Eh, depending on the flavor, the mark of the beast types don’t even really like barcodes. Allegedly Hobby Lobby does not use a barcode inventory system for this reason.
I will say that their list of reasons is deeply flawed.
> Human beings can't read a bar code.
- they can, and more importantly they almost never have to
> A lot of our product comes from cottage industries in Asia that couldn't mark their goods with bar codes if they tried.
- They can be added at the store/warehouse level, not every product needs one, and I've never seen a store that worked entirely on bar codes 100% of the time anyway.
> Inventory control by computer is not as accurate as you think.
- This assumes what I think, and it only needs to be more accurate than your current method. If it actually weren't more accurate, I don't think they'd have to fall back on "as you think" in their argument.
> Employees take more pride in their work when they know they are in charge, not some faceless machine.
- this doesn't even make sense.
> Customer service is better.
- questionable, but not impossible to support
> The time savings at check-out is minimal — and easily squandered.
- possible, but time savings at checkout is only one benefit.
- Reprogramming the computer for sales would take a huge effort in our case, because we put so many individual items on sale each week.
- It would take effort, but stores with much more inventory manage it just fine, even when new products are constantly coming in and sales are weekly.
> Twenty million dollars is a lot of money.
- I have no idea from the article what this is in reference to. Maybe the amount it would take for them to make the the switch? It's hard to say how much money it would save them so it's fair to say cost is a concern. I will say that over a long enough time period, it'd probably save more than it costs.
None of this means that concern over "the mark of the beast" is really the reason, but the reasons they gave don't make a lot of sense either. It could just as easily be that poor record keeping and manual entry at the register allow them commit fraud or something.
I suspect that if the mark of the beast plays any role at all, it's that no having barcodes panders to the christian customer base they've always heavily pandered to. Even just the rumor is basically viral marketing for them to that crowd.
Personally, Hobby Lobby's poor inventory management is a major frustration for me as a customer. Unlike other stores, they don't have any way for me to check online whether the product that I want is at their store. Granted, I avoid shopping at Hobby Lobby in general due to their owners regressive views; but at those times when I couldn't find something at a competitor it would have been helpful to be able to see if I could get it from them.
I'm not sure that's true, but it would make it more difficult since it'd be easier for customers to cheat. You'd need more monitoring than most stores at the very least.
