this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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I worked in a Walmart on the overnight shift (cleaning, separate company) when they rolled them out 3+ years ago here in Canada. They've honestly become the norm in grocery stores and other large stores here. If some company was going to be sleazy about them, it probably would've happened already (Loblaws, I'm looking at you).
I straight up asked why they were being installed, and it's two-fold. One, they can save money cause now they don't have to pay staff to go around and change the little paper tags, which takes an absurd amount of manpower and is easy to fuck up. And two, they can all be changed over to a barcode/QR code during inventory, which speeds up the whole process. I'll be the last person to defend corpos, especially Walmart, but I don't think this one was done with the intentions of directly fucking over the customer.
I've worked retail and one of the things that baffled me was just how wasteful price tags were.
They change SO OFTEN and it's so much paper and plastic just tossed it the trash every time. Never even thought about it until I worked at a store and had to change them.
God, right?! I could fill a bag full of the things nearly every day when I was cleaning before they switched over! I literally had a little bin I'd save them up in to take home to use as kindling for the fire pit cause they'd already been replaced. Though, I think the lack of waste is more a pleasant side effect than a reason why these companies did it. Either way, it's still a positive!