Sophia is your community news reporter covering the North Coast of San Luis Obispo County, including Los Osos, Morro Bay, Cayucos, Cambria and San Simeon.
A proposed Senate bill would prohibit self-checkout lanes for customers at all California grocery and retail drug stores unless certain conditions are met. It’s all in an effort to combat theft.
“I think self-checkouts are pretty good in terms of efficiency," said David Kisieu, Cal Poly student. "If I don’t have a lot of stuff, I don’t really want to wait and deal with a lot of people. I just scan something really quickly and leave."
Senate Bill 1446, proposed by state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas of Los Angeles, stores would be able to offer self-checkout lanes if the checkouts are limited to 10 items or less and at least one manual checkout lane is staffed by an employee.
“If I’m going to use self-checkout, I’m going to use 10 items or fewer anyways, so if it’s a way to deter theft, sure,” Kisieu said.
“It kind of keeps it fair for people because if you’re going to have more than 10 items it’s going to take you a minute," said Brendan Smith, Cal Poly student. "It defeats the whole purpose of helping mitigate the lines because then there’s just going to be another big line over there."
In a letter to Smallwood-Cuevas, the California Chamber of Commerce said in part it “forces retailers to police the number of items going through self-checkout lanes which could create a point of friction between a customer and a retail employee.”
The bill also states if self-checkouts are offered, the employee monitoring them should not have any other duties and cannot monitor more than two lanes at a time.
“I think one person manning it makes sense because if you do that it’s going to take away cashiers from the other regular checkouts and that’s probably going to make it a bigger traffic jam,” Smith said.
“It seems to be working at this point they’ve got one that monitors six, so it works,” said Luke Alexander, Morro Bay resident.
David Kisieu is optimistic about the bill. “I think at the end of the day theft is getting out of hand, especially in California," he said. "Whatever works, works, who knows if it’s going to work but it doesn’t hurt to try."
KSBY reached out to Senator Smallwood-Cuevas’ office for comment but has not received a response yet.
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