this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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At Giant, I'm pretty sure it's decided by the system based on some algorithm, not the employee. The one time I was audited, we were in the store for a long time and had removed a few items from the cart after adding them.
The audit consisted of the employee scanning ten random items and confirming we had scanned them too.
When I was using food stamps/EBT, I was audited every time I used the hand scanner at Stop and Shop. Luckily, I don't have to use food stamps anymore.
Well that's some bull. The software knows what items are covered and which aren't, so that's just assuming folks needing help are thieves.
Yeah, luckily an Aldi opened down the street and I started shopping there. I don't need food stamps now but with the way prices are going...
Ah, yes, yes. We're not racist, it's the system! It's an algorithm! I never heard that one before. It's also a sustym that randomly checks you at the airport.
It all depends on how truly random the system is. Each checkout (or ticket, or whatever) assigned a random number between 1 and 20, with 20 meaning audit? That's non-discriminatory. But it's also not tuned for the purpose of finding shoplifters (etc).
When you start adding criteria, they are often at least correlated with discrimination. Food stamps were mentioned elsewhere. Flight history to/from a list of hostile countries for airports. The list goes on. Technically not based on things like race, but it's a paper-thin distinction in some cases.
How do you know there's not someone looking at se purity cameras triggering random audits?
Then that's not random by any definition of the word. It's targeted.
It's entirely possible, even likely, that management would keep claiming that it's random when it's not. But then we're not talking about any algorithms.
That's the point I'm making.