The Facts Don't Check Out

Celebrations abound on several Facebook groups this week as articles have been shared stating that many retailers are finally ditching those pesky self-checkout kiosks, an act for which members of those groups have been fighting for a long time. Some people believe, however, that these Facebookers are wrongly placing the credit on themselves and that their information may not be entirely accurate. And by “not entirely accurate” we mean not at all accurate and by “some people” we mean literally everybody else.

“WE DID IT!” posted Facebook crank Don Levinski earlier this week. “NO MORE SELFCHEKCOUTS! EAT IT, WARMRAT!!1!” [Editor’s note: For clarification, “Warmrat” is how this particular group refers to Walmart. I know, hilarious.]

Levinski is the founder of Check THIS Out, a Facebook group dedicated to complaining about self-checkout and other headaches of retail shopping with a middle finger as its avatar, presumably what we’re meant to be checking out.

Levinski’s post is accompanied by a screenshot of an article headline that’s been making the rounds amongst groups like his stating that large retailers are ditching self-service registers and opting for a return to having live people, often referred to as “employees”, work as cashiers. This headline and others imply that Warmrat, Targshit, and CostHos will all be making efforts to eliminate self-checkout lanes over the next few years.

“I guess they got tired of not paying us to work for them,” comments group member Jacqueline McIntyre on the post.

“Good to know they actually listened to their customers for once,” says member Mark Bishop.

“GINA CALL ME BACK I THINK I SAW YOUR CAT OUT BACK SHE GOT OUT OF THE HOUSE AGAIN,”  adds Pauline Fredrickson.

All around the Facebook grouposphere the message is clear: Victory.

“Can’t believe we finally broke them!” says Levinski. “Looks like our quiet boycott has paid off!”

We spoke to Dylan Walker, a manager at a Newcastle, WI Walmart, whose store has recently scaled back on self-checkout lanes, to discuss the Facebook cranks’ recent overthrow of the store’s facilities.

“Okay, first of all,” says Walker, “a boycott implies they ever stopped shopping here, which I assure you they haven't. Which brings me to my second point: ‘Quiet’!? They really think they’ve been quiet regarding self-checkouts? Wrong on both counts, Don!”

Walker suggests that the decision of retailers to scale back on or do away with self-checkout has little to do with the Don Levinskis of the world and more to do with corporate finances.

“Corporate doesn’t care about that stuff,” says Walker. “They only care about net profits. And it’s not even that the self-checkouts are losing them money, it’s that it never saved them any money.”

We looked into some of Walker’s claims and found that while self-checkout was meant to reduce staff costs, most retailers ended up adding staff after the kiosks were widely implemented. For example, Kroger added 19 employees per store between 2012 and 2023, Albertsons added about 10 from 2019 to 2023, and Target added a whopping 27 employees in between 2016 and 2023. While these additions to staff aren’t necessarily a reaction to self-checkout woes, the fact remains that reduce staff numbers it did not. Considering that along with the cost of installing, operating, and maintaining those machines and the added cost of lost inventory, or “shrink”, from misrings or theft, you can see that self-checkouts were just not the game-changing investment retailers believed they’d be.

“It’s not like I’m doing galaxy-brained levels of research here either,” adds Walker. “It only took one Google search to figure out these people had nothing to do with the decision. If they had checked for themselves, or even read past the sensational headline, they might have seen that stores are probably going to move to some level of hybrid between customer and employee-run checkout, and the only store actually getting rid of it all together is in England, and their executives over there sound like they’re spinning the decision to sound like it’s not financially motivated.”

Yes, it’s true that the only retailer who currently plans on a total halt of self-checkout usage is British retailer Booths, only in England they call self-checkout “self-scanning” and retail shopping “biscuit driving”.

“Our biscuit drive prides itself on high standards and high levels of tepid, personal care,” Says Booths managing director Nigel Murray. “We like to talk to people and don’t see the need for our custies to fuss about with any randy self-scan tally-whacker doo-dad when they’d much rather prefer a ‘chip chip, how’d you do?’ or a ‘where’s your Johnny, ma’am?’ from a real-live till puncher, and I say tut tut jolly well and good riddance to all that bother!”

So this British chain is squashing self-scanning like a colonial uprising, but probably also due to profit motives maybe, I don’t know, I couldn’t really follow the above quote but it did seem to be a tosh of horse piffle, quite right.

But what say the Facebook cranks back here in the states when presented with the notion that not only are self-checkouts not entirely going away and that the decision had nothing to do with them?

“No,” says Don Levinski, “it was us. And yes, they’re going away for good!”

Well, that’s disappointing if not predictable.

When reached for comment on whether or not groups like Check THIS Out had anything to do with the decision, one Walmart executive said “What’s a Facebook group? Is that like LinkedIn networks?”

Part of Don Levinski and his ilk’s refusal to concede credit has to do with media framing. Several media outlets have posted stories on the removal of self-checkout with headlines suggesting that self-checkout is going the way of the VHS, disposable cameras, and affordable housing. The articles, of course, would clarify this if anyone ever actually read them, but in truth the articles only exist to produce engagement-baiting headlines to feed the click machine perpetuated by groups like Check THIS Out.

“Hell,” says Walmart manager Dylan Walker, “when you read the articles they even quote some of these people in the opening paragraphs and then bury any real information farther down than they know any of them will ever scroll. It’s actually pretty shameless.”

In reality, especially a reality viewed through the lens of Facebook groups, truth is in the eye of the interpreter, and right now Don Levinski and his Check THIS Out cronies are seeing a win. Perhaps it’s best to simply let them feel as though they’ve earned this win in the hopes that their rabble quietly fades into the normal din of business as they await a complete removal of self-checkout machines that is, in all likelihood, never actually coming.

“‘Quietly fade’!?” asks an incredulous Walker. “You must be on drugs if you think these people can do anything quietly. If anything they’ve gotten worse with their gloating since those articles started circulating! It’s like their perceived power over us has gone to their head!”

Well still, they can have this one victory lap, even if they haven’t earned it.