SAP VP Arrested In False Barcode Scheme 535
redletterdave writes "With barcode scanning being so commonplace, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Thomas Langenbach, the vice president of SAP, was found scanning boxes upon boxes of Lego toys before purchasing them. Little did anyone know, the 47-year-old Silicon Valley executive was actually engaged in a giant scam. Langenbach would visit several Target stores and cover the store's barcodes with his own, so when he would bring the boxes up to the register, Langenbach would pay a heavily-discounted price. For example, this tag swapping allowed him to buy a Millennium Falcon box of Legos worth $279 for just $49. Once he bought the discounted Lego boxes, the SAP executive would take to eBay (under the name 'tomsbrickyard') and sell the items. Langenbach reportedly sold more than 2,000 items on eBay, raking in about $30,000. He was finally caught by Target security on May 8, and he was arraigned on Tuesday on four counts of burglary."
He was too ambitious (Score:5, Interesting)
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I see old women do this all of the time. Not making their own barcodes, mind you, but swapping the code from the seeded cucumbers to the unseeded ones, or switch the tag from a generic bible and put it onto the fancy one they have their eye on. I wish I wasn't serious.
I see this all too frequently myself. Yes, even the bible one. The irony of someone stealing a bible is not lost on me, either.
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I worked in retail and we caught a nun stealing.
I think there are thieves and then there are people who are actually sick.
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there are people who are actually sick.
Yeah, we recently had a shoplifting MP here in Australia, forbidden fruit and all that...
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Sadly, both groups may work on Wall Street: Capitalists and Other Psychopaths [nytimes.com].
Note that there are numerous objections to this opinion piece (probably by other Wall Street psychopaths - ha!) for using under-representative source data and an incorrect interpretation of that data - even after a correction to the article - and those objections may all be accurate, but the article somehow seems at least plausible anyway, if you ask me.
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:4, Interesting)
My pastor got a laugh out of the congregation last year (the guy could make a killing as a stand-up comedian if he wasn't a preacher) when he was encouraging the congregation to read "Wierd: because normal isn't working". He said "somebody stole my copy. Stealing from a preacher? You know that book is good!"
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:5, Funny)
I see old women do this all of the time. Not making their own barcodes, mind you, but swapping the code from the seeded cucumbers to the unseeded ones, or switch the tag from a generic bible and put it onto the fancy one they have their eye on. I wish I wasn't serious.
I see this all too frequently myself. Yes, even the bible one. The irony of someone stealing a bible is not lost on me, either.
Well, obviously, that's the person who need it most!
What irony? (Score:3)
The irony is lost on me.
If I were designing a religion, I would consider it successful to have people be willing to steal (which comes with risk of punishment), or otherwise make sacrifices out of desire for my literature. That should be a goal of all good religions. If you look at it that way, how could people stealing it even be slightly ironic? That's part of the end state that a religion should work for: people out of their mind with dev
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:4, Funny)
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that they're not selling the word of God, but a translation that has taken hours and hours of careful work. And just like you expect to be paid to work, these people need to feed their families too. So before telling someone that they shouldn't eat, perhaps you should work for free first.
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:4, Insightful)
Modded insightful and not flamebait? Come on...
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:5, Insightful)
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(Sorry, my english skills are limited, so I just hope that the idea in general is understood ) ...
That ain't the only skills you are limited in.
There's too much nonsense to go through, but I'll just take the first one, man isn't descended from monkeys and no scientist claims they are. They share a common ancestor. What you said is equivalent to me saying you're descended from your brother and asking then why your brother still exists?
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Re:He was too ambitious (Score:5, Interesting)
It is still under copyright in the UK (copyright held by the Crown has no fixed expiry date), FWIW.
Re:He was too ambitious (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that they're not selling the word of God, but a translation that has taken hours and hours of careful work. And just like you expect to be paid to work, these people need to feed their families too. So before telling someone that they shouldn't eat, perhaps you should work for free first.
Who do you think you're talking to around here? Slashdot is crawling with people who create software, documentation, and a variety of other products that take hours and hours of careful work. Then we give it away. We work for free. And we have a day job to pay the bills as well. Eating and giving away as well don't have to mutually exclusive.
Translating the word of God, if that's your thing, seems like it would be best done by the people with the same sort of attitude that the open source community does. Let it take as long as it takes, and let people release it when they're satisfied with it. This seems much more appropriate to me than a profit based enterprise where the quality of the translation is partially constrained by the amount of funds and callendar schedule availible to do it.
