A French teenager has been jailed after buying a PlayStation 4 for under £8 by weighing it as if the games console was a huge bag of fruit.
The 19-year-old man, named in the French media as Adel, picked the device off the shelf and took it to the fruit section and weighed it.
He then put a sticker with the heavily reduced price tag on the expensive console and went to the checkout.
Adel paid £7.86 (€9) for the 6lb bag of 'fruit' at a self-checkout at a supermarket in Montbeliard, eastern France, last September.
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Teenager Jailed After Buying PS4 for £8 by Weighing it and Paying for it as Food
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(1)
(1)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:27PM (6 children)
Does anybody get lucky twice?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jimtheowl on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:37PM (3 children)
"Caught by police when he went back next day to same shop and tried it again"
So not if you are so intent on getting caught, but it is good he was.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:03PM
Dang. Here I was thinking "they should really let him keep it and just fix the problem", but now it falls under Too Dumb To
LiveStay Out Of Jail."Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:35PM
> "Caught by police when he went back next day to same shop and tried it again"
He was probably just hungry. [lawenforcementtoday.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:07PM
Everything must go.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 06 2021, @02:09PM (1 child)
Yes. Some people have been known to have actually been struck by lightning more than one time.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:05PM
IIRC, there was a Canadian park ranger that was hit around 6 times during his life...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan [wikipedia.org]
Sorry, 7 times ... but the last time, after being hit, he also had to fight a bear with a stick.... its 22th fight with bears in his life!!
Of course, none of the strikes killed him... in the end, he shot itself
Some guys have all the "luck"!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:36PM (46 children)
I mean, this is basically a story of "person attempts theft by fraud, gets arrested."
There isn't much to see here, aside from the fraud, everything seems to have happened as it should have.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:41PM (2 children)
The news here is that a Muslim entered a French store and didn't kill anyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @01:15PM (1 child)
That console must have been halal certified
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @01:49PM
I'm fairly sure the consoles (and a lot of technology in general) would be haram since it contains things made by Jews and in Israel. They just don't care about it if they don't want to be upset about it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:42PM (35 children)
I know, but what it really illustrates is how greedy these companies are. Pretty much everybody knows that the self-checkout lines are a major source of theft, even people that wouldn't normally steal will steal from the self-checkout machines. But, the machines allow the company to avoid having several checkers and make the customers do that work for them.
I definitely don't condone theft, but it says something pretty powerful about companies that are willing to tolerate the theft in order to avoid having to have enough workers to do the job.
(Score: 1) by rpnx on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:50PM (7 children)
Having less security doesn't make it not theft.
Not locking your doors doesn't give people a right to break into your house.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:58PM (6 children)
If the door's not locked, they're not breaking in.
(Score: 1) by rpnx on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:59PM (3 children)
Well, if they go in, take stuff, and leave, it's still theft even if the door wasn't locked.
(Score: 2) by BK on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:11PM (2 children)
What if they pay for it? Just not the amount you'd hope for.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:19PM (1 child)
That would still be theft and abandonment of property (in your case money). You can not have a one sided transaction. You can try to dance that angel on the head of a pin. But a court would probably just toss your ass in jail for trespassing, theft and maybe breaking and entering depending on the prosecutor, judge and your lawyer. But the end result would probably have you sitting in a cell with bars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @08:29AM
The magic words you are looking for is "the absence of any manifestation of mutual assent."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @02:25PM
Same thing if you leave your door unlocked and someone comes in without you allowing them to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:00PM
Under what framework of laws?
In the US, yes they are. See: Definition [legaldictionary.net]
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:25PM
The fewer cashiers they have to pay probably offsets the extra thefts.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:55PM (2 children)
Do you have any data to back that up? Because the numbers I've seen from shops don't show any increase in untracked inventory loss after rolling out self-service checkouts, including in Waitrose where their self-service machines don't weigh things (and so are a lot faster to use than the ones that do and often require human interaction).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @05:22PM
There are articles, but it's bad enough at the local grocery store that corporate had fancy cameras installed directly over the top of the terminals to see what customers were doing. The reality is that this isn't an easy thing to track in general. Yes, an uptick in things disappearing from the shelves could be due to self-scan, but it could also be due to regular shoplifting. In some respects, it's far easier to go through the self check line and just scam the computer than other methods. It's one of the reasons why some stores require a manager override if a cashier wants to suspend payment on a transaction. It looks like a legitimate transaction at the time, but no payment was made and the store wouldn't know until later on during the audit.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/stealing-from-self-checkout/550940/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:10PM
Why would the regular customers want to steal from Waitrose? If you've chosen to shop there despite their perceived (but not necessarily so) higher prices, and you know they are a workers' cooperative, why would you want to steal when you know you're stealing from the employees and not from some faceless rich owner?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:08PM (20 children)
Here in California I was at the 99 cents store and there were only two registers open. The line was very long. The person in front of me asked the cashier and the manager (who was there to fix something) why don't they have more cashiers. The manager said because they can't find employees that want to work.
