[HN] Walmart customers getting hostile at self-checkout – they blame anti-theft tech

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Retailers broadly are facing increasing theft and have responded by locking up merchandise, warning investors of major losses, and implementing new technology to help combat the issue.

In 2019, Walmart introduced computer-vision technology at its registers to reduce inventory shrink, a term retailers use to describe merchandise losses from theft, fraud, error, and other causes.

Employees overseeing the self-checkout stations can monitor the registers from mobile phones and, in the case of issues, pause the machines to prevent customers from checking out.

The employee, who has worked at Walmart locations for over two years, said the self-checkout technology caught many customers off guard — particularly when they saw that the registers flagged them and then played back a video on the machine's screen showing them scanning items.

"It was personally uncomfortable for me to notice somebody purposefully not scanning an item," said Dominick Haar, 20, a recent newly former Walmart employee who worked self-checkout in a store in Southern Illinois.

"I think it created a lot more stress for the employees, not to mention customers that just want one-on-one personal conversation when they go to the store," Leroy told Insider, referring to the self-checkout machines.

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