs comments were correct when they
| said:
|
| > it doesn't take much theft to put the business in the
| red.
|
| ...because if you run a supermarket correctly then it
| does. Despite what the knee jerk reactions to my initial
| comment suggest.
| etchalon wrote:
| That's just not how the math works.
|
| Let's assume an average marginal loss of 2% of gross
| sales to theft at a business with a net margin of 4%
| (typical of retail). Let's also assume wholesale markup
| of 50%, just to be conservative.
|
| On two million in gross sales, a 2% loss equates to a
| $40,000. Assuming a 50% markup, the retailer has lost
| $20,000 in COGs. We'll ignore the other $20,000 for now.
|
| On two million in gross sales, and a 4% net margin, the
| retailer can expect to make an annualized profit of
| $80,000.
|
| We deduct the $20,000 in COGs loss, the retailer is now
| making only $60,000 a year, that's a loss of 25% in
| profit.
|
| And that's using 50% markup.
|
| In your stated case, with a 30% markup, the retailer
| would have lost $28,000 dollars in COGs, meaning the
| retailer is now making only $52,000, a reduction of 35%
| in net profits.
|
| There is no universe in which this is a non-meaningful
| amount or to be dismissed as "well, something else has to
| be going wrong. Theft just isn't that big a deal."
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Those figures aren't accurate (eg shrinkage is estimated
| at around 1.6% and theft is just one of many factors that
| contribute to shrinkage, so the actual percentage for
| theft is going to be even lower) but I'm done arguing
| with you because you keep taking my comments in bad
| faith, eg:
|
| > Theft just isn't that big a deal."
|
| That's absolutely not what I said and if that's the
| message you're taking then you're looking for an argument
| instead of discussing the facts.
|
| So I'm done.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| How many employees does it take to move $2mil in sales?
| That's not the owner running a mom-and-pop store with
| only him running the till, is it?
| nothercastle wrote:
| Most because it's hard to quantify how much money they don't
| earn because we refuse to shop there due to everything being
| locked up
| sieep wrote:
| I have a friend who works for Nordstorm doing this kind of work.
| She claimed the bigger problem financially is employees in
| retail, i.e. stealing clothes in large scale to be sold on eBay.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I remember a guy in high school basically taking orders for
| things to steal off the Walmart truck; expensive electronics
| (for back in the day) like XBoxes, Playstations, etc.
|
| And of course, while working at Kohl's, you had people
| occasionally put items away in the back, tucked behind shelves,
| so that when they went on ultra-clearance they could pull them
| out and buy them.
| Loughla wrote:
| That definitely brings an experience from college into focus
| for me. We were cleaning out the back room and came across a
| luggage set that had slipped behind some shelves and was
| missed for like 3 years. It was originally priced at $400 but
| was so old or was clearanced at $40. I bought it, thanking my
| lucky stars that we had luggage for our upcoming honeymoon.
|
| About a week later, loss prevention called me in and asked me
| a ton of questions about the luggage and how it came to be
| behind the shelves. It was before I worked there so I had no
| idea. The whole thing seemed weird to me at the time. Now it
| makes sense. Wild.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yep, anywhere clearance is handled by "computer" and not
| someone physically noting and putting a sticker on it you
| have this happening.
|
| If you find something wedged behind a shelf it's sometimes
| a customer just putting something back where it doesn't
| belong, other times it's the long-con.
|
| Some stores won't clearance below a certain point because
| of this; they'd rather ship pallets off at 20% "loss" to an
| outlet broker than enable clearance shrinkage.
| technothrasher wrote:
| In a sort of reverse of that story, back when my teenage son
| was working at Target, my wife asked me to get a vacuum
| cleaner. So I went to the Target webpage and found a mid-
| range model, and texted my son to buy it and bring it home
| after his shift. He came home and said the only one left was
| the display model but that he got it for me.
|
| The next day, security called him in to the office, which
| freaked him out a little, of course. They asked him why he
| had bought that vacuum cleaner. He said I'd asked for it.
| They then all laughed, and told him that it was a commonly
| stolen model and they were using it as a honey pot. When he
| walked over and took it off the shelf, they were concerned.
| When he then went up to the front and bought it, they were
| confused. They said now they understood. It was always the
| dad causing problems. And they sent him back to work.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > When he walked over and took it off the shelf, they were
| concerned. When he then went up to the front and bought it,
| they were confused. They said now they understood.
|
| What could possibly be confusing about a person doing what
| most normal people do in a store?
| tekla wrote:
| I'm guessing because they expected him "employee
| disappear it" and not pay for it.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, keep this in mind when you see corporations pushing news
| stories about surging epidemics of shoplifting
| (https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/former-home-depot-ceo-
| org...). Shoplifting is not growing, and external theft
| generally accounts for about a third of retail inventory
| losses. See for example: https://popular.info/p/lies-damn-lies-
| and-shoplifting-statis...
