Unexpected Item In the Bagging Area

On the constant accusations of theft by Woolworths and Coles

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If you’ve been shopping for groceries in Australia in the last few months, it’s likely you’ve been accused of theft. It’s a serious allegation, one which used to be fairly uncommon. Even the chronic shoplifters I once knew were rarely taken aside and questioned.

At university, for example, I had a friend who would frequently get two paper-wrapped chicken breast fillets from the butcher section, and then find a quiet corner to shove them down the front of his skinny jeans. He’d then buy something cheap like bubble gum, and waddle out of the store looking significantly more endowed than when he had entered. Perhaps the cashiers didn’t notice. Perhaps they didn’t want the groin-warmed chicken back enough to confront him. Either way, he looked like a thief, and was actually a thief, but no one ever called him out. .

But these days, I am constantly fighting off the accusation of shoplifting. In fact, it happened to me just last week. I had almost completed the job of scanning my own groceries, when the Woolworths self-service machine decided I had tried to steal something.

Like a dweeby kid in a classroom, it immediately dobbed on me. “Sir! Sir! She didn’t scan the $7 tub of cottage cheese! I swear she put it in the baggage area without dialling it up. Also, she’s bought two big tubs even though there’s a shortage, because I’ve heard that’s all she eats.”

It was the machine’s word versus mine. Not that anyone asked for my thoughts on the matter. The attendant wordlessly came over, and we both watched a grainy video, replaying me scanning and bagging my groceries. Of course, I was innocent.

Who knows why the algorithm thought I was shoplifting that day. Were it a person, and not a cold assortment of zeroes and ones, I might have asked for an explanation, or even an apology. But you can’t fight with a self-service machine without looking like a lunatic who probably would steal $7 of cottage cheese. So instead I settled for an ill-directed grumble at the attendant.

“I don’t like being accused of theft, even by computers,” I said.

My comment didn’t even solicit so much as a shrug. The attendant totally ignored what I had said, and ambled off to attend a shopper with an unexpected item in the bagging area. Honestly? Fair enough. He was neither a computer, nor had he accused me of theft. He was just another hacked-off human babysitting a room of self-service machines for minimum wage.

In the moment, it’s easy to forget that staff are the foremost victims of these systems. They’re forced into constant conflicts with every type of Australian, because we must all eat and, therefore, must purchase food.

The situation is so hostile, there are a couple of cases against supermarkets in court at the moment. The Australian Workers Union, among other things, want Woolworths to stop mandatory bag checks, and to remove security gates which lock suspected shoplifters inside the store. They say it makes the job unnecessarily dangerous, because it forces the staff to confront angry customers who may (or may not) be erratic criminals.

Being a supermarket retail worker has never been easy, but right now it’s worse than ever before. According to an ACCC inquiry into Woolworths, the rates of abuse and violence have been getting incrementally worse every year since 2014.

Of course, this behaviour is inexcusable. But while this rage is grossly misdirected, given the current conditions, I think it’s valid.

In the good old days, people who owned stores knew that pleasing the customer was an important part of business. They were nice because, if they weren’t, people might stop giving them money, their shop would close and their family would becomes destitute. The community would then decide whether or not they would mercifully peg stale bread at the former store owner’s head for supper.

This is how things should be. Well, more or less. But somehow this natural order has been reversed.

Instead, cost pressures have pushed Australia into the grip of the unavoidable Coles–Woolworths duopoly. After a long day at work, we drag ourselves through overpriced grocery aisles, scan and bag our own shopping, and are then accused of stealing. We must wait in shame while someone eventually ambles over to fact-check their overly-zealous robot.

They take our money, spit in our face, and then add our rage-contorted image into a database to train more job-stealing computers. Is it any wonder people lose their shit? Given the right conditions, even the best people can behave in bad ways.

Victoria is even introducing retail legislation this year, "that brings serious consequences to those who do harm and assault retail workers". Good.

But where is the legislation for enormous, unavoidable corporations who impinge on the everyday dignity of Australians? Who inflate our food prices, take our money, replace workers with machines, record us, accuse us, and then post billion dollar profits? Let’s start addressing some of these problems as well.

Because honestly? If the situation doesn’t makes you even a little bit mad, you don’t have a pulse.