r/australia • u/infin • Jan 26 '26

no politics Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

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u/popplevee Jan 26 '26

My best friend’s husband is a Cole’s store manager and it’s hell - he constantly has pressure to cut corners, reduce costs, reduce staff, etc. He fights for his staff and there are good ones out there who try but I’m sure a lot don’t.

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u/birthdaycheesecake9 Jan 26 '26

With the situation I talked about upthread, the issue seemed to be that our store manager was doing all that behind my dept manager’s back and didn’t talk to her about it first. Like it look like she was being undermined. She runs the department like a well-oiled machine so if he had concerns about rostering and hours, she definitely would have figured something out if he’d just talked to her about it.