Lowest Common Denominator

It’s Sunday – but this isn’t really a “Sunday Story” – more of a Sunday “rant”!!

Shrinkage

In some Walmart stores across the nation, they are removing the self-checkout aisles, and replacing them with – wait for it – cashiers!  Walmart says they are doing so to “improve the customer experience”, but in reality, it’s all about “shrinkage”.  What’s “shrinkage”?  (Fellas, it’s not the cold water situation).  It’s product that leaves the store without payment,  in other words, theft.  Stores like Walmart estimate it’s as much as twenty percent of the merchandise.

Walmart cut costs by installing self-checkout lines. The “customer experience” was to unload, scan, and bag your own purchases. Then, as you’d leave the store, someone would check your cart against the printed receipt, in case, (of course) you made a mistake.

I’ve always been willing to bag my own groceries.  If my local grocery store is slammed, I’m willing to volunteer and “pitch-in” to help out and speed things up.  The only thing to “screw up” in bagging, is putting the eggs or the chips in the wrong place or the wrong bag.  And, if I do, that’s on me.

But I’m not interested in protecting the profit of my local Kroger, or Walmart, or their discount store, Sam’s Club.  I am not a thief.  There were several times when I got my cart to the car, and realized that the cashier missed an item, say, the case of water on the bottom.  I not taking something I didn’t pay for.  So I go back in the store, to the front desk, and pay for what I purchased.  That, often, causes some confusion to the “management personnel”.  That’s sad; it shouldn’t be a “surprise” that people are honest.

However, this whole concept of a nice, older lady at the front door checking my cart against my receipt says one thing to me – I’m a thief, that needs to be observed, and checked, and “caught”.  And I’m not.

Fix Their Problem

I know, I know, it’s the theory of the lowest common denominator. (If that didn’t give you a flashback to eighth grade math with a not-nice, older lady named Mrs. Hibbard, you missed out on “Math Block Development” at Van Buren Junior High School).   The “lowest common denominator” customer at Walmart or Sam’s Club is stealing stuff, I guess.  My answer is:  fix their problem, not mine.   

It’s like the seventh grade teacher who punishes the whole class because two boys are shooting “tweeties” in the back.  (Tweeties:  that requires a rubber band and a tightly folded piece of paper.  The paper is in a “v”, with the rubber band placed in the “v” and shot at the target.  They hurt!!)  It’s not the kid in the front row’s fault that the “boys in the back” are out of control.  Teacher, control those kids, don’t punish the whole class!!

But Walmart will, by making everyone go through a cashiered line.  Actually,  I’m all in favor of that.  Cashiered lines require people to be cashiers. That requires more employees at Walmart, creating jobs.  And all of that’s a good thing.  But I’m not convinced that’s what will happen.

Employee Opportunities

Walmart won’t hire more people. Instead, Walmart will create more lines of waiting customers, blaming it on “shrinkage” rather than “tight-wad-age”.  And so we will be stacked up, across the broad main aisle and into the women’s clothing department, between the bras and the goofy T-shirts.  Dodging those lines was the only advantage to self-checkout.  And now that won’t be an option.

Here in Pataskala, our local Kroger store created a “hybrid” checkout line.   in the regular cashier checkout, the customer unpacks the cart onto a conveyor.  The cashier then enters the price of each item, either manually and through a barcode reading device.  The item them is pushed down to a bagger, who bags it, then sets the groceries in a cart.  That line is where all the folks “my age” (well past retirement) congregate.  There’s others doing the work, there’s conversations with the cashier and the bagger, and there’s direction if some electronic device comes up “ERROR”.

Self-checkout is all “do it yourself”.  You unpack, you scan or enter; you bag, and you put it back in the cart.  Oh, and don’t forget to pay!!  But with this odd “hybrid” checkout, you unpack, enter and scan, then conveyor to a “professional” bagger (usually a high school kid) who bags and packs.  I guess the “professional” serves as the “shrinkage control officer”, making sure everything gets scanned in.  

Hybrids

Why have a “hybrid” that makes the customer do all of the important work?  Because it a Kroger cost-saving measure; they don’t have to staff a cashier, just a kid fresh from a present-day Mrs. Hibbard’s math class. There’s no weighing, measuring, entering, calculating for them:  just put the eggs in a separate bag on top.  

My problem with hybrid?  The high school kid is always trying to bag two hybrid lines at the same time.  So he (usually) isn’t there. That means I’m unpacking, I’m scanning, I’m conveying, and I’m running to the other end to bag too.  And with all that going on, I’m at the “wrong end of the horse” when I get done.  It’s easy to start to walk away – without paying.  “Luckily” the scanning machine goes off like a grand-prize winner at the casino if you don’t pay out fast.  That way the entire Kroger, in fact, the entire City of Pataskala is made aware – “potential ‘thief’ at hybrid checkout twelve!!!!”

Look, inflation is real in the Walmart’s and Kroger’s of the world.   But Walmart had an annual gross profit of over $147 billion last year, and Kroger almost $38 billion, both up from the year before.  I bet they can find a few more smart high school (non-math block) kids to “cashier” the lines, and not put much of a dent in the profit margin.

But whatever they do, I hope that stop treating me like I’m a thief.  Don’t make me like the “lowest common denominator”.  

The Sunday Story Series

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.