The 99 cents store nearest me shut down a while back (and another one in an adjacent city shut down years ago). Businesses are leaving California left and right and new businesses are not setting up shop here. Notice how Samsung is setting up in Texas while many businesses here are slowly winding down in California to start building in other states.
What's the alternative, for all the stores to shut down, go out of business, and we don't have any stores to buy anything from like in socialist countries? At least the stores are still around to provide for us with goods and services but that's not good enough, until every last business has gone out of business the democrats will never be happy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:54PM (19 children)
Perhaps because the typical paycheck was too close to 99 cents.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:57PM (14 children)
This. +1 Insightful. Our economy can't sustain a living wage for everyone AND please the corporate overlords without expanding to claim new resources.
First person to really get heavy machinery and mining in space is going to go down as one of the wealthiest people in history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:13PM (13 children)
"Our economy can't sustain a living wage for everyone AND please the corporate overlords without expanding to claim new resources."
We could be more resource efficient (ie: stop having too many children since people are resource inefficient if we want to live comfortably. Fewer people = more natural resources available per person).
As far as 'pleasing' the 'corporate overlords' I suppose if all of the businesses were to shut down there would be no corporate overlords to please. This seems to be happening more and more in places like California.
Let's also remember that the national homeless rate has been increasing mostly due to increases in homelessness in states like California and Oregon (and New York). Makes sense - more taxes and expensive regulations means fewer jobs and more homelessness. But we keep on voting in the democrats and creating more and more homelessness.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:26PM (8 children)
Yet we prop up all those red flyover states with money from the coastal blue states. It seems we need to vote in MORE democrats to vote in laws to prevent the red state governors from becoming "welfare queens" off the backs of the blue states. You want to see some real midwestern pain? Let those states pay their own way and support their own people and stop living on welfare (I mean "subsidies"--farm subsidies isn't welfare, right, it is simply free money from the Fed for doing nothing to prevent them from becoming homeless?).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:37PM (7 children)
I won't necessarily disagree with this. The whole idea of the federal income tax seems weird, perhaps what should happen is that the federal government should only be allowed to impose a tax on the taxes that states bring in. This would incentivize states to tax less because if they tax more then more goes to the federal government. It shouldn't be assumed that the end goal of government should be to maximize tax revenue.
The state governments, for instance, should be allowed to impose things like sales, property, and income tax. Of the total tax revenue that a state government receives the federal government can impose a federal tax. For instance, it can impose a ten percent federal tax on state taxes. Perhaps it can even impose tax brackets on state taxes received. So long as the same rates apply to each state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:15PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:50PM (3 children)
I call it an adversarial tax structure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:54PM (2 children)
In opposed to the cumulative or additive tax structure that we currently have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:58PM
Aka a compounded or compounding or compound tax structure. Let's see if the names adversarial vs compound tax structure sticks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:01PM
Not to be confused with a bracketed vs a flat tax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @01:24AM (1 child)
WRT tax brackets perhaps federal tax brackets on state taxes based on the number of residents (using a federal census). This needs to be done carefully so as not to incentivize states to accept more residents just to lower their tax bracket, then everyone will have multi state residency ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:33PM
(they can do it based on primary residents but consideration must be taken WRT states that may allow more and more people to immigrate in or encourage more and more births just to lower their tax brackets).
So to break it down
A: Governments naturally want to maximize tax revenue
B: It should not be the goal of government to maximize tax revenue
C: Taxes are necessary
B: We should create a tax structure that allows for the government to collect necessary taxes while disincentivizing them from maximizing tax revenue
An adversarial tax structure may help to meet these requirements in opposed to a compound tax structure (where you pay state income tax in addition to federal income tax in addition to local taxes in addition to whatever other taxes every government you are subject to wants to collect). You have the local government taxing you and you have bigger regional governments that the smaller government is subject to taxing the local government's taxes. So long as the local governments get taxed the same then the government wants to balance its interests in maximizing its tax revenue with its interests in reducing the amount of money that leaves its local community.
