America's shoplifting problem, explained by retail workers and thieves

https://www.vox.com/money/23938554/shoplifting-organized-retail-crime-walmart-target-theft-laws

by cainxinth • 3 years ago

48 190 3 years ago

progne• 3 years ago

Tolerating shoplifting is burning the furniture to keep warm, eating the seeds for the next crop. Stores close, jobs flee, food and medicine deserts grow. Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies. I'm watching it happen in real time in my nearest big city.

It's a huge slow motion train wreck crushing the people who need help most. To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime, more in proportion to the damage that it does.

philipov2• 3 years ago

To help them, we need to be less tolerant of the white collar crime perpetrated by the employers in our country.

orochimaaru3• 3 years ago

How would targeting white collar crime prevent the closure of stores because of safety concerns and store losses?

White collar crime needs to be prosecuted. But that won’t help here.

owlstuffing• 3 years ago

The two are not mutually exclusive.

arijun• 3 years ago

To me this sounds like a “no u” argument. Whataboutism doesn’t address the op’s claim that shoplifting reduces access to stores for those who really need it.

Spivak4• 3 years ago

To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime

??? Petty crime by any reasonable definition is an inferior good, above a (not actually all that large) income people stop doing it. It's not entirely clear how punishing it harder is actually going to help until you actually help the truly desperate. Now, once you do and the only people left shoplifting have no claim to any kind of "well I had to because I couldn't afford <necessity>" then you can bring the wrath of god down on it.

stewx• 3 years ago

No one has to steal, and it's insulting to honorable low-income people to claim otherwise.

BitwiseFool3• 3 years ago

"It's not entirely clear how punishing it harder"

It seems like nowadays 'punishing at all' is a serious issue. If the police say they won't show up for theft under a certain dollar amount they've basically made it legal to steal up to that amount.

"until you actually help the truly desperate"

Food banks and welfare programs exist. I feel like sympathetic people are ignoring the fact that some people realize they can do illegal things because it gives them an advantage, not solely because there is no other option.

ulizzle2• 3 years ago

The Aladdin fallacy. Everyone who steals is driven to it by desperate circumstances. But if you read the article, dire straits means the liquor aisle or the electronics section.

justrealist4• 3 years ago

It's not desperation! It's organized crime reselling on Amazon and Ebay!

Target is't losing money because people are stealing gallons of milk they actually consume, it's because organized gangs empty the entire shelf of laundry detergent and flip it online. The romanticism here is ridiculous.

idiotsecant4• 3 years ago

Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs. You do that when you fall down the rabbit hole of not having other options.

If we do our job of educating and providing very basic social services and opportunities for young people it turns out that crime rates get lower and we get to harness the collective human potential of a generation instead of paying to lock them up.

Unfortunately we have to rely on the better nature and responsible long term planning abilities of humans to get this done. One human might be able to stick to a plan that becomes impossible for 5.

ipnon3• 3 years ago

It’s easy to deal with the crime in SF when you’re in Palo Alto!

gustavus5• 3 years ago

Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies.

We need to keep in mind most of this shoplifting is not out of desperation or people needing things in most cases. Despite what people like to complain the US does have some social programs and beyond that almost every major city I've been in has multiple food banks and other organizations that help with people in extreme need. I'm not saying they are perfectly adequate, and I'm not trying to be scroogesque by saying "are there not workhouses or prisons?", merely to point out that first off there are lots of people that are desperate that don't turn to retail theft. In order to frame the real root of the problem.

It's organized crime. Here's how the scam works, there are various drug addicts, they will do anything for their next fix, they are the ones performing the actual theft. They then sell what they steal to the middle managers who will give them money or drugs for the merchandise. The middle managers then turn around and deliver it to what I'll call "HQ" which then turns around and sales it online, and they are able to underbid their competitors by virtue of having very low operating costs.

There was a wonderful article about how this scam was being run with a baby food ring operating out of Florida, but it is a similar story in multiple areas.

I put this out there to disabuse some people of the seemingly naive notion that these poor shoplifters are noble "Jean ValJean" types trying to steal bread to feed their family, and the truth that many of them, although held captive in the throes of addiction and mental health crises, are cogs in a machine of organized crime which although viewed microscopically doesn't seem like a big deal, when expanded up cause true societal destabilization.

qingcharles4• 3 years ago

Yes. I would guess that most drug dealers take more payments in stolen merch than they do in cold, hard cash.

drewcoo2• 3 years ago

If people are burning the furniture to keep warm, cracking down more harshly on furniture burning probably doesn't make the people less desperate for heat to live.

