“If you go into a shop and you pick up a few groceries, usually you would pick any of the cashiers that is around and you go scan your goods,” he said. “When someone is planning a sweethearting theft, they will always go to the same cashier, which is most of the time a relative of theirs, and this is an anomaly in the behavior compared to the other customers. Our system is able to identify this anomaly and alert on that.”

I usually go to one of two cashiers because they are faster and actually know what they are doing. I will always return to them simply to save time.

The system sounds costly. It’s merely another version of the “inventory robots” that never gained traction. They’ll end up spending six figures per store on hardware that constantly triggers false alerts until they eventually shut it down. Weren’t groceries supposed to be fully NFC by now, allowing you to scan everything at once on your way to the door?

The managers know who’s gonna steal. They see them sweet-talking and complaining about fixed income.