Sainsbury's SmartShop
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Great idea
- Scan and bag while shopping
- Pay
- Home
Horribly paranoid execution
- About once a month, the system requires a spot check of a few items
- This often involves a wait until a colleague becomes available, which diminishes the advantage of shopping this way
- Arguably classifiable as harassment or abusive behaviour if you've never stolen anything, as if we'd all be thieves without regular supervision
- Any irregularity immediately demands a full rescan with no way to apply discretion
- This has happened when a colleague carelessly scanned the same item twice
- Another time the colleague scanned an item from another shop that Sainsbury's doesn't even sell
- Easy to forget to scan Nectar/coupons while navigating disruption through no fault of your own
If it works at all
- One time it crapped out so hard, when it came back it had lost my entire basket
Why this is happening
- Tech leadership is overpromoted, having taken advantage of an internal move into newly created positions
- Heavy use of AI and cheap untalented labour
- Mirroring a low-trust culture of sucking up in one direction and pulling rank in the other
