Walmart employees and customers blame self-checkout for theft

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Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said stores could close if the growing wave of thefts is not stemmed. Customers and employees accuse self-checkout, which Walmart has increasingly relied on, of theft. A loss prevention expert said automation “means there will be fewer eyes on a trade.” LoadingSomething is being loaded.

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Walmart’s CEO says the retailer may have to close stores due to theft, and many customers and company employees blame a growing feature of the chain for enabling shoplifting: cashless payment. self-service.

Walmart CEO and President Doug McMillon told CNBC earlier this month that the theft “is higher than it has been historically” and that there would be consequences “if not not corrected over time”. Since McMillon made the comments, more than 100 current and former Walmart customers and employees have reached out to an insider reporter to say the retailer needs to rely less on self-checkout.

“They need to hire cashiers again and cut as many self-checkout machines,” said Mindy Stanley, a Walmart customer from Ashland, Kentucky. “I would say they lose so much because of it.”

Granted, Walmart still uses cashiers in stores across the United States. But the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant, like so many other retailers, has increasingly relied on automation to improve the customer experience and reduce labor costs. ‘work.

Walmart even released a press release in June 2020 touting its “staffed checkout experience,” where there’s a round area for self-checkout registers and Walmart employees monitor and assist the checkout process. process.

Walmart declined to answer questions about its relationship between self-checkout kiosks and traditional payment lanes with cashiers, the monitoring tools it used to prevent theft, if self-checkout had posed additional risks of theft and how much Walmart had lost through theft this year. Reuters reported in 2015 that the world’s largest retailer was likely losing about 1% of its U.S. revenue, or about $3 billion a year, to the theft of customers and employees.

“While we do not discuss specifics related to illegal activity in our stores, we are continually exploring effective ways to protect merchandise, keep prices low and provide a safe environment for the millions of customers we serve every week,” a Walmart spokesperson told Insider. in a report.

Polly Kearns, a Walmart customer from Gulfport, Mississippi, said the best way to protect against theft and keep customers happy is to eliminate self-checkouts.

“Get rid of the self checkouts and watch the thefts go down,” she said. “I don’t use them because it takes a job away from someone. I’d much rather have someone check me out than a cold-hearted machine.”

A Walmart employee at a Spokane, Washington store, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, told Insider that her store was reduced to six staff-operated checkouts a few months ago, the rest of the machines being self-service.

“Theft is horrible in my store,” the employee said. “If the company actually went to the store level and spoke with real employees who deal with the theft, they could see how to fix the problem.

“They’re converting stores to more self-checkouts with fewer employees. Self-checkouts are where most theft happens.”

Security experts agree that self-checkouts make it more difficult to prevent theft. Matt Kelley, a loss prevention expert at security solutions company LiveView Technologies, told Insider that it’s “certainly very valid” to think that self-checkout, which he said most big-box retailers had implemented it in one form or another, had led to more thefts.

“For the most part, retailers have thought about self-checkout from a financial savings and customer experience perspective,” said Kelley, who previously served as senior manager of asset protection at The Home Depot. “But inherently, that means there will be fewer eyes on a transaction. And there will be more opportunity for dishonest people to be dishonest.”

Got a Walmart tip? Ben Tobin can be reached by email at [email protected], via the encrypted Signal app, or by text at (703) 498-9171.

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