Or, alternatively, translating the Bible is really no different than translating stereo instructions. Either way.
Because he needed the cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely VP of SAP doesn't need to be doing that?
Some sort of mental illness of thrill-seeking?
Re:Because he needed the cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely VP of SAP doesn't need to be doing that?
Once you start pulling 6 digit incomes and near the 7 digit ones, money isn't just about "saving" is just about "more".
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A low 6 figure income in Mountain View (and most of California) is middle class. Family of four in the bay area? $75K/year is scrapping by.
Re:Because he needed the cash? (Score:5, Informative)
This guy wasn't an executive VP, and it wasn't at SAP Global. His official title was "Vice President, SAP Integration & Certification Center (ICC) at SAP Labs, LLC". So he was a VP of a division of an SAP subsidiary.
Welcome to the world of title inflation.
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Some sort of mental illness of thrill-seeking?
On the part of the submitter. "the vice president of SAP" is not true. He was *A* vice president *AT* SAP. SAP, like most large companies, has many many people holding the VP title, some of which make a lot of money and some of which don't. He was probably well paid but not excessively so, but that doesn't mean anything if he had some sort of addiction or was just plain bored. 30 grand tax free, for a side job, is no small haul.
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30 grand tax free, for a side job, is no small haul.
Considering the risk, effort and time spent, it IS a small haul compared to the salary of even a "low-level" VP.
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On the part of the submitter. "the vice president of SAP" is not true. He was *A* vice president *AT* SAP. SAP, like most large companies, has many many people holding the VP title, some of which make a lot of money and some of which don't.
This. That's an important distinction. Before I'd left my prior job, they had just given each and every person in the sales department the title of "VP of Sales".
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Could be his wife / some other entity, is monitoring his official finances and he is procuring unmonitored cash for some less reputable activities such as gambling, whoring, etc.
Re:Because he needed the cash? (Score:4, Interesting)
actually, some research on shoplifting has shown that the vast majority of shoplifters can afford the items that they steal. In fact, its not uncommon at all for white middle class adults to engage in shoplifting, often citing the excitement of it as one of their motivators.
The "National Association for Shoplifting Prevention" says that studies have found depression to be very common amongst shoplifters (http://www.shopliftingprevention.org/whatnaspoffers/nrc.htm).
another interesting article is here: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137627302/sticky-fingers-hidden-hams-a-shoplifting-history [npr.org]
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Re:Because he needed the cash? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Because he needed the cash? (Score:5, Funny)
My doctor growing up was a kleptomaniac. He would take things out of the local grocery without paying for them all the time. No one ever stopped him because he'd always return the goods a couple of hour later. Of course, he wasn't conspiring to do it for profit, he just couldn't help his impulses any more than someone with OCD.
I suppose this could be something similar, but criminal charges are definitely in order for the nature and amount of the crime.
You may want to check and see if you still have both of your kidneys. Just sayin.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Doesn't a VP at SAP make enough money to afford his lifestyle? Is he so greedy that he's gotta do this kind of crap? And where does he find the TIME to post 2000 items to eBay?
Clearly, things at SAP must be doing badly because #1) he's not making enough and #2) He's got plenty of time to sit at work posting shit to eBay.
I don't have time to clean out the junk in my house and post crap to eBay. I barely have time to write this post.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, Doc. Your hourly rate is really, really expensive. Would you consider payment in Legos? I have some Star Wars ones...
Kleptomania is a mental disease (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people steal, but kleptomaniacs have a compulsion to steal independent of need. As this article illustrates [howstuffworks.com], the root of kleptomania is a desire for revenge upon a world that the person feels has treated them unfairly. This includes emotional mistreatment, which is independent of a high salary or success in life.
Re:Kleptomania is a mental disease (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kleptomania is a mental disease (Score:4, Funny)
For comments like that, Slashdot's Scores should be logarithmic.
This wasn't kleptomania (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy was making a lot of money off of his theft. Kleptomaniacs typically don't sell stuff on Ebay at high mark-up, they keep, give away, or even donate the stuff the take. Precisely because profit isn't the motive of kleptomaniacs, I believe this guy was just doing it for the cash. Sad, given his apparently position and likely social stature, but he needs to go to jail, not a mental hospital.
