Or, just maybe, they could adequately staff their stores instead of constantly running skeleton crews. If they were actually sincere with their cries of high theft, more employees on the floor could deter would-be thieves, while also giving them time to help customers when needed and pack out product so the place doesn't always look like an obstacle course left in the wake of a hurricane, with piles of stuff on the floor blocking half the aisles.

Any place that requires an app for me to shop at is a hard no for me, much less all the other nonsense they want to include.

And you carry one of these around with you? How often are you visiting stores with these locks?

Yeah but the engines of Capitalism & Infinite Growth in a finite world gotta go brrr.

Yeah, but that's a key, not a lockpick

CVS wants me to stop shopping with them.

I'll just goto a fucking supermarket. It's faster. Yes, even with the checkouts.

Or, "No, I'm not bothering to shop at CVS anymore because that's a hassle."

Hey, no shop...ing?

We use our grocery store. Seems to work well. My store doesn't even have an app, just a website, and the loyalty card isn't needed for discounts, only for points I'll never use so I don't bother with it.

Yeah, shopping at CVS was never something I'd consider enjoyable, it was a thing I did occasionally if I needed something and was nearby. Now I'll go the extra half block to a different store. Screw 'em.

Yes, and weekly; every time I do my shopping.

This new system with the app is a hydra

Many supermarkets are enshittifying/rent seeking too though

D. Staff just leave them unlocked because it's in a "dead" network spot and nothing reliably connects or store requires users to be on their Wi-Fi

The answer is never “make service better to attract customers”, it’s always “extract as much value as possible from the ones that remain”. Shitty short term number go up mentality.

What kind of inefficent shitscape is your business that adding a new app functionality is easier, cheaper and faster than hiring more, better paid people?

Hold on, maybe this is a method of appeasing the stock holders to improve trust in them, backing out might cause people to back away

Wait, this could also be a temporary measure as they hire more people, although the damage has already been done and will show itself next quarter

I've been looking into the local veggie co-op. You pay for the season and you can pick up a box of veggies once a week, all locally sourced. I'd go to the farmers market, but I'm worried it'll just be a bunch of people selling marked up veggies they got from the grocery store.

My local grocery store from the Safeway family of stores has Bluetooth beacons that crashed my old phone. Now I turn my phone off as I have to assume these are to track where I am in the store and for how long so they can further target their ads.

Fortunately, at the farmers market, you can usually look up the farmer. Eg, visit once or twice just observing, seeing who gets visited by regulars, Google the farm name to look up details and reviews, etc

@howrar @dantheclamman I needed a replacement garage door remote last week. Bunnings has them locked to the shelf thing. I did bend it a fair amount but couldn't get the thing off. Found an employee who seemed as pissed off as I was. He didn't have a key though. So had to disappear for quite some time to find one. It's a $60 product in a reasonable size pack. Not a $6000 item I can slip in my pocket. Another reason to shop online (I needed that item that day otherwise I would have got it online)