After spending untold amounts of time and money to denude their stores of the traditional checkout line in favor of self-checkouts, the recent scourge of shoplifting in Democrat-run cities has forced one major retailer to reverse course.
According to Newsweek, Walmart has begun the shift back to traditional checkout lines in two stores in two different states, one in St. Louis, Missouri, and another in Cleveland, Ohio (both cities with Democratic mayors).
Granted, despite having done the same thing for three stores in New Mexico back in 2023, Walmart told Business Insider that they had no plans to scale back on the self-checkouts on a nationwide scale.
Instead, spokesman Brian Little told Business Insider, “We believe the change will improve the in-store shopping experience and give our associates the chance to provide more personalized and efficient service.”
Of course, the unspoken assumption has been that the main purpose, rather than improving the “shopping experience,” was to reduce instances of shoplifting.
As The Street reported, self-checkouts have made shoplifting easier than ever, allowing customers to “forget” to scan items (whether honestly or otherwise).
And of course, many Democrat-run cities, with their soft-on-crime policies, have allowed shoplifting and petty thievery to flourish on an unprecedented scale, leading some major retailers to abandon those cities entirely.
Self-checkouts might have cut down on labor costs, but, apparently, the loss engendered from the increased opportunities for theft offset the money saved, so much so that certain Walmarts have been forced to hire real people again.
Other retailers have taken similar measures as well.
Do you prefer regular checkout lanes over self-serve options?
Target and Dollar General, for instance, have either set limits on the amount of items that could be checked out in the self-checkout or drastically scaled back on self-checkout stations in general.
Now, while of course theft and shoplifting have never been a good thing, the change engendered by these crimes might end up as a net-positive for the ordinary customer.
For one, though many people have appreciated the relative ease of the self-checkout, many more have despised lacking the option to use a regular checkout in many Walmart stores.
If a customer had a large amount of groceries to check out, they practically had to take out a small shift as a cashier just to get out of the store, and then had to pay for the privilege.
Self-checkouts have become an annoying trend as much as they have been a fertile breeding ground for shoplifters.
For another, though Walmart did not admit it outright, this move illustrated just how much of an impact petty theft has had on businesses in general, especially now that it has been allowed to flourish in many blue cities.
Big businesses like Walmart have been forced to make major changes like this to adapt, but small mom and pop shops have not had this option.
Instead of having the luxury to make sweeping (and expensive) changes to their stores to offset the increase in shoplifting, most mom and pop shops have instead been forced to take the punishment — and then desperately hope they might survive the double whammy of inflation and shoplifting.
And, unlike the Walmarts and the Targets of the world, very few of these shops will stand much of a chance.
