Sam Amico
The self-checkout line has many benefits. For starters, it generally means not waiting on someone who’s paid to check out your items.
Videos by Rare
It also is supposed to work as sort of an express lane, where customers have just a few items and want to zip out, making lines move faster. In theory, anyway. But those benefits don’t outweigh some large risks, criminal defense attorney Carrie Jernigan said on TikTok.
The biggest risk of using the self-checkout? Shoplifting, she said.
And not shoplifting on purpose. Rather, people are now being arrested for forgetting to scan an item. As if they were trying to steal it, she said.
This is different than the early days of self-checkout when stores would walk the person back to the scanner, have them scan and pay for an item, then let the person go on their merry way.
Stop Using Self-Checkout Machines
@carriejernigan1 Reply to @afamily20202 ♬ original sound – LAWYER CARRIE
“These are the people that I genuinely think just forgot to scan an item,” Jernigan said. “It is usually something that was on the bottom rack of the cart … and when they are walking out, asset protection stops them.
“They let almost all of these people either scan and pay for the item, or just let them go, but took the item they did not pay for.”
Not anymore, it seems. And the world has a rise in shoplifting crimes to blame. Stores now tend to treat everyone, guilty or not, as shoplifters these days.
“They have lost all sympathy, and they are just taking a ‘Tell it to the judge’ approach,” Jernigan said.
Another group of innocent people getting arrested are those who do so well after the fact, per Jernigan.
“It is something that [happens when] asset protection is doing a quality-control check, or inventory that weeks, days, months later comes up short,” she said. “So they will begin watching hours of video.”
The checks can result in customers getting charged unfairly, simply for buying an item that went unchecked.
