Weighing and billing my own grocery in Switzerland!
OK, I come from India and there in malls, after shopping, usually a mall staff scans the barcode of each individual items, bills them, I pay and bring them. Further, at the exit, a security guard usually verifies by matching the items in the bill with the contents in my bag, so as to check that I am not stealing anything.
I was completely bewildered here in Zurich when I found that in the COOP malls, there are self-service counters, where you scan the barcodes by yourself, deposit the amount to the cash machine, and pack the items in your bag. There are state of the art sensors and security systems to check theft, and no person does any verification physically. While buying vegetables too, you weigh them on the machine yourself, put a tag for the weight, and pay accordingly to the cash machine, which looks something like this:
You are further allowed to carry your own bag into the shopping center, in which you can carry the items after you have bought them. In India, people are usually instructed to keep their bags outside the mall at a designated counter, and are allowed to carry only transparent polythene bags inside, so that they don’t use their bags to steal items from the mall.
Furthermore, there has never been any checking for tickets in the buses and trams running within Zurich, in the two months I have been here. It is your own responsibility to buy and keep valid tickets for your journey, but even if you don’t, you probably wouldn’t be caught. Sure, as some readers pointed out, there are occasional surprise checks, and hefty fines for travelling without tickets, but most of the time, they just trust you to be honest.
This came completely as a shock to me. I admit that such a system works because there is enormous wealth here and they can afford such perfect security systems. Furthermore, no one has any need to cheat or steal as almost everyone is well off. This is extremely efficient as it significantly reduces the number of staff required to carry out such chec . king and verifying activities.
Edit 1:
Thanks to the comments that helped to refine some points in the answer
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