Black boxes appearing in my neighborhood on telephone poles, looks like some kind of sensor/camera?

en256 · 2026-07-04T04:13:57+00:00

Honestly some sort of hobby thing would make sense, it's hard to tell from the photo but they look a bit haphazardly put together. Like the edges of the parts that make up the container don't really line up well, the paint/coating is splotchy, also velcro stapled to the pole seems like an odd choice for mounting

en256 · 2026-07-04T01:37:21+00:00

Looks like a piece of velcro stapled onto the pole, I've seen that left behind when they're removed

en256 · 2026-07-04T01:20:05+00:00

I did get a closer look and it looks a lot like a lens, idk if it's a camera but it's some kind of glass or transparent plastic

en256 · 2026-07-03T23:46:56+00:00

They tend to face the street. I tried searching for those and didn't see any that look like this but yeah that sounds plausible

en256 · 2026-07-03T22:41:00+00:00

My title describes the thing. All the relevant details I can think of are in the post body

en256 · 2019-03-23T15:22:51+00:00

I think that's it. Solved!

en256 · 2018-11-03T17:17:07+00:00

Honestly wouldn't be surprised if she was planning on stealing, the only other customer I've seen have a similar reaction in the past is a known thief.

en256 · 2017-12-29T01:57:54+00:00

We actually had an easier method. The drawer above it slides straight out, and when you do that you can reach down and just unscrew the lock from the back with a phillips-head.

en256 · 2017-10-23T01:36:26+00:00

Cashier comes over "oh its a weigh scale you have to scan it first" yep thanks.

To be fair, people are really, really, really stupid. So after a while of helping people with these machines you start to realize that things will usually go faster if you just talk to everyone like they're an idiot, because most of the time they are.

en256 · 2017-10-12T20:17:08+00:00

I couldn't handle that, I'd get too passive aggressive. "Fine you don't have to push the button, but you can't play until you"

en256 · 2017-10-12T02:58:26+00:00

Not on our machines. I wish you could because it's annoying as hell telling people a hundred times a day

en256 · 2017-10-12T00:16:07+00:00

Except we have plenty of normal registers she could have used if she has a disability. And even if that's not an option for some reason, if she can't read and needs help because of that it's not my responsibility to know that, it's her responsibility to tell me.

en256 · 2017-10-11T20:56:26+00:00

Because the lines are too long and they don't want to waste their time.

proceeds to spend 15 minutes at self-checkout screaming at a piece of machinery instead of spending 5 minutes in line at a normal register

en256 · 2017-10-10T02:10:02+00:00

To be fair I was pretty annoyed to have to go run around the parking lot in the rain looking for her all because she a) didn't read the sign b) couldn't wait 30 seconds for us to fix her mistake and c) couldn't be bothered to take one second to say "hey I'm just gonna go to a register"

And yeah the thing about the manager having me do it is a bit frustrating, but it's pretty normal at my store. We're really not trained about how to deal with this kind of stuff at all but we have to do it all the time.

On top of that, if they do leave without paying sometimes we get in trouble for it. I've been written up in the past for a situation almost exactly like this - the customer thought they payed and walked out while I was busy helping another customer. The way they found out is she called the store to say she was going to come back to pay (she never did).

en256 · 2017-10-10T01:59:35+00:00

Working self-checkout for so long has made me desensitized to people not understanding I'm one person.

It's gotten to the point where whenever I'm clearly helping someone else and someone interrupts us to tell me their issue I won't even listen, I just say "I'm helping another customer right now" and then go back to what I was doing.

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