Re:Kleptomania is a mental disease (Score:4, Informative)
As this article illustrates [howstuffworks.com], the root of kleptomania is a desire for revenge upon a world that the person feels has treated them unfairly.
The article you linked to says absolutely nothing of the sort. In fact, citing the DSM, it says the following about diagnosing kleptomania: "The theft is not due to anger, revenge, delusions, hallucinations or impaired judgment (dementia, mental retardation, alcohol intoxication, drug intoxication)."
So I'm not sure what you were reading.
The sad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
He'll get off easier than some kid downloading a couple songs.
A VP scamming for money? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stores need updated registers (Score:5, Interesting)
This sort of scam is far too common. It's time that stores had updated cash registers that would display a picture of the item when the code is scanned so that it if is obviously different, it has a good chance of getting noticed. It would mean adding a display facing the checkout clerk right above the scanner, and it would require having someone take a photo of each item when it first goes on sale--the latter could be provided by the vendor.
Nothing to do with money (Score:3)
Rules of Aquisition (Score:3)
#14. Anything stolen is pure profit.
Target Analytics (Score:3, Interesting)
Another piece of this article overlooked is the "caught by Target security". Target has some of the most comprehensive and detailed customer data of any retailer. If you're on their coupon mailing list, the mailer you get from them is customized to you; they have a profile on you that's extremely accurate and their mailers have 2-3 floating pages, where the one printed to go to your address will have coupons based on the things someone in your profile would buy, and it's highly segmented and targeted to a level that's almost creepy; it can apparently predict if a woman is pregnant and when you're due, and can start sending you targeted ads: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
Last month my car got broken into and my girlfriend's purse stolen; we were at an event and didn't get back to my car for about 5 hours after it happened. The perps took all her credit cards and started running them up, howeverher main one was canceled because they bought several items at Target which were outside of her normal profile (lots of junk food apparently, she's a very healthy eater), so they called AMEX and alerted them to fraud within 10 minutes of the fraudulent purchases, and AMEX shut her card down; we know because it got rejected at the next store they went to. They also pulled up the security tapes and were able to give video from their security cameras to the police of the guys checking out at the register. While we recovered and got all charges canceled, that was uncanny what Target was able to do to stop this crime in a matter of minutes.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
So you expect the drones at the cash register to know the prices of a billion different store items? You'd be tough to work for...
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I would expect them to see that the description that comes up isn't what the product is. The price isn't stored in the bar code, you can't change the barcode to make the product lower priced, but you can print a bar code for a cheaper item and stick it on the expensive one. The till would bring up the product description and price of the cheap item, so they need to be selling a cheaper item with a sufficiently similar description that it would not get noticed by a sleepy drone. This is a pretty high risk method of stealing stuff.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've known people who get a thrill from outsmarting the system or for punishing a company. Perhaps he had a grudge against Target and got pleasure from stealing token amounts from them.
Re:Common Sense (Score:4, Funny)
And what's he making now?
License plates. drrrTISH!
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He's making Bubba a very happy guy!
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you might have missed the whole "title inflation" phenomenon that's been going on for the last 20 years or so. Don't be ashamed. Whomever wrote the "fine" article made the same mistake, giving the impression that the accused was the second in command at SAP Global, or something.
His official title is "Vice President, SAP Integration & Certification Center (ICC)". That means he's not an executive VP at all, and his title is specific to only one of SAP's businesses. That puts him in the highest rungs of "middle management". He probably reports to the guy who reports to the guy who reports to the COO, an actual executive.
Regarding his compensation, it would be solidly in the 6 figure range. So $30k would be more meaningful to him than a mere "rounding error", but it wouldn't make difference in his standard of living, in any real sense. Having been around the block a few times, he was probably bored as hell at his job, his wife probably ignores him, and he was probably sick of the fact that his kids were the only ones in the house who had any excitement in their lives at all. It had probably been so long since he felt he was even alive, he needed the adrenaline rush just to check and see.
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If you do that, please, safe sex.
As a doctor I've seen it all go horribly wrong more than once.
I spoke with my chiropractor, and he advised that if I install universal guard rails on the bed, I should be perfectly safe.
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I think the bigger questions are "WTF was the VP of SAP doing pulling a cheap ass eBay scam like what your average meth head would pull? Is he a kelpto? Is the company in trouble? Is his pay THAT shitty?" These questions sound more relevant to me than how long he was able to pull this shit off.
