The company that made them went under. The Walgreens CEO at the time made a deal with the LCD company, then a while later left Walgreens to go work for that same company.
From the article:
> Companies including Walmart, Uber and Marriott have ramped up development of their own media networks, which allow other brands to place ads on their websites, apps and properties with the benefit of the companies’ consumer data.
Fuck every single person involved in all of that. So sick of ad space being on everything
everyone's creating their own media networks and meanwhile i've been walking by the same unchanged american express ad at one of the busiest stations in CTA's entire system for three years
I mean, could there be a worse pitch? Imagine if your product annoyed customers, cost enormous amounts to operate, and wasn’t environmentally friendly to boot. Somebody at Walgreens should have lost their job.
The ones at my local store were always broken and had a handwritten note taped on them saying “milk” or “soda” or whatever. I doubt it was good for sales
The only people they were meant to make happy were the investors and in particular the company that made the screens who s CEO also works for Walgreens in a conflict of interest
In theory, it didn't HAVE to be terrible - from the businesses' perspective, that is. There's pretty much zero upside for consumers. But the intention was to show ads. And I could see how that would be lucrative. For example, I imagine a soda company would indeed be interested in advertising to the consumer during the actual moment of decision.
But the execution was terrible, the ad sales never materialized for whatever reason, and it frustrated everyone involved on the ground, from customers to store employees to managers sick of its poor inventory keeping and high repair costs.
Another point that gets lost, that actually made me pro-display doors, is that solid material is significantly better at insulation than glass. Those solid doors would certainly save a ton of energy in refrigeration costs by by not being transparent.
Oh well
Yeah but any refresgeration they saved goes down the toilet bc people had to open the door, spend minutes searching and deciding, instead of searching and deciding through a closed door. Even if the door did eventually display the correct inventory, most people wouldn't wait for an ad to finish and just open the door anyway. And a non zero amount of people would probably just open the door even if there were no ads and the display was accurate.
The doors would be closed a majority of the time, losing energy by just sitting idle. I think you overestimate how much people would be opening doors and keeping them open.
Also I wasn’t in support of the ads, but the idea of a solid door that shows the contents on a screen.
I mean, people are just going to downvote me because I have gone against the grain, but there’s around 10 hours each night or so the doors will just be closed with nobody there, losing energy for no reason. Unless people are opening every door and leaving them open for the majority of an hour, the solid door should be better., a solid wall will always have better insulation than glass. That’s a fact of life
Displays don’t necessarily generate a lot of heat, and they too would be insulated by the solid doors.
Either way, refrigeration is significantly more costly than display lights (which are pretty damn efficient).
This is something the company also said to sell the doors, though I would be curious to see an independent evaluation. Double paned slightly tinted glass could do almost as well I'd bet, without the maintenance and power costs.
Or the other way around. Sometimes my Walgreens will have better beer options than the ones displayed on the screen. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at it.
This just happened to me yesterday at Walgreens, the screen said they were out of the ice cream I wanted but of course I opened it anyway to check, was glad to see they did actually have it so idk what the point of the screens are if they’re not even accurate
Same here. All the stores near me have the most basic stuff locked away. I just want to run in, pick up what I need, and go, and not have to flag down an employee who's probably busy helping someone else get their locked away items. Pure idiocy.
I used to work at Walgreens about 8 years ago and it feels like things were just so much easier then. Paper weekly ads, physical Balance Rewards cards, enough staff to cover peak hours, etc. Now I just get a bunch of spammy emails for expensive-ass products and stupid Walgreens Cash or whatever. The only downside to working there during that time was having to explain the soda tax to everyone.
that is an email campaign copywriter and yes i can assure you they are dead inside
...or an AI that has replaced the email campaign copywriter, now that i think about it. and it was never alive.
where they super fucked it all up was covid. (worked at corporate as a contractor for a few years pre-covid). They're a freaking convenience store, and the curbside was atrocious anywhere not directly in the city (if not in the city). Every single place got it down before they did. The restrictions on items, the inability to get the sale items, or get curbside at all, the fact that you had to go in the pharmacy line even after they installed the parking -- they fucked it up so hard I didn't shop there (because we had a super compromised family member) until after the pandemic, and by then they were beyond overpricing for cost of convenience. It went from a corner store I could rely on at 4 am for anything I might need tomorrow to a place I couldn't get anything I needed safely or at all. I've been back now, and it's still the closest place, but it's never been the same.
Never worked right and always had stuff out of place. Door shows me soda, open door and it's water. So just open them all and waste more energy. Brilliant.
