A frustrated Kroger customer shared his outrageous self-checkout experience as others agreed the store and other retail chains should keep their cashiers.
Thomas Cherryhomes took to X to air out his grievances with the grocery chain and said the kiosk flagged him for shoplifting because he used two hands to scan his items.
‘This Week on Dystopian Nightmares: Don’t use more than one hand via the self-check-out, or you will be flagged for shoplifting by the internal camera, and the self-checkout babysitter will need to check your cart,’ he wrote on Tuesday.
‘P.S: @kroger. YOU SUCK.’
Cherryhomes’ message seemed to resonate with fellow shoppers who are also fed-up with camera-dependent checkouts.
‘Some things really should be human. We seem to have forgotten that,’ X user Greg Gauthier commented.
‘The store clerk’s presence isn’t *just because* there isn’t a sufficient technological substitute for tallying goods in a basket.’
‘I am a SELF CHECKOUT ABOLITIONIST,’ JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg wrote on X in December, 2024.
Thomas Cherryhomes took to X to air out his grievances with Kroger’s self-checkout
‘Get rid of it. GET RID OF IT. get rid of self checkout NOW !!’
A Kroger shopper wrote on Saturday: ‘The machine at the Kroger near us LOVES yelling about stupid nonexistent problems.
‘I was a cashier for a few years in high school, I know how to operate these things. There is no problem! I scanned everything and placed them in bags, no I’m not stealing anything. F**k self check!’
‘Hey @Kroger ! If you are going to treat us like thieves for using your self checkout, at least make your AI algorithm smart enough to not flag the advertisement bolted to the cart,’ another user shared on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Coppell, Texas Kroger shopper Erik Falcoon posted: ‘The @kroger in Coppell, TX has half the self check outs closed, no checkers on duty and a line a mile long. Awful!’
The grocery chain actually responded to Falcoon’s complaint, apologizing for the experience and asking for more details so the store can handle the situation.
Kroger, which has more than 2,720 locations across the US, has not publicly responded to Cherryhomes’ message.
Kroger has tried out an all self-checkout concept – but after customers complained about long waits to buy their groceries, the model has been scaled back.
Kroger has more than 2,720 store locations across the country
A Kroger in Dallas, Texas went completely self-checkout in 2021. But after three years, the chain announced they would be returning to its old ways.
‘We listened closely to customer feedback and made the decision to convert back to hosting staffed checkout lanes at this store,’ Kroger spokesperson John Votava told the Dallas Morning News last year.
The Dallas store was the first location to try out the cashier-less experience. The grocer chain said they never planned to convert all of their locations to self-checkout only.
In 2023, a Franklin, Tennessee Kroger did away with all of their cashiers and left it completely up to customers to scan their products.
A spokesperson for the store told WKRN that they made this decision because most people at that location were already choosing to check out on their own.
The store said in 2023 that no employees were fired when they did away with cashiers.
Last year, police issued an urgent warning after discovering a worrying scam at Kroger self-checkouts in Atlanta, Georgia.
In June, 2024, Crooks had placed a card-skimming device – disguised as a pin pad – in the self-service aisle of a Kroger grocery store.
Card skimmers, often hidden by fraudsters on cash and card machines, steal information such as card numbers and pins from credit and debit cards.
With that information, they can make fake cards or use the information for online purchases without the owner’s permission.
Self-checkouts in general have proven to be a controversial topic, with some retailers opting to do away with them.
Supermarket chain Hy-Vee, with around 300 stores primarily in the Midwest and South, has fully replaced self-checkouts with staffed lanes in some locations. Others have created express lanes, imposing a 12-item limit on the kiosks.
Bosses said they ‘want to provide a better customer experience in several of our stores by bringing back the face-to-face interaction with our employees.’
In reality, the retailer – like its rivals – is ditching self-checkout kiosks because they are especially vulnerable to theft.
‘Most of the rollback of self-checkouts is due to retailer concerns over theft,’ retail expert Neil Saunders of Global Data told DailyMail.com.
Self-checkouts can also be problematic for stores, with a significant portion of thefts taking place while customers ring up their own items.
In 2021, Kroger tried to implement a fully self-checkout model in a Dallas store, but ultimately decided to bring cashiers back
More than 20 million Americans have stolen from a self-checkout kiosk, according to 2024 data from Capital One Shopping.
The report revealed that the likelihood of thefts increased by up to 65 percent at self-checkout when compared to regular registers.
Despite online critics being fiercely vocal this data also revealed that 73 percent of American consumers preferred checking out without a cashier.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Kroger for comment.