The VP title means less than you think. At some companies, they hand these out like candy. He could easily have been making under $100K a year.
What "VP" means is really non-sequitur, peanuts as far as logic goes when it comes to asking WTF is a decently paid professional, 6-figure or not, pulling a cheap-ass ghetto scam at a local store.
Re:Common Sense (Score:4, Informative)
The description isn't a novel.
Slap a barcode for a $39.95 lego-boat on a $129.95 larger lego-ship and the scanner will say something like "lego boat".
I don't know how you expect a bored cashier at minimum wage to catch that.
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Yeah, you'd think, but it doesn't really work that way. Most cashiers are performance-rated by how fast they process orders. They don't have the luxury of questioning every item that comes thru. Their job is to scan the items and collect the money, not loss prevention. Now if they were paid more and not treated like human hamster wheels then maybe you'd have a point.
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I would expect them to see that the description that comes up isn't what the product is.
No. You expect wrong. Cashiers are expected to scan and charge, not to do verification and validation. Moreover, at least in Florida and other states IIRC (from the time I used to work in Home Depot), the law typically mandates that you, the seller, must charge what is in the label.
In most cases, you cannot go tell a buyer "naaaaah, our bad, we slapped the wrong barcode, and we have to charge you the actual price which is more than what comes off the bar code." You typically have to sell the advertised p
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what else is (mostly) charged by weight? Transport and storage cost.
Adding all that extra weight (and likely also volume) to expensive items also makes them more expensive to produce, transport and store. The additional cost may very well outweigh the occasional losses due to sociapaths.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. Most people aren't sociopaths. The stores would be much better off with face recognition software and a database of CEO photos, which triggers an alarm.
Except... (Score:5, Funny)
they'll simply weigh your cart and charge you a flat rate per pound
Kind of tricky if you've only bought some helium-filled balloons... Does the store owe you a few pennies?
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
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What's a city in Scotland with an awesome castle got to do with it?
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not to say it was, but it could have been an insulin pump or colonoscopy bag
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
In my university days, I worked in a shop and got caught in something like this - and was pulled up by the manager for letting this go through.
Seems like the guy had been doing it quite regularily through the week, but the sums involved were tiny. He's swapped the sticker for "thermos flask" (met flsk) for "drinks flask" (pla flsk) and saved himself £5 when he came through to me. (oh, restricted characters we love you!)
I quite fairly pointed out that it is a flask, it came up with a flsk on the screen. Of course I didn't elaborate and say that I'd actually turned my mind off as he was probably the 80th customer that day I'd served and all of whom had probably more than 10 items each, and as long as the barcode beeped I didn't really care, so I kept my job at least.
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UPC barcodes don't work that way. UPC barcodes have two pieces of info encoded on to them as one 12 digit number: Manufacturer and Product. My understanding is a little rough, but the first digit of the code represents what type of code it is (coupon, product, etc...) The next 5 digits are a unique number assigned to each manufacturer, the next 5 is a unique number assigned by the manufacturer to that specific product, and the last digit is a basic checksum to detect errors in scanning or manual entry.
I
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Common Sense (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like brain-dead retarded management policy. Stepping over a dollar to save a dime.
They didn't deserve you.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to retail sales. Management = retarded.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Honesty was not the best policy if you were trying to make a living as a salesman there. Several of the other guys would simply outright lie to customers, and it blew my mind that management had no problem with it. I swear, one of the guys was a pathological liar... but, man, he did OK for himself.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked in a camera chain that went to 100% commission. We had two cameras in the store that paid a negative commission. Somehow they were all defective/damaged packaging/lost in transit/never received. Eventually the home office got the hint and quit trying to re-stock the stores with them, but I have to think they lost more money on that then they would have if they simply ponied up a $0.50 commission on those things so that they were worthless, but not actively hostile to being sold.
-nB
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a manager at a Sams Club in Buffalo NY while at college and there is some good reasoning behind this, even if you/I don't agree with it. Most large retailers goal is to boost profits but cutting expenses; one area to do this is in personnel. If you have fast cashiers, then you need fewer of them. The overwhelming majority of studies in the early to mid nineties showed that the majority of theft was employee related, so to spend a lot of time worrying about customers would be focusing on the wrong area, or as you put it, you would be stepping over millions of dollars to save a few bucks. Another study showed that very few customers who did steal, did it as a one-time deal, it would usually turn in to a pattern and unless your the luckiest man/woman on earth, you're going to get caught eventually.