If people are desperate enough to eat the seed they know they need for the next crop, policing seed use more strictly won't make the people less desperate for food. In fact, it probably makes them more desperate.

Why would you think being less tolerant of shoplifting would make the people less desperate?

WalterBright5• 3 years ago

Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift

That assumes they are desperate, and not just find it easier to steal than to work.

scoofy• 3 years ago

It’s a two tiered system.

I live in SF, and when I see a man grab a rack of jackets at target and walk out, it’s obvious the act of a desperate and drug addled individual.

When I see an efficient group of people in a Lexus breaking into cars or luxury stores, or the groups reselling fenced merchandise on 24th and Mission, it’s obviously organized crime.

The one fuels the other. There’s little reason for a desperate man to steal 10 jackets (he only needs one or two), unless there is a fence willing to buy them. There’s little reason for organized crime to break into cars or shops when others are willing to do that work for them, they can focus on selling the goods on Facebook Marketplace or eBay.

qingcharles4• 3 years ago

The truth is weirder than that. In sections of society it is frowned upon to have paid employment. It is seen as being a loser. A decent percentage of shoplifting is done by those with drug addictions, but a bigger percentage is done by those who are not desperate or in need, but simply because it is seen as the respectable way to earn money.

Source: I am a criminal and have spent a serious portion of my adult life in custody

trinsic23• 3 years ago

I agree. And, we need to be more aware and action orientated towards our judicial systems to enforce the law and making sure people get treatment/help. I think this should probably start with our police and judicial systems

ip262• 3 years ago

Just a few weeks ago, NPR did a segment on how reducing traffic enforcement (because it disproportionately impacts minorities and the poor) has significantly increased the number of people hit and killed by cars… mostly minorities and the poor.

Ajay-p2• 3 years ago

I am sympathetic to a person stealing food or clothing but not iPhones and consumer products, but theft appears unsustainable for retailers. What is the answer to this problem? Options are:

a. More prosecutions and stronger enforcement of existing laws;

b. Greater security within the store environment; or

c. Closing the stores in areas with high crime.

The last option would not be productive for the community. Option B has its limitations such as profiling, potential hostile encounters, and civil liability for America retailers. I do not know what it was like for shoplifters a decade ago but one person has told me it was more stringent. Shoplifters were prosecuted and punished, therefore it is possible that the only solution is greater enforcement of the law, and aggressive prosecutions.

tasty_freeze• 3 years ago

Don't take this as me defending the shoplifters, but I don't think the smash-and-grab iphone thieves are doing it because they want dozens of phones. They are fencing them and use the money, which can buy food (and of course anything else).

vharuck• 3 years ago

This matches my brief experience. When I worked at a Lowe's store, which was a big target for serial shoplifters, the security staff said the process usually went like this:

1. Steal a small but expensive item, usually by hiding it in another item's box (return the big one later for a refund).

2. Return the stolen item at a different Lowe's, or even Home Depot. Without a receipt, you'll get a gift card with the item's value.

3. Sell the gift card at a discount, either online or to somebody in the parking lot.

I don't remember any problems with people stealing the basic things every good toolset should have, like hammers or drills. It was a lot of drill bits and attachments.

vorpalhex6• 3 years ago

Mostly drugs and alcohol. There is huge overlap between shoplifting and substance abuse.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104590/

gustavus5• 3 years ago

They are fencing them and use the money, which can buy meth and fentanyl

FTFY

maxfurman• 3 years ago

You are missing option d), raise the standard of living so that no one lives in poverty, and no one feels that stealing is the best way to get what they want.

vorpalhex6• 3 years ago

We have the highest standard of living in the world. There will always be thieves. Even in a post-scarcity utopia there will be thieves.

psychlops3• 3 years ago

Maybe he skipped that since eliminating poverty is an impossible solution.

gustavus5• 3 years ago

Duuhh it was so obvious the whole time, why don't we just fix poverty. It's so simple.

I mean it's not like there are dozens of confounding factors that make it a complicated problem like mental health issues, disabilities, immigration, substance abuse, or a dozen other things.