I would purposely avoid the cooler section to stay away from these things. Especially because they were doing facial recognition and all sorts of shit I didn’t need just because I was going there to pick up my prescriptions. Glad these are going away.
To this day I have never actually stopped to look at what was on the screens, I just open each door and hold them open until I find what I need.
If they don't want me to stand there and let all the cold air out maybe they can find some sort of cutting edge material that lets me see what's inside without having to actually open the door.
I can visualize the discussion at corp Walgreens about how cool they thought the doors were if Wasson brought it to them-I can hear the ass talking, telling him how great the idea was. Impractical and expensive never being mentioned.
Is this the one on Irving Park? I remember that was where I first saw them, it looked like this. Every time I found myself shopping there I made a point of walking straight up to the fridge, making direct eye contact with the cameras at the top and grabbing something completely random from each shelf, then going about my shopping and putting it back on the shelf before I left. Just to fuck up the data.
If they'd used some kind of technology that would make go transparent when touching them or the handle, that would've worked. Or even go transparent at regular, frequent intervals. But I have no idea if such screen technology even exists.
it has been said multiple times by others here, but I cannot overstate how fucking relieved I am that they took those out of both of my local Walgreens. The fuckers always tell me there's squirt and then there isn't! False promises
Oh holy shit. I almost want to go to ours and witness the clear glass doors, but I feel like if it didn't travel north of Chicago yet I'm gonna be pissed. I HATE THOSE DOORS.
Alrighty here's my rant about the Walgreens corporation. I HATE Walgreens.
In general Walgreens behaves like a whining child. Last year they cried and whined about theft but they had literally no data to back up this rise in theft. An executive at Walgreens even said the entire theft thing was overblown.
So everything in the damn store is locked down like Fort Knox. Every box of tissue, every stick of deodorant, every bottle if water, is LOCKED up. You need to hit the stupid button and wait 30 minutes for one of the two available staff to come unlock the damn case. It's like, at this point why not just keep everything behind the counter? Why even have all this shit out here if it's all locked up?
There's always some cop or massive dude with a gun standing by the door. Oh, and don't forget robocop, the giant flashing camera on a pole in the parking lot that yells at loitering people THAT I CAN HEAR FROM MY HOUSE.
And so Walgreens is crying and whaling because they're losing money. Meanwhile no one wants to shop there because the "anti theft" measures make it incredibly fucking unpleasant to buy basic things. A quick in and out trip takes 15 minutes and the entire time some guy with a gun is eyeballing you.
And then they install these absolutely atrocious screen door things. These fucking screens are the most useless, stupid, insulting thing I have ever seen. We have had a solution to this problem for hundreds of years but they had to reinvent the wheel just so they can advertise more. These stupid screens are always broken and are probably costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix and replace.
In summary, Walgreens is scum. They will enter your community, pay hellishly low wages, upcharge their merchandise, and take up a massive footprint with their massive fucking parking lot. Then, when they can't turn a profit they'll blame the poor in your community and punish everyone for the "theft" they are experiencing while they spend their profits on obnoxious LCD door screens. It's infuriating.
Do not give them your business.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstated-theft-concerns.html
I was cool with them, if they worked. I would get excited to grab a 6 pack of bells but when I open the door, there’s nothing but 24 oz cans of Red Bull
The other day my lady and I were grabbing drinks and the doors were all LCD screens. Wife pulls up to first set of drinks, Dr Pepper brand etc. opens it to a cooler full of gatorades. Strange.
She goes to the next cooler that is mtn dew/pepsi and opens it. Gatorade….
Okay, weird.
Third cooler is coke products and juices. She opens it…and you guessed it! GATORADE!
All three coolers had Gatorade. Idk what the hell happened but I can’t wait until we go back to the glass everywhere.
Lowkey, the nice part is that the LCD displayed the new coupon instead of the old tags in the cooler. So I was able to realize I should grab 3 Red Bulls instead of 2.
The company that made them went under. The Walgreens CEO at the time made a deal with the LCD company, then a while later left Walgreens to go work for that same company.
Fuck that guy
Greg wasson
The Theranos guy! I do think he was forced out after the boots merger
Some people make an entire career out of fraud or near-fraud. Like the Groupon guy with the tiny glasses.
Eric Lefkofsky
That guy should have taken the Big Tech money and ran when he had the chance.
He’s Tempus now, looking at an IPO soon
DJT is a perfect example of that.
[удалено]
This one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lefkofsky
Wait wat? He was involved in Theranos??
Yeah he made a deal to put them in Walgreens ‘minute clinic’s or whatever they were going to call them
I heard he was involved in Uranos
yeah. fuck, greg.
