Man Pulls Gun Over A Sauce Packet

The economist they quoted in that article is a liar.

He made that statement based on two assumptions, both of which were proven false in the article.

Assumption #1: stores did not change their markup percentage; they decided to eat the cost increase. Absolutely false, as detailed in the article.

Assumption #2: sales volume remained constant from just before the pandemic until now. Absolutely false, as the shopper in the article proved.

 

Unfortunately, it seems like most of the customers who use those machines are A LOT slower than the checkers in the traditional lanes. Also, there really needs to be a limit on the amount of items you can bring into the self-checkout area. If you have an entire cart full to the top with merchandise then you ain't got no business in the self-checkout line.

 

Here's the problem, article is reporting absolute dollar value profit, not the profit percent. Grocery stores have notoriously low margins, 1% is normal so lets take an 11% inflation number from last year, that means every single one of those companies profits are operating at LESS of a margin than 1% this year despite higher absolute numbers

 

Last weekend, I went to self-check and was told by an employee I had too much stuff. Pissed me off. I’ll gladly put my hand scanner speed up against any of Walmart’s standard belt checkers. I scan everything in the basket, first. Then, toss only what’s necessary into bags. Swipe my card and I’m out of there. It’s so much faster than pulling each item out and putting it on the belt for a slow and miserable checker to scan.