No it's probably all just the evil capitalist class, if we just got rid of them then everyone would be equal and joy and peace would exist forever just like in the Soviet Union known as a bastion of joy and freedom and peace, and they had practically no crime to boot. Was it because of a totalitarian police state that banished people to die in the frozens wastes of Siberia for life? No it was because the capitalists were gone that's clearly the solution.

underseacables2• 3 years ago

I think enforcing the laws will do it. Prosecution of shoplifting seem to be down, and police and resources have been diverted to other crimes. It’s created a self-fulfilling cycle of unpunished stealing.

al_borland• 3 years ago

Even with option B, the cost for that security could rise to the point where it doesn't make sense to keep the store open, and it turns into option C. A and B would really need to work together.

I've seen a non-trivial number of people online who work in retail say they are looking the other way on shoplifting, and others should do, because people are in need. However, this is short sighted. When all the stores close, there are no more places to shoplift from, the jobs go away, and even the people who did pay lose their options for buying goods. It's bad all the way around.

Maybe local governments can work with retailers and the community to setup local food banks, and shops for donated food, clothing, etc to give people an alternative to theft.

CivBase2• 3 years ago

I am sympathetic to a person stealing food or clothing but not iPhones and consumer products

I understand minimizing consequences for people in difficult situations. But in those cases the government needs to reimburse the shop and provide services to help the theif get out of their difficult situation.

Simply turning a blind eye is not an act of sympathy. It's apathy.

tomjen3• 3 years ago

We know that most shoplifting is committed by a small group[0], so we don't need to profile anybody, we can just ban people when they are convicted of their second theft (so as to avoid youngsters being stupid).

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...

impostervt• 3 years ago

My local grocery store chain (Giant) recently closed off 1 of the two main openings to every store, and the self-checkout is now very annoying about "put the item in the bagging area". All of their solutions seem to be very anti-consumer, to the point where I now use instacart instead of going myself. I've also started ordering from a different grocery store.

I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time.

CivBase2• 3 years ago

Better yet they could hire cashiers.

When self-checkout stations were introduced at my local grocier, they were a convenient way to checkout fast when you only had a few simple items. It was always a user-hostile experience, but it wasn't a big deal when you only had a few items.

Now there are so few cashiers ever available that I'm regularly forced to use self checkout with a few dozen items. And the experience has only gotten worse.

nfriedly• 3 years ago

I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time.

Same, but that's expensive and these stores often operate on very thin margins.

I worked at a k-mart when I was a teenager, 20-something years ago. The store had a problem with shoplifting and did hire a security guy to come in. He got some arrests for "petty" shoplifting, but it took something like a year to nail the big one. It turned out that the employee who had installed the cameras had been doing a ton of shoplifting. They eventually caught him because he made a mistake and did something on-camera.

That solved the shoplifting problem, but the security guy probably cost more than they saved. At any rate, the store closed down a year or two later.

sixothree3• 3 years ago

If the expense of hiring a few employees is greater than the cost of the loss from theft, then how big of a problem is this really?

ObnoxiousProxy• 3 years ago

Truthfully, the proliferation of crimes like this is a pre-condition of systems collapse because it slowly unravels a lawful society. Laws that are not enforced are useless, and behaviour like this would eventually permeate into mainstream culture. After all, why should I pay if others can steal without consequences? Not to mention the negative socioeconomic impacts others have already pointed out of forcing store closures or driving up costs which eventually just feed the loop.

Whether or not one is sympathetic towards the people practicing this, the key issue that is becoming apparent is increasing apathy towards basic civilizational social contracts. This will be bad for everyone in the long term.

reidjs• 3 years ago

Agree that it's bad people steal, but disagree that petty theft will slowly cause the collapse of our modern lawful society.

pc866• 3 years ago

It shifts the Overton window on what behavior is acceptable, and like the GP said it creates a feedback loop where stores close, prices increase, more people are forced to steal, etc etc. It's pretty widely accepted that lawlessness, even at the "petty" end of the spectrum, is a precursor to larger deterioration of society and whatever civilization/empire you're talking about specifically.

Paul-Craft5• 3 years ago

Well, I agree with this, but only because I believe the petty theft is a sign of in-progress collapse, rather than a cause of future collapse.

I suspect you disagree with me on that. What sort of evidence would you accept that would convince you of my position?