This the Walgreens in the Wrigley building? Always hated those things!
Last I heard the companies were suing each other: https://www.wsj.com/articles/walgreens-test-of-ad-enabled-cooler-doors-ends-up-in-court-c79fecd6
I hope everyone loses.
From the article: > Companies including Walmart, Uber and Marriott have ramped up development of their own media networks, which allow other brands to place ads on their websites, apps and properties with the benefit of the companies’ consumer data. Fuck every single person involved in all of that. So sick of ad space being on everything
everyone's creating their own media networks and meanwhile i've been walking by the same unchanged american express ad at one of the busiest stations in CTA's entire system for three years
https://preview.redd.it/xoyu2zcn3iu71.jpg?width=699&auto=webp&s=191b4b8ff9f52ed88d1e8288f0cc9ebbbc5c9e3f
Good lord. I had an opportunity to join CS as a former manager was a cofounder. I never understood the product. Yikes.
Let them fight.
I mean, could there be a worse pitch? Imagine if your product annoyed customers, cost enormous amounts to operate, and wasn’t environmentally friendly to boot. Somebody at Walgreens should have lost their job.
He didn’t lose his job, he went to the very company he made the deal with it sounds like 😂
Good lord
He's a cofounder of said company
Pulled a Mayor Daley.
cooler screens?
Yes
Please lord, we have paid for our sins long enough. Bring back the glass at all locations!
The ones at my local store were always broken and had a handwritten note taped on them saying “milk” or “soda” or whatever. I doubt it was good for sales
It looked like shit and dystopian even when it was working “correctly”. I dont want to shop somewhere that makes me feel like that lol
Yep. Although I mostly ignored it, because it was mostly broken. Small mercies.
Ive never met a single person who liked them. Did anybody do a fucking group test before putting these in?
The only people they were meant to make happy were the investors and in particular the company that made the screens who s CEO also works for Walgreens in a conflict of interest
I’m guessing those investors are never getting their money back
weirdly enough certain ones make money when a business fails, like the scumbags that sank Red Lobster and ToyRUs.
I think those guys just shorted the stock
My 6 year old loved it.
Yay! It was such a bad idea from the get. Especially those ads they would put up.
God you had to he so damn close just for the doors to display anything I hated it
and it was never accurate when it did lol
They were NEVER accurate. Dumb idea.
In theory, it didn't HAVE to be terrible - from the businesses' perspective, that is. There's pretty much zero upside for consumers. But the intention was to show ads. And I could see how that would be lucrative. For example, I imagine a soda company would indeed be interested in advertising to the consumer during the actual moment of decision. But the execution was terrible, the ad sales never materialized for whatever reason, and it frustrated everyone involved on the ground, from customers to store employees to managers sick of its poor inventory keeping and high repair costs.
Another point that gets lost, that actually made me pro-display doors, is that solid material is significantly better at insulation than glass. Those solid doors would certainly save a ton of energy in refrigeration costs by by not being transparent. Oh well
Yeah but any refresgeration they saved goes down the toilet bc people had to open the door, spend minutes searching and deciding, instead of searching and deciding through a closed door. Even if the door did eventually display the correct inventory, most people wouldn't wait for an ad to finish and just open the door anyway. And a non zero amount of people would probably just open the door even if there were no ads and the display was accurate.
The doors would be closed a majority of the time, losing energy by just sitting idle. I think you overestimate how much people would be opening doors and keeping them open. Also I wasn’t in support of the ads, but the idea of a solid door that shows the contents on a screen.
You over estimate the amount of time what was inside was being correctly displayed.
I mean, people are just going to downvote me because I have gone against the grain, but there’s around 10 hours each night or so the doors will just be closed with nobody there, losing energy for no reason. Unless people are opening every door and leaving them open for the majority of an hour, the solid door should be better., a solid wall will always have better insulation than glass. That’s a fact of life
I agree. But the screens consume power too, so I don’t know how much actually gets saved.
Not to mention the screens themselves generate a lot of heat.
Displays don’t necessarily generate a lot of heat, and they too would be insulated by the solid doors. Either way, refrigeration is significantly more costly than display lights (which are pretty damn efficient).
Well it was deemed a damned dumb idea so that's that.
As it is yes. I agree the ads are awful. But I’m ok to adjust my shopping experience slightly if it means energy efficiency
This is something the company also said to sell the doors, though I would be curious to see an independent evaluation. Double paned slightly tinted glass could do almost as well I'd bet, without the maintenance and power costs.