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think part of the fixation on "shoplifting" is that a
| Reddit video showing someone walking in and filling up a bag
| of merchandise _viscerally gets people going_ in a way that
| "statistics about wage theft," "invisible employee-caused
| shrinkage," and "process/control failures" doesn't get people
| hot-and-bothered.
|
| People will get mad because they visually saw someone steal a
| tube of toothpaste, but not care about other forms of mass-
| theft because it's not on YouTube.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| There's also the part where reddit has communities of
| shoplifters who give each other tips and post propaganda
| about how more people should shoplift.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Sure, and a large part of those communities are people
| just cosplaying.
| vondur wrote:
| Ha, I watched this happen at a Target here in SoCal. A
| group of people filled up their carts (3) with clothes and
| shoes, rushed out the door to a waiting van. Security
| didn't even try to stop them at all.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Nor should they, tbh. A few hundred bucks worth of shoes
| isn't worth getting hurt over.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Beyond even the cops and DA absolutely refusing to do their
| jobs in any way, it also severely degrades the shopping
| experience.
|
| You can either go to costco which is always mobbed, or if
| you make the mistake of going to Target, you will have to
| repeatedly get someone to unlock cabinets which hold
| laundry detergent, deodorant, toothpaste, etc.
| mindslight wrote:
| That's _Target_ degrading the shopping experience. It 's
| understandable how they make a cost-benefit analysis and
| decide to, but let's not absolve them of responsibility
| for that choice.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Given the shoplifting levels, comprehensive lack of
| enforcement, etc they don't practically have a choice.
| See also SF whining a couple years ago because a Target
| actually reported all the thefts and it made Breed look
| incompetent. And the open retail-theft marketplace
| operated at 16th st bart.
| mindslight wrote:
| They have many choices. Off the top of my head: accept
| the higher loss, raise prices on in-store purchases of
| those items to account for the higher shrink, authorize
| their security guards to forcibly stop and detain people,
| put vending machines that unlock with a payment card
| (deposit) rather than employee-operated locks.
|
| I don't know why you're continuing to absolve the well-
| capitalized corporation of responsibility for their
| choice of dumping externalities on legitimate customers,
| except as part of some gish gallop of reactionary talking
| points that lash out with blame for _everyone but_ those
| directly responsible for the frustrating conditions.
| x0x0 wrote:
| > gish gallop of reactionary talking points
|
| Yes, indeed. I don't understand why you're not blaming
| the criminals and the incompetent government enabling
| them, rather than merchants with thin margins. Or us, for
| not being enthused about paying for the thieves.
| mindslight wrote:
| We can condemn each individual criminal for their
| personal choice to steal, but this does not have much
| bearing on the overall situation. There is no "government
| enabling them", rather there is a government that is
| necessarily choosing how to optimize its limited
| resources.
|
| Meanwhile, a large store full of goods manned by a
| skeleton crew, which doesn't even hire a single person to
| chase down thieves, seems like quite the attractive
| nuisance. Why is it governments job to subsidize the
| security of this store's stuff through the threat of
| expensive post-facto enforcement against a bunch of
| judgement-proof perpetrators? Why do you keep absolving
| the well-capitalized corporation of responsibility and
| even agency ?