Nifty39292• 3 years ago

"Laws that are not enforced are useless" - Worse than useless because it's a license for the justice system to discriminate. "We don't normally enforce this law, but we're enforcing it against YOU right now."

thrill• 3 years ago

Also worse than useless because those who normally follow the law begin to build immense frustration and loss of desire to make their own good choices.

raincom• 3 years ago

It is called "prosecutorial discretion" used by prosecutors to favor the powerful, wealthy, connected folks. Right now, this discretion is extended to favor ordinary folks belonging to right categories.

brigadier1324• 3 years ago

Just imagine how much more abundance we would have if we didn't need to build all these security measures to deter bad actors. We are all paying more because of these thieves.

PH95VuimJjqBqy2• 3 years ago

Think about how much easier it would be if teenagers didn't fuck.

But teenagers do fuck, so we must deal with the reality of the human condition.

idiotsecant4• 3 years ago

Yes, that would definitely translate into abundance for all and not an extra 2% return to the owners.

kennywinker10• 3 years ago

The shareholders who contribute nothing of value and yet still require more and more wealth be extracted from retailers? Yeah, we’re definitely all paying more because of those thieves.

mcphage• 3 years ago

imagine how much more abundance we would have if we didn't need to build all these security measures to deter bad actors

This article has plenty of information about the fact that companies aren't building in security measures because they don't want to pay.

Or to put it another way: think about how much better shopping experiences we'd all have if stores weren't constantly understaffed. But they are, and so shopping sucks and shoplifters proliferate.

jasonjayr• 3 years ago

After all, why should I pay if others can steal without consequences?

I think that cuts to the heart of the basis of morality.

Do we need the threat of consequences in the afterlife, if there are no immediate consequences to the self? Are we allowed to do whatever we want now, if we can absolve ourselves of consequences in the afterlife?

And if you don't believe in an afterlife, Do we recognize that these actions can hurt others? Do we have empathy for those that were hurt and try to make them whole? Do we more strictly punish those that abuse that empathy? How about people who simply don't feel any empathy for others, how is that dealt with?

I don't have any good answers for these questions.

pc866• 3 years ago

if there are no immediate consequences to the self

Fixing this is the answer, isn't it? Make sure there are consequences. Watch any video of people riding bikes into a CVS and filling trash bags with goods. The employees are scared to do anything. Not only do they not try to stop them, many times they're actively preventing customers from trying to stop them. A minority of the time one of the other customers, who has probably seen this bullshit way too many times, tries to do something.

How about a law saying "if you are an employee of a store charged with loss prevention, security, or anything like that, you have qualified immunity when trying to stop an active theft?" The idea that I can run into a store and start stealing things, then turn around and sue the security guard AND the corporate store for punching me in the face while I'm doing it is ludicrous.

We already have laws that if someone is killed in the commission of a crime you're committing, it's the same as if you killed them. It's not unheard of to say that if you're committing a crime, the laws of liability change.

kennywinker10• 3 years ago

I think you might have it backwards. Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse. No matter how normalized, if there’s even a rare chance of consequences most people who can afford to pay will pay. That these crimes might be increasing (stats that prove that and aren’t junk are “hard to come by”) is evidence not of the theives not holding up their end of the social contract - but of employers, businesses, and governments not holding their end up.

Eddy_Viscosity2• 3 years ago

Exactly this. Crime is the symptom, not the cause.

dpkirchner• 3 years ago

Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse.

That this is not the obvious conclusion is alarming. We've been talking about the costs of poor social safety nets and high income inequality for decades.

threatofrain• 3 years ago

With ML we might have efficient ways of detecting enforceable scenarios, but I wonder if the tradeoff of cameras everywhere and a turnstile when entering a grocery market will be worth it.

Soon we might see conglomerations of businesses pooling their data together for global customer credibility scores.

seanmcdirmid6• 3 years ago

I think you might have it backwards. Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse.

It is probably a positive feedback loop: some system collapse causes some petty theft, which causes more system collapse, which causes more petty theft...

hat these crimes might be increasing (stats that prove that and aren’t junk are “hard to come by”) is evidence not of the theives not holding up their end of the social contract - but of employers, businesses, and governments not holding their end up.

Why not both? Much of the shoplifting in my area is for drug money (at least the blatant kind you get to see up front). Now, one could claim employers are wrong for not letting someone addicted to fent work, but maybe not. Definitely how they got to that point is some fault of society, however.

sershe• 3 years ago

"most people who can afford to pay will pay."