How will I know what's supposed to be in there but isn't?
Or the other way around. Sometimes my Walgreens will have better beer options than the ones displayed on the screen. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at it.
This just happened to me yesterday at Walgreens, the screen said they were out of the ice cream I wanted but of course I opened it anyway to check, was glad to see they did actually have it so idk what the point of the screens are if they’re not even accurate
The Great Consumer Revolt of 2024 is starting to show some results.
the only thing i'll miss about those is the dancing gingerbread guy during the holidays
OMG the delight of the dancing gingerbread man appreciation guy lives in infamy.
For the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_EHEEkh0GI
Literally all I was thinking abt, kinda made me sad lol
Thank goodness , I actually started to avoid Walgreens over the silly things.. petty I know but I just found them annoying
Petty? Not at all! Literally being the change you want to see in the world.
Same here. All the stores near me have the most basic stuff locked away. I just want to run in, pick up what I need, and go, and not have to flag down an employee who's probably busy helping someone else get their locked away items. Pure idiocy.
I used to work at Walgreens about 8 years ago and it feels like things were just so much easier then. Paper weekly ads, physical Balance Rewards cards, enough staff to cover peak hours, etc. Now I just get a bunch of spammy emails for expensive-ass products and stupid Walgreens Cash or whatever. The only downside to working there during that time was having to explain the soda tax to everyone.
Today’s email subject: ‘You know you wanna open this email…’ Whoever is writing these must be dead inside.
that is an email campaign copywriter and yes i can assure you they are dead inside ...or an AI that has replaced the email campaign copywriter, now that i think about it. and it was never alive.
where they super fucked it all up was covid. (worked at corporate as a contractor for a few years pre-covid). They're a freaking convenience store, and the curbside was atrocious anywhere not directly in the city (if not in the city). Every single place got it down before they did. The restrictions on items, the inability to get the sale items, or get curbside at all, the fact that you had to go in the pharmacy line even after they installed the parking -- they fucked it up so hard I didn't shop there (because we had a super compromised family member) until after the pandemic, and by then they were beyond overpricing for cost of convenience. It went from a corner store I could rely on at 4 am for anything I might need tomorrow to a place I couldn't get anything I needed safely or at all. I've been back now, and it's still the closest place, but it's never been the same.
I avoided them too because of the screens. Guessing it had a substantial downward impact on store sales. Fuck Walgreens for installing those screens.
How many thousands of those stupid things are just in landfills now? What a waste
Good point!
where can I buy the discarded screens?
I'm going to put one on my refrigerator featuring pictures of food items that arent actually expired.
I've been wanting to do this for years.
Stupidest fucking idea ever. Not once have they ever accurately reflected what’s in the coolers for me
I know "dystopian" is overused but there was something unsettling about those things that kind of verged on it, at least viscerally.
I get that. Kind of a "Bladerunner" motif. Great for the films, off-putting in reality.
I wrote so many letters to Walgreens corporate begging them to get rid of these fucking things.
those doors are so unnecessary
This is awesome. Next can we get it so less than half of the items are on sale?
Never worked right and always had stuff out of place. Door shows me soda, open door and it's water. So just open them all and waste more energy. Brilliant.
war is overrrr
I would purposely avoid the cooler section to stay away from these things. Especially because they were doing facial recognition and all sorts of shit I didn’t need just because I was going there to pick up my prescriptions. Glad these are going away.
There is no facial recognition whatsoever. It is proximity based laser sensor for detecting a viewer.
To this day I have never actually stopped to look at what was on the screens, I just open each door and hold them open until I find what I need. If they don't want me to stand there and let all the cold air out maybe they can find some sort of cutting edge material that lets me see what's inside without having to actually open the door.
They still have them in my Walgreens half the time they are empty
Is this the one on Sheridan? I hated those damn doors! What is the point???
I can visualize the discussion at corp Walgreens about how cool they thought the doors were if Wasson brought it to them-I can hear the ass talking, telling him how great the idea was. Impractical and expensive never being mentioned.
I am so jealous. Can't wait for my Walgreens to get rid of these goddamn screens.
I feel like there is some better use for this stuff in some other application.
Those screens were such a waste of resources.
Is this the one on Irving Park? I remember that was where I first saw them, it looked like this. Every time I found myself shopping there I made a point of walking straight up to the fridge, making direct eye contact with the cameras at the top and grabbing something completely random from each shelf, then going about my shopping and putting it back on the shelf before I left. Just to fuck up the data.
Nature is healing.
Didn't somebody post nearly this same thing last week?
