A WALMART employee has revealed another way that the retail giant is preventing customers from shoplifting at self-checkout machines.
Walmart has outfitted several of its stores around the country with a growing number of the scanners, which are loved by some customers as convenient but despised by others as a hassle.
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For employees, the machines create a whole host of new challenges, namely: loss prevention.
Cashiers who were previously tasked with checking out a customer are now often asked to help clients and prevent theft at usually six to eight self-checkout machines contemporaneously.
How can employees keep their eyes on so many people at the same time?
It can be exasperating, according to a TikTok video of one employee and influencer (@sunny.outdaway), whose name is not shared online.
“Me watching people steal at self checkout as if my phone doesn’t notify my for every missed scan,” she overlaid in text on the short clip.
She can be seen in her blue Walmart employee vest, rolling her eyes and mouthing “D*mb*ss b*tch” along to a soundtrack.
“Make the roof of my mouth itch,” she wrote in the video’s description.
The employee’s video was liked over 650,000 times and commented on by almost 5,000 people on social media.
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“I tried the usual at self checkout then the machine started beeping loud and showed a replay of me not scanning,” one person confirmed.
“The system didn’t have avocados so I put in that they were onions. Then the machine says ‘no those are avocados’. Like what. Weight alone,” another shared.
Along with sending employees an alert that an item has not been scanned, the machines can reportedly weigh every item to make sure nothing extra has been added to your groceries.
Employees can also see a real-time list of all the items that have been scanned on their own devices, making it easy to see an item in a bag that has not been paid for, they told reporters at
And Walmart’s CCTV surveillance video coverage has been lauded as eagle-eyed.
Among the major complaints about the machines by customers and employees are that they cause too many false alarms.
The scanners can misinterpret a movement or strangely-weighted item as a “missed scan” and require the input of an employee to continue, wasting the time of both parties.
Even worse, some customers have been accused of stealing after accidentally mis-scanning or forgetting to scan small items, according to a lawyer in Arizona.
Shoplifting at Walmart has reached new heights, said Walmart CEO Doug McMillion in an interview with CNBC Squawk Box in December.
“It’s higher than what it has historically been,” he said.
Walmart has reportedly estimated that it loses about $3billion per year from theft and related losses.
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