Just a Smidge: scan & go

Showing posts with label scan & go. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

An Open Letter to Walton Enterprises

Dear Walton Enterprises,

As your lawyers have probably informed you by now, you own both Walmart and Sam’s Club. Congratulations on that! Well played. That probably makes you a few bucks each month. Good for you!

As you may recall, last August I gave your Sam’s Club checkout tool, Scan & Go, a glowing recommendation. It’s a fabulous piece of technology that makes me actually look forward to shopping at your store. Again, congratulations on that!

I’m writing today, however, because of the insane dichotomy I’m experiencing recently between your two store brands. While Sam’s Club continues to be an absolute shopping joy, Walmart seems to be sliding the other direction at break-neck speed.

As I mentioned back in August, you still seem to be positioning people who want to check my receipt at the exits of your Walmarts. While that is sensible and necessary for your Sam’s Club Scan & Go system, it’s just flat-out annoying at Walmart, where I have already unpacked and repacked my cart at the checkout. So, no, I’m not stopping again and retrieving my receipt out of my wallet so the person at the door has something to do.

But apparently, your Walmart self-checkout monitors, your actual checkers, and that person on the stool by the door can’t seem to stem the tide of Walmart shoplifters. I assume that’s the reason you seem to be locking up all the merchandise?

Which brings me to the reason for my letter to you today. The locks. I noticed it starting a few years ago. And don’t get me wrong, I understand the glass doors and locks on the small hand tools. But even back then, when the only things you were putting behind locked glass were the tools and small expensive electronics, it wasn’t always easy to find someone with the key.

Fast forward to today and you are completely out of control. Now it seems that every aisle has something behind glass, and I dare you – I double dare you – to find an employee within 700 feet of what you’d like to buy. And if you do, I’ll personally give you $100 if they actually have the key. It’s like going to a store that’s closed, so all you can do is peer in the window at the things you wish you could have.

I was in my local Walmart on Monday and you had a locked glass door protecting the laundry detergent. The laundry soap!! Why are you making it hard to buy soap? Has fabric softener become a hot item for the thieves? How in the hell is anyone shoplifting a two-gallon jug of Tide?

I went to automotive. You locked up the antifreeze. It’s an eleven-dollar jug of neon-green liquid. Again, same question as the Tide. What the hell??

But probably the craziest thing I saw – and I’m including all the other Walmart shoppers in that – was the locked glass door in front of the socks.

THE SOCKS!

I didn’t bother to check, but how much could your most expensive, high-end pair of socks actually retail for? A dollar sixty-eight? What’s the matter with you? Mind you, the boot display was wide open for me to put my hands all over – and my feet in – as many pairs of work and casual boots as I pleased, but there was no way you were going to let me anywhere near those high-dollar socks without the help and watchful eye of a completely non-existent employee.

Seriously?? Who are you worried about? Based on the number of employees who work there versus the miniscule number of them that were trusted with a key, I almost think you’re trying to keep them away from the merchandise as much as you are me.

I’m no fortune teller, but this situation doesn’t require such mystical powers. It’s very easy to see where this is headed. Now, I understand why you haven’t implemented the Scan & Go system at your Walmart stores. It’s a largely different shopper demographic than your Sam’s Club stores. Many of your Walmart regulars might not have access to a smartphone, or the ability to find and use the app, or even all their teeth.

But you need to figure something else out, because the glass door road is a dead end. The way I see it, you have only two choices going forward. Either take down the glass barriers that are keeping us from doing our sock and detergent shopping, or hire two hundred more employees at each location so we can all have our own personal key bearer.

If you don’t do one of those things soon, the only people you’re going to have left “shopping” at your stores are the shoplifters. Again, I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model.

See you soon,

-Smidge

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Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Good Apps and Bad Apps

Technology is an amazing and scary thing.

I just read a really good insight that I now can’t find anymore, because I saw it when I was mindlessly scrolling through one of the social media apps, and the act of years of mindlessly scrolling through social media apps has reduced my attention span and retentive memory to that of a hamster.

So, I will paraphrase and apologize in advance to the person responsible for this pearl of wisdom if I get the ages and exact wording wrong. It went something like this:

Any new technology invented before you were born until age 18 is just normal and how the world works. Anything invented from age 19 to 45 is an amazing new life-changing breakthrough. And any new tech inventions from age 45 until your death all go against the natural order of things and will surely contribute to the downfall of our society.

I’m 51, so I think you know where I stand on the new stuff. Actually, I think I do OK for the most part, but I am convinced that ChatGPT is 100% going to be the end of us.

There are plenty of examples of good, useful apps out there, and I still embrace them. And there are maybe just as many examples of apps that never should have been made in the first place and will surely bring on the end of times. Those are all the ones the teenagers use.

One good example of how I am embracing technology in my advanced years is the Sam’s Club Scan & Go app. I just used it again this morning, and it is a game changer. You just use your phone to scan the barcodes of everything that goes into your cart. You can easily change the quantities, so you only have to scan one of the six packs of bacon crumbles you are buying, as a real-life recent example.

As you make your way through the poor man’s Costco, the app keeps a handy running dollar total of your purchases, so you can easily see how much longer you’ll have to work before retirement. But let’s face it – the number is meaningless because you’re buying six bags of bacon crumbles, for goodness sake. You’ll never live long enough to retire.

Once you are done shopping – signified by a very large three-digit number at the top of the screen and no more room in your giant, oversized cart for anything else – you just hit the Checkout button, and head for the door. A nice person near the exit scans a barcode on your app then scans a couple of items in your cart to make sure your large three-digit number shouldn’t be larger, and they wish you a nice rest of your day.

Checkout lines are for chumps.

Scan & Go is an excellent example of a good app.

Do you know what isn’t a good app? The one that a business I have visited in the past just emailed me about.

Right there at the top of my inbox the other day was the subject line, “Donate Using Our App and You Could Win Big!”

My first thought: Umm… say what? This is a very bad idea.

Why, you ask? The company encouraging me to donate using their app was Vitalant. (Formerly, BloodSource).

I am by no means an expert, but donating blood is really a situation where I think you need hands-on professionals involved in a controlled setting.