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Employee theft requires different tactics to fight and doesn't
| pose the same consumer privacy concerns.
| sieep wrote:
| Great point! I know some pretty advanced statistical analysis
| is used in my friend's case to detect anomalies in ordering,
| shipping, etc.
| tlavoie wrote:
| Back in the stone age, I worked at 7-Eleven while in
| university. Nothing was really computerized at the store
| level then, even cameras were rare.
|
| What was done all the time was a simple, templated, paper-
| based process that managers went through each month. I
| believe the gist of it was that it recorded sales for each
| shift in the month (7am-3pm, 3-11, 11-7), and who worked
| them. Some simple stats highlighted low sales correlated
| with employees, to point out who was likely entering
| smaller prices in the till and pocketing the difference.
| Now it's all bar-code scans of course, but it was a common
| problem at the time.
| larkost wrote:
| This is a longstanding problem. I worked at the receiving dock
| of a retailer long ago, and the amount of procedure and double-
| verification involved was a bit of a drag, all of it obviously
| aimed at making sure that neither I nor the guy driving the
| truck could make things "fall off the truck" without it being
| obvious.
|
| But even then, it was common knowledge that most "shrinkage"
| (generic term for stolen/damaged/expired/destroyed merchandise)
| was from employee theft (except in grocery stores... there it
| is second to expired goods).
| Avshalom wrote:
| Except at my store where internal shrink is dominated by me
| throwing things.
| jandrese wrote:
| If you go to a store and note the security camera locations
| one thing that is obvious is most of them are pointed at the
| employees.
| ecshafer wrote:
| When I was younger, teen and early 20s, and working in retail.
| I noticed and thought it was kind of funny how in the job
| application process, these 100+ question interviews were all
| about trying to filter out criminals. They really treated
| employees as potential criminals first. Its ironically more
| paranoid than working in the financial industry.
| nekitamo wrote:
| Criminally minded employees are bad for the bottom line in
| retail.
|
| Criminally minded employees are good for the bottom line in
| finance.
|
| The firms in question will filter accordingly.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Its ironically more paranoid than working in the financial
| industry.
|
| Having owned a liquor store for a while, it's not paranoia.
| The majority of the people you can get to work low end retail
| jobs will try to rip you off in any way they can.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| "if I only had a bartender that stole from me 1/3 of the
| time I'd keep him..."
|
| or so the saying goes
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > She claimed the bigger problem financially is employees in
| retail, i.e. stealing clothes in large scale to be sold on
| eBay.
|
| One of Kanye's early songs he mentions stealing kakis from his
| job before he quit to become an artist. Not surprised, if
| you're an employee you have access to all sorts of things a
| customer does not. I imagine you also have access to areas
| where there are no cameras.
| yndoendo wrote:
| I have a friend that does this for Home Depot. He describes his
| job as being a detective. Watching video to collect enough
| evidence so he can question employees shorting the company.
| Non-employees has their evidence given to the local police
| department once there is enough.
|
| Often employees with talk about the other crimes they committed
| while being interrogated. He just plays along, ".. yes we had
| that too ... and that too". Give them enough evidence and they
| will hang themselves.
|
| The hardest to catch are the slight of hand employees that can
| take money from the safe while it looking like they put all the
| money in. This is even with cameras watching the safe.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Once you get walked into the room and the folks on the other
| side of the table start into the Wicklander-Zulawski[1]
| playbook... it's game over.
|
| "Take a seat, the door is unlocked and you can leave at any
| time."
|
| [1] https://www.w-z.com/private-sector/
| JohnFen wrote:
| > "Take a seat, the door is unlocked and you can leave at
| any time."
|
| Why wouldn't everyone just leave at that point? That's what
| I'd do, since if I'm being investigated, then my job there
| is over anyway regardless of my guilt or innocence. I'd
| have nothing to gain by volunteering to be interrogated.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| you do a couple of things to distract them on the way,
| like lead them around to a harder to reach room, ask them
| unrelated questions e.g. "did you see that goofy guy at
| the counter this morning", and give the impression that
| you want to hear their side of the story.
|
| most people will comply esp. if slightly distracted or
| thrown off a little; the serious hoodrats would be
| picking a fight or pushing back and the pros would
| already be walking out the back door ASAP
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They've seen too many copaganda shows where open
| communication with the investigator solves the
| misunderstanding and they go find the real bad guy.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >The hardest to catch are the slight of hand employees that
| can take money from the safe while it looking like they put
| all the money in. This is even with cameras watching the
| safe.
|
| I've read about this in Vegas, where there are people who can
| palm the the chips so quickly that they weren't able to
| discern it on 30fps cameras (they had upgraded to 120fps, I
| think). Didn't know if it was the sort of bullshit people
| like that like to tell stories about without any evidence or
| not.
| heathrow83829 wrote:
| i'm surprised by this because it's so hard to sell used goods.
| i have an old suit from graduation that's in perfect condition
| and looks quite nice. the thing will NOT sell, not even for
| 10$, at all even though it's practically brand new.