As a side note, both Target and Walmart are profitable, so they can't be stepping over too many dollars...just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean it's bad.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I should know I use to be one and I was the "odd man out" that would notice these things and say something.
(emphasis added)
I see this line of thinking a lot, and there's a key factor people tend to forget. There's a reason you've moved on to bigger and better things, and a reason some people continue to do that menial work for a decade. When you hire low wage employees for a while, you begin to realize that any "good find" won't be there for long, because they're meant for something more important.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked retail management for about 3 years while I was finishing my masters. I don't mean to toot my own horn (okay, I kind of do), but they were desperate to keep me. Why? I was a terrible manager - I let the employees get away with murder, as long as the work got done. I was insubordinate - if the policy was stupid, I didn't follow it. I told the head of the store that I hated my job and I hated the store - every day for two years.
So, why were they desperate to keep me? I could think. The regional actually told me that he would be sad to see me go, because critical thinking is rare in retail. They dangled long-term job offers, travel, higher pay and increased benefits to try to get me to stay. Again, why?
Because I could think. They know that if you have any sort of brain, that retail is just a temporary gig on the road of life, and it makes them sad on the inside.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Not always, though (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Work just enough not to get fired, paid just enough not to quit.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
They probably figured someone at the store blew it.
One time we hauled a pallet's load worth of Jones soda out of our local sams club. They were apparently discontinuing carrying it (it hasn't reappeared in the 3 years since). I think they'd *tried* to price it at 12-something (12.38?) per 12 pack. They instead managed to fat-finger it at 2.38 per 12 pack.
We saw it, said, "no possible way." Took it to a scanner, yep 2.38. Took one up to a cashier, "can you price check this?" "2.38" "Seems odd" "That's what the computer says" "Okay, I'll be back" -- and I was, with their whole stock of it.
I don't remember what our total bill was that time, but we bought them out. We had a ziggurat of soda, waist high, in our garage for months... maybe over a year. It was awesome. 20 friends over for BBQ? Bust out the Jones!
Mostly its too much trust in the machine.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
With the "self-checkout" machines popping up everywhere so stores can cut down on employee costs, I'd be shocked if anyone noticed.
I assume he replaced the barcodes with UPCs for cheaper, but similar products so that a cashier wouldn't be particularly suspicious, particularly if it's a line of products with which they're not familiar. The self check might actually be harder to get by than a human, since those have a scale on the bagging side.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The scale on the self-checkout doesn't do any sort of sanity check; it just makes sure the weight changes after scanning an item to ensure you've placed it in the bagging area.
This is not true, or at least, not true everywhere. The local grocery store chain has self-checkouts that reject things that aren't the right weight. From personal experience, I know that if get a coke out of the freezer case and drink half, then try to pay for it, you have to get a store employee to override the system.
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I ended up in an infinite loop.
Placed item in bag, computer bitched that it was an unexpected item, removed the item, computer bitched that an item was removed, replaced item, computer bitched...
Tried this cycle 2 times then said fsck it, and since the "watcher" was busy flirting I cancelled that item and just left it in my basket. Now, it was only a 50c part in a total purchase of ~$100, but gah! make those systems a little more forgiving about exactness of weights will you?
-nB
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
After a while, I doubt they even notice what it was they rung up. Scan, bag, repeat x N. Total, swipe, next. Try that for five or six 8-hour days in a row, for hundreds of customers, then see how much you notice or care about the merchandise.
I sure hope that's not true. If so, then buying all those boxes of XL condoms from that cute cashier at the drug store was a total waste of money?
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Somehow I doubt that the cashiers follow Lego pricing so closely. To someone with any amount of ignorance on the merchandise, $50 may seem like a reasonable price on a large box of plastic foot needles.
Also keep in mind the repetitive, mind-numbing task cashiers perform. After a while, I doubt they even notice what it was they rung up. Scan, bag, repeat x N. Total, swipe, next. Try that for five or six 8-hour days in a row, for hundreds of customers, then see how much you notice or care about the merchandise.
Wow, you have a high opinion of human beings. /sarc
It actually works pretty much the exact opposite way from what you said. While a beginning cashier may be flustered, the more experienced cashiers actually observe more details, because they're no longer stressing with the basic mechanics of checkout, and they also are more familiar with the products. The human mind is a restless thing. You better believe they notice what you are buying.