That is basically irrelevant; example - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...

It's by far not the most people who drive this. Non-enforcement of rules gives the worst individuals free reign. Enforcement works on the margins, and in this case the margins is basically all that matters, at least UNTIL the collapse.

bugglebeetle• 3 years ago

Sure, but that is a consequence of allowing police forces to devolve into extortionate gangs, with no responsibility for responding to crimes and plenty of latitude to commit their own, with impunity.

Some of the largest protests in US history were in opposition to this state of affairs and they were met with violent repression and police being rewarded with even larger budgets WITHOUT the requirement that they actually enforce laws.

fjfaase• 3 years ago

I think these processes are also driven by the fact that more and more people are living at or below the poverty level (due to an evert getting bigger gap between the rich and the poor) and reduction in social-economical mobility. The 'American dream' is no longer a reality in the USA. When large parts of socity live at the bare minimum and have no hope for improving their situation except through crime, it is to be expected that crime rates will increase.

seneca• 3 years ago

I think these processes are also driven by the fact that more and more people are living at or below the poverty level

Not true in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-s...

At 11.5% only two years since 1990 have been lower, 2019 and 2000.

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 3 years ago

There was an education thread the other day. No one much said it explicitly, we all danced around it... but it was mentioned that some states aren't bothering to teach math anymore, because some "groups" always failed. It was supposed to be some social justice thing.

I'm no racist. None of the children who were failing were incapable of understanding algebra. But there is a toxic culture that interferes with them wanting to learn it and behaving in ways that allow them to learn it.

It is asinine to say that they have no hope of improving their situation, when the same people are sabotaging themselves from childhood on up.

Sabotage piles up. When those retail stores inevitably flee those regions, there will be even fewer legitimate jobs to go around. There will be so-called "food deserts". And then that too will be blamed on late-stage capitalism and so forth.

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 3 years ago

I don't think anyone noticed themselves, nor has anyone listened when I've mentioned it previously, so I'll repeat:

Sometime decades ago, the police just stopped policing.

I don't have all the details. We can infer and speculate a bit that it didn't happen at the same time everywhere, all at once. But it can't have been much later than the 1980s or early 1990s, or I would have noticed.

The only thing that the police do with any earnestness or initiative are drug busts, and this is plainly because when they do drug busts they get to keep the proceeds whether that is cash or fast cars (that get new squad car paint jobs). They do the other things (local) politicians want, which is some ticket quota revenue collection once in awhile. They continue to begrudgingly take stolen car reports, because if more than a few voters complained they weren't doing that, eventually some politician somewhere would lose an election or be forced from office.

But there are no repercussions for refraining from any other sort of police work. Those scenes in The Wire where they're trying to convince rape victims not to report it (in that scenario, so their stats would look better)... not just narrative device. When we hear about them not going after a school shooter killing kids in classrooms, and we're straining our brains to explain it and the only thing that comes to mind is cowardice? Well, I've got a simpler, though no less bizarre explanation... it just wasn't in their job description.

This isn't accidental or temporary or bad management. You have Police Chiefs going on Twitter and chastising the public for believing that they should be able to park cars and not have their windows smashed and contents stolen. It is a matter of policy that they no longer do policing. This is backed up by case law that makes it official that they have no duty to the public to protect them from any crime.

Most of all though, you have a public that is somehow willfully ignorant of it, thinks that maybe they're just doing a bad job but doing the job, and if they're patient new people will be hired and maybe they'll start doing it moderately well again. It's baffling.

trinsic23• 3 years ago

Most of all though, you have a public that is somehow willfully ignorant of it, thinks that maybe they're just doing a bad job but doing the job, and if they're patient new people will be hired and maybe they'll start doing it moderately well again. It's baffling.

Cognitive dissonance. I think this is a symptom of a slow western civilzation collapse

drewcoo2• 3 years ago

What you're claiming, minor infractions leading to major ones, is called "broken windows theory."

It sounded convincing until someone actually researched it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-o...

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Truthfully, the proliferation of crimes like this is a pre-condition of systems collapse because it slowly unravels a lawful society

Truthfully, the proliferation of crimes like this is a symptom of systems collapse because it evidences the unravelling of a lawful society (or, at least, the pre-existing social order, which may not have been generally “lawful”.)

trinsic23• 3 years ago

I agree. I wonder what the conditions are that is causing this downfall of society?

charonn0• 3 years ago

After all, why should I pay if others can steal without consequences?