Care must also be taken WRT to inflation as that's also an undue tax by the federal government. Perhaps if the federal government prints money then the states should receive some of that money as well to use how they see fit? The federal government's ability to print money kinda messes this up as they can easily just print more and more money to try and spend how they see fit. This is also something that needs to be looked at.
(so the whole concept still needs work for a variety of reasons).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:35AM (3 children)
Or the corporate overlords could accept that we're going from today's fantastic margins back to the more modest but sustainable margins of yesteryear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:36PM (2 children)
When they all go out of business I suppose it won't matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:28PM (1 child)
The government also wants to shut down gardens ran by volunteers.
NYC DESTROYING gardens to "solve rat problem" - ARE YOU FNG KIDDING ME?!?!
Louis Rossmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2IzbqN4RuY [youtube.com]
The volunteers are happy to volunteer their time but I suppose that creates too much happiness inequality. Better to make everyone miserable.
The democrats won't be happy until everyone is miserable ... and even then, they will still be miserable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:23AM
Misery likes company
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:50PM (3 children)
I work at a grocery store and thanks to the union we at least get a decent benefit's package even if it's typically little better than minimum wage and hardly any position alone is full time. We haven't stopped hiring through the entirety of the pandemic. I can't particularly blame people for not wanting to give up the benefits, but really the responsibility here is the government to help the workers out and to stop encouraging the wealthy to hoard their wealth. It shouldn't be possible to work a full time job and not have anything left over to save for the future without personally spending irresponsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:43PM
This shows a misunderstanding of what wealth is.
Wealth is the production of goods and services. When all the businesses go out of business there is no one 'hoarding' wealth, there is less wealth overall.
"It shouldn't be possible to work a full time job and not have anything left over to save for the future without personally spending irresponsibly. "
In most cases it's not. Unless you have way too many children that you can't afford to support (an irresponsible act) or you spend money irresponsibly, for the most part, if you have a full time job and don't spend money irresponsibly, you can save for the future.
Government wants to tax the people that save and invest and are frugal and responsible and give that money to those that are irresponsible. That's not encouraging people to be responsible and save for the future, it's encouraging the exact opposite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @03:25PM
Here is the thing. When you are working your full time job and the government is taxing you to give that money to someone else and they are taxing the business you work for (which passes on those costs back to you) this makes it harder for you to make a living. It gives you less take home money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:21PM
(inflation is also a tax. What you're complaining about is what happens in socialist countries. People work so many hours and the government taxes it all either directly or through inflation and so the people that work so many hours can't make a decent living. If you want your full time job to take you further you should be advocating for less inflation and less taxation and less government spending, not more).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:09PM (1 child)
Citation? I've never stole anything in a self-checkout and why would I. I can pay for it. And I only go to self-checkout in cases when it's clearly faster way out of the store.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:53PM
I've never stolen anything from self checkout either, but I also don't typically jaywalk just because there's no traffic either. It's rather naive to assume that other people don't do things like deliberately use the wrong product code on items they need to weigh or decide to give up on scanning something if they can't get help promptly and just take it with them. There's a reason why stores are putting more cameras around the self-checkout area.
This is a couple of years old, but it's quite difficult to get data on things like this.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/stealing-from-self-checkout/550940/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:10PM
He isn't really very smart, certainly not after trying it a second time. If he had just done it once and never returned then sure it would have worked. But this is just one of those things, or at least should have been, while brainstorming the idea and thinking about how you would abuse this system -- take something expensive, scan something cheap, put cheap sticker on expensive item, $$$.
This is a known issue with all forms of self-check-out systems. Scan cheap, pick expensive. It's theft or fraud when you do it since you can't really claim it was a mistake if you get caught. One of the things they do is they put scales and such in the platform where you put your items after you scanned them at the exit so they'll see if the items match weight (ie you can't pick and scan one apple and then put 10 in the bag that you then put on the checkout-scales). In that regard he was "smart", even tho I believe it was by accident, as the weight here will be the same.
