Running as Root

This weekend I was in Walmart and had the same thought everyone else gets when they're stuck in a long line at the register. Namely, that I would gladly pay more money to get the hell out of there with my selected items. Ironic that Walmart is successful for being the low price leader (that and you can buy gardening tools 24 hours a day) and yet, I would gladly discard my 20 cent savings in order to put some distance between myself and the store.

Later that weekend, I watched as Lisa's aunt skipped through the line of a Dollar General by knowingly overpaying for the item she wanted. She just asked the cashier if $5 would cover the $3 in crap she had, got the nod, tossed $5 on the counter, and walked out.

So, that's my new idea for Walmart and their competitors (absurd though it may be). The store should have someone at the super duper fast checkout simply estimate how much you owe. If you think it sounds fair, pay and run. Otherwise you either wait in line at a register with a cashier (if you can find one) or you watch in agony as people that can't program their VCRs try and work the self checkout. "Look maw, it's one of them talkie 'puters like what's in that movie!"

Update

My god, hanging out in a small town got me thinking low tech. This is better suited to RFID stuff. If all products are tagged with their information you could use embedded RFID stuff on the product to automatically determine what is in the basket and instantly generate a total and diminish the need for lines at the checkout (you still have to pay someone until they get some auto-bill action down). Sure you have the possibility of fraud, but I don't think the risk is much greater than it is currently considering the recent Walmart barcode scams.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2005 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Business, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.