People vs. Corporations

by Dark Phiber

Part 1: Robot Wars at the Big Box Stores

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only and is not endorsing any of the behavior recommended herein.  Any resemblance between references in this work of fiction and real-world entities is coincidental.

(((Corporations))) are not your friends.

They don't care about you.  They only have one mandate: Create value for their owners.

That's it.  Contrary to what you've heard, they aren't here to improve the quality of your life.  They're not here to make you look cool, or healthy, or successful.  They exclusively exist to siphon as much value as they can.  They don't have any mandate to be moral or ethical.  They don't care about the environment, living wages, or their employees.  They only care about money.

The only thing that keeps corporations from being totally immoral predators isn't the invisible hand of the market.  It's government regulation (despite all the arguments against government, there is nobody else out there protecting citizens to a comparable degree).  Yea, that seems confusing since you've been told over and over (by corporate media) that government is the bad guy.  Go figure?  Government isn't what's bad.  Bad (((people))) in government are bad.  Meanwhile, collective bargaining (a right often protected by government) and centralized regulation is the only thing keeping most people from being worked and exploited to death.  And what few rules and regulations we do have are at least trying to keep corporations from destroying what little habitable environment we have left.

Corporations do all sorts of sneaky-yet-slightly-legal tricks to increase how much money they make.  They mislabel and misrepresent products.  They make promises they never intend to honor.  They constantly lobby to reduce their accountability to anybody but their shareholders.  They buy politicians.  They buy scientists.  They produce their own "studies" showing their products are perfectly O.K.  They outsource as much as they can to reduce their costs.  They hire more employees than they need in order to avoid having too many full-time people they have to provide benefits to.  They replace people with machines wherever possible, because robots don't complain about not having healthcare or a living wage.

In this episode of People vs. Corporations, we're going to talk about the robots.

How instead of hiring people to handle checking things out for you, you have now become conscripted in harmony with the surveillance state Point of Sale (POS) robot to scan your own products, pay for, and bag them.

It's funny that the Big Box stores now have almost completely switched over to robot point of sale.  Half the time these machines aren't working properly.  Half the time you need assistance because robots can't be trusted to exclusively transact certain restricted items, but the humans they do manage to have around are even less capable than the checkers the robots replaced.  It's a mess.  And there's often somebody ahead of you in line who can't figure out how these things work, or wants to turn check-out into a 45 minute life lesson for their six-year-old.  These machines end up taking more of your precious time so corporations can make more money.

Corporations screw with you in all sorts of ways.

For example, have you ever tried to price-compare two similar items in a grocery store?

Maybe it's two jars of peanut butter and near the price tag you have a "unit price" of say, x cents per ounce.  Then you try to compare it to a nearby jar and it says x cents per pound.  Hey, they gave you the unit price.  They deliberately switched it up to keep you from being able to easily figure out which product is the better buy.  They do this all the time.

They also do shady things like mislead you into thinking that a six pack of one item is more expensive than a 14 pack of the same item.  Unless you do the math, you may find buying in quantity isn't always cheaper, even though most people think it is.  There's bags of chips with printing that obscures the fact that 75 percent of the bag is empty.  Even the placement of items on shelving is scientifically designed to get you to pay more.  They have monetized the act of convenience.  They have even figured out how to sell broken/defective products, knowing a certain percentage of people won't return them.

I think of myself as an ethical person.

I abhor stealing.

But years and years of watching these corporations and their minions f*ck with me has made me become quite the cynic, and I finally found something to do to ease that tension.  It's my way of taxing corporations for forcing me to do their work.  It's getting back at them for doing everything they can legally (and often illegally) get away with to make a little more money.  Let's call it: POJ instead of POS.  Not point of sale.  Point of Justice.

What is POJ?  It's the defiant act of getting over on the robots and their corporate overlords.  And it's incredibly easy to do, and relatively safe.  You just basically act like the kind of idiotic consumer they treat you as - and you can win all sorts of prizes!  Even if you get caught, just admit it was a mistake - no harm no foul, even though it's highly unlikely you will get caught.

Getting Over on the Robots

The robotic point of sale machines have all sorts of anti-theft technology.

But there are plenty of ways to defeat/confuse the system.

I can't go into details of how any particular machine works, but I can cover some of the basics of how these machines try to ensure the sales transaction works the way they want.

For example, they employ scales on the bagging area and know the weight of each item.  If you scan a product that weighs ten ounces, and then don't put that item in the bag (on the scale), the machine will alert the robot manager to take a look - note that I've never seen the opposite happen, of accidentally scanning an item twice and the machine letting you know it's under-weight!  Go figure?

Some machines also use video "A.I." (another bastardization of the term "artificial intelligence") to examine your motions to see if you're picking up and putting things down appropriately.  So all your motions in front of the robot should be fluid and normal.  There are some tricks you do not want to do, especially since you're on video.  This includes scanning one item twice like a cheap bottle of wine, when you have two bottles and didn't scan the more expensive one - it's easier to get caught doing that.

And of course, there's RFID tags in certain items, usually expensive or small items that can be easily hidden.  Avoid trying to sneak out any RFID'd stuff.  You never know where sensors are.

