this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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To be fair it is so much better than it was when they came out.
Can you elaborate? This was before my time, so I'm curious what that early experience was like.
It was a nonstop barrage of "Unexpected item in the bagging area!" on repeat until you just give up and walk out the door leaving everything behind for the store to clear away for the next customer.
Unfortunately the more regional stores and co-ops still have the old units. Which like, good for them for maintaining their stuff, but also it's kinda a pain lol
The store can configure them to have higher tolerances. One store near me turned the scale off entirely. They have way more throughput on the machines, and don't need as many human cashiers now. The scales didn't enough theft in the first place.
The big improvement has been image recognition on produce. It used to be you needed to either know the produce code, or navigate a terrible menu system. Nowadays, you can just put stuff on the scale, hit the camera icon, and have it show you a few possibilities, which is almost always correct.
There was also a long period where the anti theft system would trigger if you breath on the bagging area, and require a staff member to unlock it. They seem to have toned that down a lot. Even when it triggers, it just nags you without locking anything.
I put something on the scale, hit search, type the first 3 letters of the item, select the relevant item, select whether it is in any additional container (like the produce bags), and it's done. Takes me 3 seconds to do.
I'll have to look to see if my grocery store has image recognition. I have not noticed that feature, but I'd be interested in trying it.