My trips to Walmart are infrequent, so each time I go I observe the changes since the prior visit.
Items I seek often are no longer in the aisles where they used to be. They get moved. Maybe experts believe moving merchandise around somehow improves the store, though it makes it harder on shoppers who go to the usual aisle and find unrelated merchandise there instead.
Then there’s the checkout system.
In September 2023, I wrote a column wondering where the Walmart cashiers had gone. For they were no longer in the store.
Back then, holding my one item to purchase, I stood still, staring in confusion. (I often look confused in stores as I process the environment.)
A woman in charge of some checkout kiosks asked if I needed help.
“Just wondering,” I murmured, “where have all the human cashiers gone?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “We have one on aisle 19.”
I frowned. “That’s the only one?”
She nodded yes.
Imagine that — just one human cashier in the entire mega-store!
Some of the former cashiers had become supervisory guides at the automated stations, maybe one human supervisor per four to eight checkout kiosks.
What about the other former cashiers? Many — perhaps all — were offered other jobs in the store. Some likely accepted, but a large number wouldn’t have.
Not every cashier of a certain age or of feeble build can adapt to stocking merchandise, getting down on the floor, lifting heavy boxes, and all that jazz.
Those cashiers, I figured, were doomed to be out of work or would need to find a new employer.
So, imagine my surprise last week when I went into Walmart, solely because I heard they have a collection box for used eyeglasses to help poor folks get them for free. I trotted into Walmart with four pairs of old prescription eyeglasses to donate.
While there, I looked around.
Every aisle that was ringing up sales was staffed by a human being!
The experts who had said, “Minimizing human cashiers will lead to a better shopping experience for our valued customers” are now singing a different tune.
Now they are saying, “Maximizing human cashiers will lead to a better shopping experience for our valued customers.”
In both cases, I believe, they don’t really care about the shoppers’ experience. They care solely about the store’s profits. Maximizing profits is their job. Whatever they think will maximize profits, they will recommend.
Big stores — especially those with stockholders — couldn’t wait to eliminate cashier jobs, in the name of “efficiency,” which is their way of saying “profitability.”
The checkout work was still being done — but for free, by the customers.
The funny part is the experts who now recommend expanding the human component of the checkout system at Walmart are the very same experts who a few years ago recommended practically doing away with human cashiers at the store.
I’m no expert, but if asked a few years ago I would have told them that cutting back to one or two human cashiers in the store would lead to losses via customers unwilling or unable to perform self-checkout, customers making honest mistakes at the checkout, and customers deliberately scamming the system.
Self-checkout is an easy system to abuse.
Because I am honest, I obey the rules. But because I am a native New Yorker, I’m aware of how to artfully avoid paying.
You can just wave an item close to the scanner but not quite close enough for it to read the barcode.
Many a time I’ll try to scan an item, and it will take more than one try to succeed. Perhaps I was shoving the wrong part of the item by the scanner or my fingers got in the way. Well, if I make just one attempt to scan and then toss it in the bag, even though it hasn’t scanned, that’s merchandise walking out the door.
If I follow the advice of my old New York coworker Joe R., I would lie to the checkout machine anytime it asked for information. If I’m buying, say, seven cucumbers, it will pause when I hit the cucumber button, and ask for the quantity as it displays a numerical scale. I could easily type in two cucumbers instead of seven.
If the item is sold by the pound, such as red grapes, I could put it on the scale and instead of hitting a red grapes button hit a button for yellow bananas or white potatoes and save myself as much as $5 per pound.
Some folks (not me) buy expensive items at Walmart. If the store is predominantly self-checkout (as it was in 2023 and much of 2024), I am confident I could exit the store without paying for an item, if I wanted to.
But I wouldn’t want to.
So, when you hear so-called business experts say what should be done, just remember those experts might say the very opposite a year or two later.
Which means one should never take their expertise too seriously.
Those of us who study consumerism and shopping probably know better.
Oh, my attempt to donate used but serviceable prescription eyeglasses was a dud. The big collection box in Walmart, with a slit in the top for inserting items, was overflowing. The charitable organization that runs the program hasn’t sent anyone lately to tend to the collection box. So, I took my donation home with me.
If readers know of any other collection boxes for donating prescription eyeglasses, please give a holler.
