Self-checkout theft has become so widespread that a whole lingo has sprung up to describe its tactics. Ringing up a T-bone ($13.99/lb) with a code for a cheap ($0.49/lb) variety of produce is “the banana trick.”
In their zeal to cut labor costs, the study said, supermarkets could be seen as having created “a crime-generating environment” that promotes profit “above social responsibility.” Even if a manager wants to press charges, many police departments can’t be bothered with supermarket theft. In 2012, for example, the Dallas Police Department enacted a new policy: Officers would no longer routinely respond to shoplifting calls for boosts amounting to less than $50. In 2015, the threshold was raised yet again, to $100.
“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a total moron,” reads one of the more militant comments in a Reddit discussion on the subject. “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.”
This should really come as no surprise; at the local Fred Meyer/Kroger just down the road from the house here, the new normal has become having two live checkout staff where the used to have eight or ten - but they have 18 self-checkout stations for your convenience.
I guess I'm a total moron, though - the ol' "banana trick" has never occurred to me, although the Reddit author is quite right. I do find it somewhat annoying that I'm charged to do employee work. But more often than not, the stations with human checkers are clotted with hippos with big, full, full-sized shopping carts. Most people don't want to wait 30 minutes or more in line. Unsurprisingly, they're installing cameras at the self-checkout stations.
But speaking of the old banana trick, it used to be for real:
Slipping on a banana peel is a cliché, a vintage vaudeville gag. But its origins weren’t just slapstick comedy. Before it became a comedy trope, banana peels menaced New Yorkers for decades.
In 1907, Anna H. Sturla boarded a ferry, slipped on a banana peel, and demanded $250 in compensation from the boat’s operators. Three doctors had examined her, she claimed, and told her she needed an operation. She received $150—a significant sum at the time, although less than the $500 she received after her first banana-peel incident, a fall on the train-station steps at 125th Street and Park Avenue.
In all, she collected nearly $3,000 - a fortune in 1907 dollars - with her "slip and fall" routine before she was arrested and tried for making fraudulent claims.
But for years, she was taken seriously. After all, many New Yorkers suffered similar injuries. Vendors touted banana skins as “sanitary wrappers” and sold them as a street food. Sure enough, New Yorkers discarded the wrappers onto the street, and the pages of turn-of-the-century New York City newspapers contained accounts of shockingly serious banana-related injuries.
New Yorkers threw their trash in the street, where no one picked it up, leading the city to release wild pigs to eat the refuse. Dead animals lingered in gutters for days. In this environment, discarded banana peels rotted into slippery messes and mottled into a camouflaging brown.
This was New York City's approach to garbage removal from the streets in the 1890s.
Initially, New Yorkers held deep antipathy toward the street cleaners because they were sent out by the government, and so police protection was required.
Today, of course, relatively few people - other than folks like the "antifa" crowd and the homeless bums - throw garbage into the streets. Most of us are considerably more enlightened. We simply elect it into public office.