Here are some specific techniques:

The Setup - You typically want to limit the items you try to get past the robot.  Don't pick something obvious.  Don't pick something too expensive.  Don't pick a single of something.  Don't pick something large.  Don't pick something that can't be bagged with other stuff.  Start a normal checkout and have at least one or two bags partially filled with things in the bagging area.  Then execute your POJ...

The Double Dip - This is by far one of my favorite tricks.  Take two items that stack or nest (like half cans on top of each other, or two stacks of things that you handle as if it's one stack: paper plates, tortillas, or small boxes of things).  Know where the Universal Product Code (UPC) symbol is before you grab the stack so there's no fumbling.  Pass both the items over the UPC scanner in one smooth motion - it will only register once, and put both of the items in your bag.  But at the same time you drop them in the (mostly full) bag, grab the bag and transfer it from the bagging area to your basket.  This fakes out the scale.  (This is why you have one or two mostly full bags set up before you do the double dip.)

If you're creative, you can find some pretty expensive products you can do this with, like crab meat.  Although I'm happy just being able to get a 2-for-1 as payment for my otherwise freely-exploited point of sale services I had to provide.

The Miscount - If you're buying three or more of something, I heartily recommend you always miss at least one item.  You have five storage boxes?  Ring up four.  You have ten cans of cat food?  Ring up eight.  If you get caught, well, you thought the machine rang up everything - sorry I'm not a checker, I'm a consumer.  This especially works well with larger items you don't have to bag.  Be sure to go through the motions trying to scan everything - the wireless scanner works good for this because half the time it doesn't register so you're always looking like you're trying to scan more than the number of items on video.

The Stowaway - This technique works well in a variety of situations, even when dealing with an actual cashier.  Hide an item underneath another item, but make sure the heavy/large item on top has the UPC showing so it isn't moved around.  Also, make sure whatever you're hiding underneath the item doesn't have an RFID tag.  You'd be amazed what can be "accidentally" found underneath a 40 pound bag of dog food.  Again, just remember if you try to do this with something too expensive, it probably has an RFID on it and you'll have problems.  But there's lots of stuff that won't.

The Hookup - I routinely do this in big box hardware stores just to see how lazy humans can be.  For example, I just picked up some plumbing parts.  Different adapters.  I attached several of them together with only one UPC tag obvious, and they didn't realize it was three separate items.  Even easier to double- or triple-dip with the robots.

Now let's talk about exiting the store...  If you're shopping at a store that forces all consumers to wait in line and have the number of items checked and individually counted, this trick is a lot harder to do, and I don't recommend trying in those stores.  These are usually the "membership clubs" which actually require you to agree to such "exit Gestapo" tactics in return for being a member.  Regular retail outlets can't "detain" you like this - you didn't sign an agreement to shop there; you didn't pay a membership fee.  Once you bought your stuff, you are free to go.

For the non-membership stores, it's really quite simple: just leave the store.

Yea, there's sometimes a "receipt Gestapo" near the exit, but never volunteer to stop and hand your receipt to them.  Just blow through the exit, not making eye contact and holding your keys in one hand, receipt in the other like a good little efficient consumer.  If they're checking somebody else's receipt, blow by them and head outside.  It's perfectly normal.  They are not expected to check everybody's receipt, and most of the time they are not allowed to chase after shoppers who don't comply - that's a liability issue for them.  Most big box stores even have a policy to not chase obvious shoplifters.  If you're stopped by the "receipt Gestapo," let them take a look.  They are unlikely to do a full audit of your basket - they'll just look for obvious items on the receipt.

They aren't paid well enough to give two shits that you paid for three cans of soup but have four in the basket - not that they'd catch it anyway.  And if they do catch a discrepancy, you simply say, "Really?  I thought I scanned that."  Big whoop.  Go back and scan it.  That's the worst that could happen.

Additional guidelines: Do not be greedy.  The objective here isn't to generate a lot of money.  The objective is to penalize the corporations for their anti-worker, pro-profit-at-any-cost mentality.  If I can get one item free every time I go to the store, I feel like I've "won" a small skirmish.  It's now a point of personal pride to hone my skills in this respect.

It's important to note that every big box store has an allotment of acceptable "loss."  They can lose inventory a thousand different ways, and they don't really care.  They make up for it a million other sleazy ways as I've explained earlier.

For those that say, "Don't do this.  It will only cause product prices to increase and you'll end up paying for it later."  Ha ha... not buying it.  This notion is predicated on the bullshit idea that shareholders should make their money first and foremost before they'll ever cut consumers any break, and is the whole reason why more people should be doing this.

If we're second class citizens and the rich people getting richer is the priority, all bets are off.

I'll serve my own interests before yours every chance I can get, just like you'd do to me.  It'll cost you more to "pass it on to the consumer" one way or another.

I refuse to accept it as a universal truth that executives will always get paid while the little man gets the shaft.  And you shouldn't buy into that notion either.

That's the same mentality that claims unions hurt workers more than they help.

It's BS.

Good luck with your POJ training!