| sieep wrote:
| I can actually comment on this a bit as I ran an eBay
| business during college selling second-hand clothes. A lot of
| it is about volume and brand. For example, women made up a
| majority of our sales even if it was men's clothing. Certain
| brands like Nike, Polo sold better & having hundreds of items
| up vs. just one and having 5 stars. All of that combined
| allowed us to sell items daily.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| biggest threats are insider threats
|
| back when bookstores were a thing most places I used to work in
| one, and had a manager watch us, the entire time, as we took
| romance novels we couldn't sell out back and ripped off the
| covers before tossing them in a ship-back bin. Ditto for a few
| others like best sellers and some mags
|
| she took two us out back to do it, leaving only one person on
| the floor to run the checkout -- field day for any serious
| thief. but they were more worried about us...
| dole wrote:
| In 2012, Target operated a "couple of forensics labs" and at
| least 23 "investigations centers" for surveillance. OP's article
| kinda sugarcoats it. Since it's been verified Home Depot does
| checkout facial recognition and builds profiles, silly to think
| most any other major retailer wouldn't.
|
| https://privacysos.org/blog/target-is-really-really-into-sur...
| echelon wrote:
| AI will probably automate this.
|
| I predict a new class of machine learning model that will
| ingest a large number of low resolution video frames and dump
| high resolution facial reconstructions.
|
| This stuff will probably be sold to both private and public
| sectors.
| euroderf wrote:
| Democratising the Mission Impossible fake face technique.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ironically, probably helping minorities at the same time.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-
| machin...
| djoldman wrote:
| Probably not in Illinois!
|
| https://www.aclu-il.org/en/campaigns/biometric-information-p...
| odie5533 wrote:
| How much forensic-grade surveillance profiling is an acceptable
| amount while I peruse deodorants and potato chips?
| Avshalom wrote:
| You can't peruse the deodorant, we have it locked up.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's just so obvious at this point to see the wealth building
| up on one side and the technology that is necessary to protect
| it and wealth completely disappearing on the other, making
| people steal the deodorant in the first place.
|
| I can't believe there isn't a society or couldn't be one where
| all this shenanigans isn't necessary.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| there is. but you'll probably have to force the issue.
| cm2012 wrote:
| This is why Target self check out is the best. They have
| confidence in their theft deterrence so their machine has a lot
| of leeway and yells at me less for weight issues.
| odie5533 wrote:
| How much do they pay you to work as a cashier there?
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's impossible to prove or falsify of course but lower cost
| to them from having to pay fewer cashiers in theory shows up
| for the customers in lower prices. The other benefit is self
| checkout usually crams more lanes into a smaller area so you
| can checkout more quickly than waiting for the 2 lanes at
| best I'd often see staffed outside of peak seasons before
| self checkout.
| immibis wrote:
| There has never been any instance of a company passing on
| cost savings to its customers unless forced by market
| competition.
| bluGill wrote:
| Since WalMart and dollar stores compete in the same space
| to some extent they have competition. And most things you
| buy at target can be bought from smaller specialty stores
| that while not direct competition between them all you
| have same same variety of things available. (and
| different prices and quality levels so you can make your
| own trade offs)
| rtkwe wrote:
| So do big box retailers and grocery stores not have any
| competition then? I don't want to be snarky but it's not
| exactly a mono or even duopoly space in most towns for
| grocery stores and big box retailers are more often
| single choices in medium and smaller towns but above that
| you've often got a choice of big box retailers to go to
| too.
| Avshalom wrote:
| 17 an hour except at a few high CoL stores.
| chihuahua wrote:
| The payment for me is in not having to wait in line behind 3
| different people who are buying 100 items each, and are using
| many different coupons.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Pointing the beeping raygun is actually pretty fun
| toss1 wrote:
| I can check out faster by rarely having to queue for the
| register, and I can scan things faster than a tired bored
| retail worker and know it's accurate. Self-checkout is also
| much less likely for me to catch a cold/flu/etc. as I'm
| neither in close proximity to the employee who was in close
| proximity to every other customer that week, and is touching
| every one of my items after touching every other customers'
| items. And, I can bag the goods the way I want them bagged,
| either for easier carrying, cold items together, or for how I
| want it organized to un-bag at home.
