Self-checkout lanes are everywhere now.
Grocery stores, big box retailers, even places selling just a handful of items have decided that scanning and bagging your own stuff is part of the deal. And lately, those machines are even bold enough to ask for a tip. But according to a criminal defense attorney who’s gone viral on TikTok, using self-checkout could come with a much bigger cost than awkwardly hitting “no tip.”
Carrie Jernigan, a criminal defense attorney, is warning people to avoid self-checkout altogether. Her reason is simple and unsettling. It’s risky, even if you’re not trying to steal anything.
She says stores now have large, sophisticated teams whose job is to review self-checkout footage and look for possible shoplifting.
Every scan, missed scan, and awkward item shuffle is recorded. If a store’s inventory comes up short later, they can go back through the video to figure out where something might have gone missing.
That’s where things can get ugly. If you accidentally forget to scan an item, scan the wrong barcode, or even if the store just makes an inventory mistake, you could end up being flagged as a suspect. From there, the store can report the incident to police. Suddenly, what felt like a harmless mistake at the checkout turns into a legal nightmare.
She says these cases can be expensive, stressful, and time-consuming to deal with, even if you didn’t do anything intentionally wrong. And the worst part is you might not even know there’s an issue until law enforcement contacts you later.
If you’re thinking, “That seems extreme,” she argues it happens more often than people realize. Self-checkout shifts the work and the risk from the store to the customer.
You’re basically acting as your own cashier, but without the training or protection employees have.
That said, Jernigan knows self-checkout isn’t disappearing anytime soon. So if you absolutely have to use it, she offers a few tips to protect yourself. Stick to small orders so there’s less room for error. Always pay with a credit card so there’s a clear record of what you purchased. Keep your receipt, even if you usually toss it. And most importantly, go slowly. Make sure the cameras can clearly see you scan every item.
Convenient or not, self-checkout may not be worth the headache. Sometimes waiting in line for a human cashier really is the safer move.