24 december 2023
My local grocery store has several armed security now. At first they checked receipts when you exited and mean-mugged "suspicious" people like me. Now they just stick to the mean mugging. Maybe they realized selectively checking some people's receipts but not checking everyone's was some sort of potential legal liability.
Recently at the self-checkout line the machine flagged something I did as suspicious. The attendant came over and reviewed the grainy over-head video of me holding a bag of discount onions and entering the code in. They seemed to be unaware that discount fresh produce was something for sale, so they asked me how I was able to get a bag of onions for a dollar. I could see the security bro watching this exchange tense up and start walking toward us.
So I explain that this store has a bin of bananas and other aging produce that
they sell in $1 bags. They seem skeptical of this, but the alternative is that
I can somehow trick the self-checkout machine into giving me things for a
dollar and I'm wasting that power on the worst bag of onions in the store.
Note that this isn't the first time the machine has flagged what I'm doing as
suspicious and forced an employee to come over and review the video, but this
is the first time anyone did anything more than "yeah yeah whatever" the whole
situation because even if I was tricking the machine who really cares?
It strains my credulity to think that the grocery store CEO believes having their busy-body employees review video footage of me buying $10 worth of food while 4-6 armed security guards wander around in tactical vests is a financial benefit for the Kroger Company. I used to dumpster dive here years ago and the amount of wasted food surely hasn't gone down. This is America and I hate it here.