Re:Common Sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Somehow I doubt that the cashiers follow Lego pricing so closely. To someone with any amount of ignorance on the merchandise, $50 may seem like a reasonable price on a large box of plastic foot needles.
Its an age thing. When I was a kid, $50 for a big box of lego would seem a bit high, so as a childless adult if I scanned a box and it said $50 I would not be overly surprised but kind of pissed off that prices have gone up so much.
Now a days I shop for lego for my kids, and some of the largest movie-tie-in licensed items are more expensive than a car loan payment.
Another example, basic stereotypical "Lego house kit" prices have gone up by percentage more than real house prices went up during the bubble...
Re: (Score:3)
I think the tie in for /. is SAP VP. Folks that you contract to to run your business from a technical stand point, who aren't above scamming Legos from Target to make a few bucks; you should trust them!
Re:Giant scam? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this compare to the ongoing financial scams being perpetrated on all of us?
Totally different ... he got arrested.
Re:Even easier at self-serve checkouts (Score:4, Interesting)
You could be even more ambitious at the Self Serve check-outs! (especially here in Australia)
Actually the self serve checkouts (they don't use them at Target, btw, which might have made a difference in this scheme) would have served to CATCH him. The checkouts use highly accurate product weight data, combined with a scale, to tell if you are sneaking things past the scanner. In the case of this scheme, he would have been putting the barcode for a 10 oz. box of Lego onto a 3 lb box of Lego. The self serve checkout would have a fit as soon as it saw that a 3 lb box appeared when a 10oz on was supposed to.
Re: (Score:3)
But what would it then do? Around here - the UK - it would show a message stating that there's an "unexpected item in the bagging area" and require a member of staff to authorise it.
Which they would do without checking since the message appears so regularly for no obvious reason.
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Re:Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a set of rules for the great unwashed, and another for the 1%.
The marvellous book Freakonomics describes how rich people steal, lie and cheat more often, because their sense of entitlement gets there in the first place.
But I'm not sure I'm allowed to post this. It's election year, therefore we're not allowed to say anything that might offend conservatives, Republicans or rich people.
I swear, this 1% shit is getting old. A story gets posted to /. about on guy stealing from Target, and suddenly this classist bullshit gets posted.
Why can't it just be that this guy is an idiot with mental problems? Or just an idiot with kleptomania?
m
Re: (Score:3)
There are quite some alternatives to Lego; some are even fully compatible with the original Lego bricks.
Yet I have to see one with the same quality. Strong blocks (not floppy), and that all fit perfectly together: not falling apart or being impossible to take apart. That's what Lego manages to do, and what all competing bricks that I have had in my hands fall short of. Most of them just don't have the rigidity for starters: usually because they use a cheaper plastic. Many have issues with fitting - usually
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actually there is a minimal amount of "extra" price in lego building blocks (note they should not be refered to as "lego" since the correct name is Lego Building Blocks. One of the reasons that the "real" ones are so expensive is that they are made to crazy tolerences the other one being they are just about indestructible. In fact you can take the LegoBB from my collection from when i was a kid and mix it with a new off the shelf kit and know that all the parts will actually work together.
a LegoBay version
Re:Time for the Lego Bay... (Score:4, Interesting)
My thoughts on why Lego is not like RIAA:
When my 5 year old put his stickers from a set all over a box, I emailed Lego, and they sent me a new sticker sheet. I had offered to pay but they said, no charge. Same thing with a couple of parts that he lost. When my five-year-old scratches his Just Bieber CD... well I sure as hell don't try too hard to replace it. But if I did ever want to replace a big label CD, I doubt they would be accommodating.
Lego allows Peeron to keep scans of all the old instruction manuals online. Even though copyright hasn't technically expired, they realize that they're not likely to print old instructions. They're too busy printing new instructions. Compare that to the RIAA that sends C&D letters to lyrics websites, and tries to shut down guitar teachers from posting lessons online.
BrickLink, LugNet, etc. don't get harassed by Lego. As long as they don't use the name Lego in the website, pretty much anything goes. They have an interest in making sure the AFOL stay active. We go on to raise the next generation of Lego fans that way. :-)
Re:Time for the Lego Bay... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Over-react much there, mate? Heck, why stop at people who work at SAP. If your company uses SAP software, it reflects upon you as well, and you should be demanding a full accounting of your management team for deciding to purchase SAP.
Or...maybe not.
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