|
| So, I consider self-checkout a real plus, not them stealing
| my labor. The exception is when the system is ill-designed or
| ill-tuned, so it halts and I'm effectively debugging it for
| them, except nothing is fixed b/c the employee just logs in
| and waves it through. With that exception, I still much
| prefer self-checkout.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I would pay more for self check out since I am much faster
| than the employees ever are and I value that more than extra
| cash.
| JohnFen wrote:
| If I were confident that I wouldn't mistakenly be accused of
| theft, I might use self-checkout. But I'm not, so I don't.
| adrr wrote:
| Thats the risk right. If a cashier makes a mistake and
| doesn't scan and item, nothing happens. If you make the same
| mistake, you could be hauled off to jail, prosecuted, lose
| your job. Why put yourself through that risk. Its common
| enough, that its probably happened to you that a cashier has
| missed a scan.
|
| On the flip side, you could also sue and win lots of money.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/walmart-shoplifting-
| la...
| JohnFen wrote:
| > its probably happened to you that a cashier has missed a
| scan.
|
| It has, a couple of times (that I noticed). It's a hassle
| because it meant that I had to return to the store to pay
| for the item that was accidentally skipped.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| people are reading this article misunderstanding that its purpose
| is to discourage theft by getting nerds to constantly talk about
| Target this, felony theft that, not by actually being effective
| at a technical level
| euroderf wrote:
| Can't someone juice this conversation with some
| false/misleading advice for retailers, so that after it goes
| thru an A.I., the A.I.'s advice for retail operations makes
| shoplifting and employee theft easy and simple ?
| reify wrote:
| looks like the lowly shoplifter is going to bring down
| capitalism.
|
| All that theft! no more profits. fuck me.
|
| All major businesses have insurance to cover all losses from
| internal and external theft. Those same lossses are tax right-
| offs. in other words, the amount of money lost to shoplifting is
| less money they pay in tax.
|
| I wonder of all the cctv, facial recognition and monitoring costs
| work out more than the actual shoplifted losses.
|
| there is more to meet the eye than a lowly shoplifter here.
| wtcactus wrote:
| This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer sends
| Jerry's broken video player in the mail to claim the postal
| service broke it and get money for it.
|
| "It's a write off Jerry. It costs them nothing. They just write
| it off!"
|
| Of course that Kramer also didn't had any idea of what a "write
| off" was. He was also just throwing words around to justify
| theft.
| loeg wrote:
| "Huston"? This does not bode well for the writing/editing process
| at whatever site this is.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not quite phonetically, but spelled as pronounced? I'd assume
| we're talking about Space City in Texas vs the street in NY
| pronounced like a house that weighs a ton.
| loeg wrote:
| Definitely talking about Houston.
| jollyllama wrote:
| We have a problem.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| (Typos / spelling mistakes certainly fit this category)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| loeg wrote:
| It's not tangential; it speaks to the editorial process or
| lack thereof at this publication that they couldn't catch a
| misspelling of a major American city. It casts the entire
| article in doubt.
| alangibson wrote:
| It's funny to see Reddit posts driving HN posts. There was a
| viral post about a rather video friendly lady getting politely
| arrested for shoplifting at Target going around today.
|
| A surprising number of people commented about how Target had made
| sure they got long sentences by waiting and recording them until
| they would get serious charges.
| Operyl wrote:
| Target does tend to build cases, up to a certain point, so as
| to not waste LE time. But it's not as much as people tend to
| think. If you steal a candy bar or a loaf of bread it's just
| not worth it, but more? A TV? Yes.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Specifically they wait until it's enough to charge with
| felony theft.
| carverauto wrote:
| so does walmart, have had one for a long time
| OptionOfT wrote:
| When I moved to the USA I always thought it was interesting in
| how many ways you can just walk out a store without paying.
|
| I'm from Belgium, and at least where I grew up at, the stores are
| much more corralled. One way in, one way out.
|
| But this forensics is also why I don't use self-checkout. Not
| that I steal stuff, but I don't want to end up in a situation
| where I forgot to scan something and get in trouble.
|
| I've had it happen to me that something was missed at Costco, you
| just walk back and pay.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Do Belgian fire codes not mandate multiple exits? One problem I
| have sometimes seen here is people running out of a fire exit,
| even if they set off an alarm in the process. And you can't
| block or lock those exits.
| bj85 wrote:
| TFA is a just a poor summary of an improperly cited 2009 forbes
| article. A somewhat recent article with additional information
| here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-25/how-
| targe...
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