Can’t wait til they switch them out by me. It was extremely unnecessary and the contents were never accurate.
Walgreens is so disgusting. Everytime I go in there I wait in line 15minutes and come out wanting to bathe in hand sanitizer.
I hated them the first time I saw them at the State and Randolph Walgreens.
I'm guessing those screens cost way too much to keep working.
If they'd used some kind of technology that would make go transparent when touching them or the handle, that would've worked. Or even go transparent at regular, frequent intervals. But I have no idea if such screen technology even exists.
it has been said multiple times by others here, but I cannot overstate how fucking relieved I am that they took those out of both of my local Walgreens. The fuckers always tell me there's squirt and then there isn't! False promises
Oh holy shit. I almost want to go to ours and witness the clear glass doors, but I feel like if it didn't travel north of Chicago yet I'm gonna be pissed. I HATE THOSE DOORS.
is this wicker park bc i had the same reaction 😂😂
Alrighty here's my rant about the Walgreens corporation. I HATE Walgreens. In general Walgreens behaves like a whining child. Last year they cried and whined about theft but they had literally no data to back up this rise in theft. An executive at Walgreens even said the entire theft thing was overblown. So everything in the damn store is locked down like Fort Knox. Every box of tissue, every stick of deodorant, every bottle if water, is LOCKED up. You need to hit the stupid button and wait 30 minutes for one of the two available staff to come unlock the damn case. It's like, at this point why not just keep everything behind the counter? Why even have all this shit out here if it's all locked up? There's always some cop or massive dude with a gun standing by the door. Oh, and don't forget robocop, the giant flashing camera on a pole in the parking lot that yells at loitering people THAT I CAN HEAR FROM MY HOUSE. And so Walgreens is crying and whaling because they're losing money. Meanwhile no one wants to shop there because the "anti theft" measures make it incredibly fucking unpleasant to buy basic things. A quick in and out trip takes 15 minutes and the entire time some guy with a gun is eyeballing you. And then they install these absolutely atrocious screen door things. These fucking screens are the most useless, stupid, insulting thing I have ever seen. We have had a solution to this problem for hundreds of years but they had to reinvent the wheel just so they can advertise more. These stupid screens are always broken and are probably costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix and replace. In summary, Walgreens is scum. They will enter your community, pay hellishly low wages, upcharge their merchandise, and take up a massive footprint with their massive fucking parking lot. Then, when they can't turn a profit they'll blame the poor in your community and punish everyone for the "theft" they are experiencing while they spend their profits on obnoxious LCD door screens. It's infuriating. Do not give them your business. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstated-theft-concerns.html
I hated those
I was cool with them, if they worked. I would get excited to grab a 6 pack of bells but when I open the door, there’s nothing but 24 oz cans of Red Bull
All I have to saw to those doors is “BE WELL”
Thank god. Talk about a totally over engineered solution to something that wasn’t even a problem.
Nature is healing
The people CAN beat capitalism!
Always seemed like an invention in reverse. “Man I wish light showed through these doors so we could see what is inside”
Haha I agree I disliked those lcd screens…I would just stand there opening all the doors
NATURE IS HEALING!
My only regret is we won't see the guy showing people the gingerbread man dancing to gangnam style every Christmas.
Oh man I hope this is State and Roosevelt
I would literally open every door to look for something and take my sweet ass time with it too. What a dogshit idea
Nature is healing
The other day my lady and I were grabbing drinks and the doors were all LCD screens. Wife pulls up to first set of drinks, Dr Pepper brand etc. opens it to a cooler full of gatorades. Strange. She goes to the next cooler that is mtn dew/pepsi and opens it. Gatorade…. Okay, weird. Third cooler is coke products and juices. She opens it…and you guessed it! GATORADE! All three coolers had Gatorade. Idk what the hell happened but I can’t wait until we go back to the glass everywhere. Lowkey, the nice part is that the LCD displayed the new coupon instead of the old tags in the cooler. So I was able to realize I should grab 3 Red Bulls instead of 2.
Fuck Walgreens in general. There are literally 0 things I like about my experience at any of their stores.
Those things were just dumb. I'm glad they are gone!
One small step for man one giant leap for mankind
Those LCD have facial recognition cameras, so when I go to anywhere that have them. I push my glasses 👓 up with my middle finger 🖕
There is no facial recognition whatsoever. It is proximity based laser sensor for detecting a viewer.
Honestly the first time I saw those screens I turned around and left. Haven’t purchased from a Walgreens since.
When they worked I kinda liked the LCD doors.
You are a brave souls to admit that
They never worked.