I'm a little surprised the system even allowed it but then I guess they didn't implement all the security features they thought off, or should have.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:36PM (5 children)
It could serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of removing people from places like grocery stores. I say 'could' because lesson-learning is not something those in charge are known for.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:16PM (4 children)
I'm sure the businesses have done the cost benefit analysis and have determined that the money saved on labor outweighs the increase in theft. Labor is generally a business's biggest expense.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:28PM (3 children)
At least that's the claim we get whenever talk about the minimum wage or automation. Reality has not lived up to that, however.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:07PM (2 children)
So then what do you propose is their biggest expense and do you have supporting evidence?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:18PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday October 07 2021, @07:37AM
Large supermarkets have personnel cost of ~5% of revenue. The gross margins are much higher than that. Given that profit margins are ~3%, personnel is a relevant cost factor but not the most important by far.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:40PM (3 children)
Buy an iPhone and claim it's just an Apple. Nobody could claim it ain't.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:55PM
At current literacy levels, you could make a case: "it's an apple, I put it in with the other apples and paid the posted price." With an accomplice, the accomplice could bring several display iPads or whatever into the produce section and leave them on the fruit table for the "dupe" to find.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:09PM (1 child)
Your Honor, apples are nice, but Sony is my favorite fruit!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @12:05AM
> Sony is my favorite fruit!
Hear it grows from the root kit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:44PM (11 children)
Monkey attempts to take shortcut.
Monkey goes to jail.
Sure that will make monkey a better monkey.
Is it not better to make it so monkey can not attempt such shortcuts or better yet, how about we make it so monkey does not VALUE garbage time wasting monkey toys?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:53PM (8 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:34PM (7 children)
You're probably right, but I have seen one example of this going the other way. A grocery store in my neighborhood used to have 4 self check lanes. It is a fairly small, local chain. After a couple of years all the self check lanes were removed because there was too much theft. Maybe the little guys didn't implement it as well, but it sure looked like the same setup you see at the big box giants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:47PM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @05:05PM (1 child)
I worked at Aldi for a while. They looked into it and decided it definitely wasn't worth it. Their checkout chicks are super fast, their products have a barcode on every side and they just push the products past the scanner. The customer puts them straight back in the trolley and then goes to pack them in their own bags on a bench out past the the checkouts.
The average cashier at Aldi scans about 1200 items an hour.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:59AM
And apparently my double scan detection skills have faded a bit since then.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:48PM (2 children)
I held off using them as long as possible, but too many slow people use that store, I guess they're tourists, and eventually I just couldn't be bothered to wait for the human. The throughput is definitely higher, and the cost is definitely lower with this setup. Many of the other chains in town use the hand-held scanner, scan as you go, technique. No idea how that works and what their lossage is like. I presume the penalties for fucking up or cheating are just too high to be worth it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:02PM (1 child)
Where I lived back in the late 80's, early 90's some supermarket chains tried self checkout lanes. This was back before people were used to using "technology" beyond cable TV or a VCR in their daily lives. They ended up eliminating them as they went almost unused.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:17PM
I remember years ago when one of the local chains installed self scan machines. I tried it a few times, but I always had to get help because it wouldn't register my touch. At which point, it was pretty obvious just how badly they were trying to avoid having to pay for cashiers.
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:31PM
they could just follow the example of my local cvs; 1 person working the checkout lane and 2 self-checkout machines that don't take cash. and the machines suck to the point that every item triggers an error so the 1 person actually working the checkout lane needs to go "fix" the machine(s) every 10 seconds. it's an additional 5 minutes each way to go to the supermarket instead, but ends up having a shorter total round-trip time
/* no comment */
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:32PM (1 child)
The acquisition of such toys, on an ever increasing scale (iPhone,SUV, yacht), can motivate monkey to do a difficult undertaking; go to school and earn a degree to afford such toys.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:16PM
Silly boy should've bought a Pi. Costs about the same as a bag of fruit. There are plenty of free games, too.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 06 2021, @02:07PM (1 child)
Judge: Was the PlayStation made by Apple?
Prosecutor: No.
Judge: Verdict is Guilty.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Funny) by OrugTor on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:45PM
Reminds of a variation on the joke.
Judge: why did you steal the expensive violin?
Youth: I took it for a lark.
Judge: Obviously no resemblance. Guilty as charged.
This joke is accessible only to violin teachers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @02:28PM (2 children)
Somehow my preferred trick for acquiring cheap ginger (sells for ~$45/kg here) by leaving it in the bottom of the trolley and 'forgetting' it's there won't work that well for a console...
