Urban myths two: UPC codes

Post Reply New Topic

Urban Myths part two: UPC codes.

Those bar codes on everything in every store that the check out clerks scan with lasers guns - what are they?
They are UPC's.

Much of the public thinks that that means "universal PRICE code".
Even Andy Rooney sounded off on Sixty Minutes about "universal price codes."

The "P" stands for "product" not price.

But not only is this unknown to muchof the public-much of the public has constructed a whole mythology about how the sequence of numbers is a "code" that somehow contains the item's price.

Customers in the drugstore I used to work in would say "I dont know the price because I cant read bar codes". Some folks even asked if me if "you guys have to change the bar codes every time the price changes"( as if each store had its own factory in the back to remanufacture every piece of merchandise on its shelves everytime the prices changes).

One time a couple insisted I was overcharging them. So on impulse I picked up the item and said "well let me read the barcode". A proceded to pretend I was decoding the numbers - " seven...fourty.....nine- well (with a shrug) - the code says $7.49."
The couple looked at each other as noded " I guess hes right"- and then paid up and left.

What I did was the equivalent of pretending to descipher your body weight by reading your social security number! Thats how dumb the public is!

The point is: world war two is over! And- we dont live soviet russia. The Government doesnt dictate prices in america- hasnt for a long time.
Point two- In a capitalist society prices are never universal-products are.

Anybody with a single brain cell should realize that (1) theres no reason to invent "a universal price code" because it has no reason to exist, and (2) If a universal price code were implemented our whole retail system would collapse in less than a week!

I have an old transistor radio from the Soviet Union, probably 1970s. It is very plain and lacks the large amount of information one usually sees on the back of American radios of the era-in America by the 70s, legal warnings were already de rigeur, while the Soviets didn't give a sh*t. Citizens had no standing against the government, and there really wasn't a civil legal system like we have, so if you opened up the radio and got zapped, tough sh*t. The radio was built like a tank anyway. One thing it DOES have on the back is the price, molded right into the plastic-29 rubles. Such is a command economy.

In the case of bar codes, they can be programmed to read out whatever the store wants them to. The problem is that Americans are too dumb to realize that the store has a central computer. Many really do think that prices are set by fiat or cartel. And then we wonder why socialists constantly are getting elected to office. In the minds of many Americans, we already live in a communist society, so what's the harm in electing a guy who is friends with Hugo Chavez and Bill Ayres? Maybe it's the ghost of Nixon's price controls, maybe it's the rampant belief in intricate conspiracies that dictate what we eat for breakfast. But people really believe that UPCs contain centrally set prices. And then there's the people who think that they contain the number 666, but that's another topic.

Yep, all the UPC bar code does is tell the store's computer this item has been scanned - either at the register or at the stockroom.
At the register the UPC lets the part of the computer where price info is stored tell the register "okay, it's this item, so it costs that much." And the it tells the inventory tracking portion of the computer program "add one more of that item, made by these guys, to the number sold and to be restocked" and that is the end of what happens.

Saves the store a decent amount of money in paperwork, labor, and price tags. Which means the store then has that much money to add to investing in something else: getting new types of items, expanding the store, making up for lower prices of things on sale, putting a little more money into employee insurance if store is big enough to offer it, putting a little more money into people's paychecks so they can keep the good people they've got.

As far as prices, they come from production costs, supply, and demand. There is a general idea of okay, costs this much to get materials to make it, this much to make it, this much to get the item to the store, and this much for the store to buy the item, and the store needs this much from that item's sale to cover the cost of operating the store.

And there's a general idea of what people are willing to pay for that type of item, so each party along the process tries to balance the income they need to keep in business with how much a percentage they can charge of the final cost consumers will pay for an item.
So, a suggested retail price is created based on an idea of what those costs are.

UPC codes allow a lot of information involved in latter stages of that chain of events to be transmitted electronically, saving bundles on paper, mail, and labor.

A large store used to spend a small fortune on price tags and maintaining the machines with printed and applied them.

As a tangent, I once worked for a small, family owned retail operation with a couple stores in both upper class and not upper class neighborhoods. Building rent, utilities, and taxes, were a little more in the upper class area and a little less in the lower class neighborhood, so prices were adjusted a few cents in the different stores' computers, being lowered in the less affluent neighborhood. Simple, done with it.
And that is why in mass advertising from national companies there might be some statement like "Prices may vary by location"

Remember hearing a conversation at a register where it was what looked like grandmother and young granddaughter as the customers. Little girl asked cashier, when grandmother was paying, "What do you do with all the money?" Grandmother looked ready to fall through the floor.
Cashier smiled and said something like, "It's a lot like home actually, there's the light bill to pay, the heating bill, the water bill, we have to pay rent to the mall, taxes on the store and stuff in it, gotta pay the people who work here, gotta pay their medical insurance, and have to pay to get another one of what you just bought."
Little girl smiled and said "Oh. Okay"
Grandmother person had an expression I read as that she hadn't ever thought about all that and she learned something too.

Okay, done rambling.
For now.

~Ahem~
I happen to work for a huge grocery store chain as an IT Helpdesk Tech, we send downloads every day to each store's main computers as to what XYZ item is priced at today. We have sales that change overnight. Today a box of Captain Crunch costs this much, tomorrow it's that much.
It just a string of numbers ....

Segueing in to a tangent with the "string of numbers", was at Hobby Lobby in city about 30 miles from where we live and somehow got around to commenting to cashier on store's light (electricity) bill.
Said she'd forgotten exact amount but manager had said it is over $8,000 monthly.

Let's see, round to 8,500, which times 12 months is $102,000 yearly for electricity.
Not exactly pocket change.

i never even heard of that being a myth :S

(only in america maybe? giggle)

instead, most people i know tend to assume theyre alarm-triggers, since every single store has these alarm frames in the cashier exits. which of course, theyre not either

^^ THIS

I know no one who even thinks for one millisecond about the barcodes and whether or not they spell out the actual price. It isn't that public doesn't know, they DON'T CARE and have not even thought about it. Those that have given it a thought typically think that the barcodes have something to do with the security gates.

IF you never think about bar codes- you're even dumber.

Even in the last two decades of the twentieth centurey barcodes were an inescapable part of american life. How do you not notice something thats printed on every item yoiu consume? And thats scanned by every check out clerk you buy it from?

Today you have to do your own cashiering in most stores. So you have scan each item yourself so to be oblivious to barcodes in 2009 is to be oblivious to life itsself!

The public doesn't know and doesn't care about great many things. Generally speaking most people are trained to do their jobs, with various success, and also have what you could call "street smarts", but beyond that they know very little else.

This doesn't stop them from having great many uninformed opinions though.

"street smarts" is incredibly fun to watch if there are cultural clashes

my dad still, and forever, keeps his peruvian el callao street-smarts in norway! "hey, lets not stop here, we could be mugged!"
"dad... for the billionth time........... n o b o d y gets mugged here... "

/

his clueless (but VERY nice. she helps me out a lot!) wife - in spain! shes from norway, and from the cuddliest little island. she stopped inside a dark and ruined alley, right next to HOODLUMS, whipped out a digital cam, and started to take snapshots of the ruins :S
even my little sisters were insisting this was a bad place to flash expensive cameras around
luckily the hoodlums were SO surprised at this behaviour, they just laughed. and we left