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:32PM
How much ginger are you using?
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:56PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:22PM (5 children)
It's a hack. Back in the day many lionized Captain Crunch [wikipedia.org]. Admittedly the guy in TFA is far less sophisticated, but he did find an exploit and used it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:39PM (4 children)
Different times. While Draper whistled tunes to the phone didn't Woz and Jobs sell blueboxing (and other colours) devices etc while also building what would eventually be Apple? Nobody really cared. I guess AT&T might have cared but apparently not enough to actually bust them for it.
Same thing with a lot of underground scene related things and computers. Just look at the crack information (cracktros) etc for various cracked software and you'll find post addresses and phone numbers there just listed. All easily connected to actual people. Nobody cared at the time. Nobody cared until the mid-late 90's and that just went away. It was illegal or in a massive grey area at the time. It was just that nobody cared.
That said I would not put the dude in the article on the same level as Crunch, Woz or Jobs.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday October 06 2021, @05:12PM (2 children)
The usual dodge here is to mix a bag of a few potatoes and avocados and scan it as potatoes. The avocados are usually much more expensive, but near enough in colour that there is no way the camera can tell.
As an aside, potato - potatoes, avocado - avocados. Why does potato get an e when pluralised but avocado doesn't?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:05PM
It's something similar here except they like take the fancy expensive apples in their bag but scan the cheap but similar looking apples.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:45PM
apparently it can also be avocadoes. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avocado [merriam-webster.com]
there was a stackexhchange and other links going into usage and reasons, not helpful reasons but who ever blamed language of being logically consistent. if only we had invented computers before writing, we might have more logic embedded in it's use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:22PM
People are still selling all kinds of custom 'pentesting' devices, and no one cares. Data is for sale, no one really cares except paranoid techies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @08:48PM
Every petty thief at self-check knows the code for bananas. Aside from providing assistance for glitches, that's also why they have an attendant at self-check, usually 1 for 4 machines in my area. The presence of an attendant keeps most people honest, and this guy got caught so no real news.
I bet most LP people at stores where groceries are sold have a "10 kg of bananas" story.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:11PM (3 children)
Self checkout strikes me as something that involves more than your simple financial transaction. With gasoline pay-at-the-pump, you do everything yourself, but you are pre-paying and there is no latitude given to the person at the pump. You select the fuel, you pump the fuel at the stated price, and you pay for it. With grocery or other self checkout, a lot of it you scan barcodes where there are fixed prices for the barcodes, but what about things like produce or lumber by the foot? Where does competency come into it? We're not being trained to work these checkouts, and the vendors are yielding some control to the consumer. If I ring up avocadoes as apples, is that illegal? What if I did it wrong? What if I decide they are apples? What about if I go to the big box store and pick up a 2-meter length of baseboard, but when I get to the checkout I see the ends are marred up and not in good condition: can I enter in the length of the wood that is in good condition? If I do, is that illegal? Do I have any discretion? They've put a lot of the process literally into my hands, so how much leeway, legally, do I get on making decisions? What about mistakes? What about incompetence?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @08:36AM (2 children)
The lines are clear but most people don't know them. You are criminally liable for anything you do with gross negligence, full stop. You are civilly liable for anything you do with negligence. You don't get out of your standard of care just because no one is watching.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @12:29PM (1 child)
The lines are not clear, in my opinion, for self checkout. I'm the teller, the checkout person now. What are my rules and responsibilities? Where is my training? There are a lot of assumptions, but the statements above about deciding what's worth paying for and what isn't can't be discounted. "Eh, the bananas this week are already ripening and cutting their shelf life in half, I think they're only worth 60% full value." All prices are negotiable, and in this case they put the customer in the position that the person they would reach out to first to negotiate with is themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @09:53PM
You rules are the same for every other situation. You cannot make the store agree to anything they haven't offered you. They didn't offer you avocados at the apple price nor did they give you the authority to negotiate on their behalf, not even their cashiers have that power. And allowing you to check out your own items pursuant to the same duty of care you have when dealing with anyone else. Just because no one is watching doesn't change that. The items have marked prices, if you don't like it don't get them. You have a duty of care and good faith when doing self-checkout, if you can't handle it, not only should you not do it but you are legally liable for your mistakes when you do.