I've had this exact thought while waiting to pay for my purchases and watching people carry armloads of stolen items out the front door.

brucecrust• 3 years ago

I saw a generic bottle of mayo go for $8.99. I say steal more. The commodification of food is an evil in and of itself; our society is based on profit over people. Let this shit collapse. This is a symptom of economic systems failing people. The problem doesn't lie solely on individuals.

baggy_trough• 3 years ago

You wouldn't enjoy what would come next.

ip262• 3 years ago

Commodification is the opposite of profit. Every businessperson looking to make more money tries to get OUT of the commodity business.

Jun83• 3 years ago

Retailers use the equation (inventory in db - what's on shelf) = shrink, which conflates many different types of problems in one. Shrink can happen with errors in dbs and cycle counts, but the large part is due to actual theft. However, theft can take many different forms:

* Items "falling off the truck", i.e. you expect 100 units to be delivered to store, only 90 were delivered. Workers rarely check counts while receiving in store backrooms, so retailers think these were stolen from the shelves;

* Employees stealing stuff directly, either from the backroom or from the shelves;

* Employees working in conjunction with non-employees to steal, e.g. sweethearting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweethearting);

* Plain old shoplifting, e.g. somebody swiping a few items from the shelf into their pocket;

* Organized Retail Crime (ORC): People coming into the store and brazenly stealing entire shelves or racks of merchandise.

The first four has been around since Retail was invented, but their impact is relatively small on a store basis. It is the last item that is the killer and what is referred to as the rise in "shoplifting" recently. This is not shoplifting in the traditional sense at all. As an example, consider Cotopaxi closing their flagship store in SF: https://sgbonline.com/cotopaxi-closes-store-in-san-fransisco...

Retailers are very reluctant to deal directly with the problem, i.e. stop the people walking out. The reason is that the usual profile of people engaged in OCR as well as its relation to various progressive causes makes this a taboo subject in the US. This also makes it hard to discuss the problem. Just the other day I heard a segment on NPR saying retail theft has not increased and "statistics are hard to come by".

Edit: For those who (rightly) point out the fact that retailers are doing cost benefit analysis and deciding that the bad press is not worth it: consider walking into a bank in California and stealing (without using a weapon, just intimidation) less than $950 (lower than the misdemeanor theft limit for retail) and see if the bank would do a similar analysis.

thmsths• 3 years ago

I would also naively expect that trying to intervene directly is dangerous. Organized hints at multiple people, you do not want to start escalating things in such a situation.

ipnon3• 3 years ago

It’s simply more expensive to deal with the public relations and legal consequences of organized retail crime than to deal with it itself. These are national or even multinational corporations. They will let the stores in dysfunctional cities bleed out and write them off for the quarter, and remember this the next time they choose where to invest.

underseacables2• 3 years ago

Also political .

yoyohello13• 3 years ago

A company would much rather lose some inventory than deal with an employee that was injured or killed trying to stop a thief.

Paul-Craft5• 3 years ago

Only because one side of that equation costs more than another. Let's not attribute any sort of positive morality to the company here.

crote2• 3 years ago

Retailers are very reluctant to deal directly with the problem, i.e. stop the people walking out.

This isn't due to some kind of "woke" policy. You can't expect minimum-wage workers to literally risk their life trying to stop a potentially-armed shoplifter. The company sure isn't going to pay their healthcare costs when they get stabbed or shot, so why would the worker care about a slightly lower profit margin?

trealira• 3 years ago

From what the employee said, they're reluctant to take any action at all, like hiring more staff or caging certain merchandise like beer.

Corporate ignored employees’ requests to put booze in locked cases because the liquor aisle is an area of the store that attracts some especially “sketchy” characters. It also blew them off when they warned of camera blind spots that shoplifters were aware of. “The company didn’t really seem that interested in solving the problem, they seemed more interested in, I don’t know, complaining,” he says. The cops weren’t much help, either. They’d show up hours after being called and ask whether the perpetrators were still there (they obviously weren’t) and which way they’d gone (what does it matter if it was six hours ago?).

...

“All these companies that are screaming about theft, they’re kind of complicit in it because they keep reducing staff,” says Steven Rowland, the host of The Retail Warzone podcast and a former retail store manager. “From an hourly standpoint, a lot of these folks feel like they’re not paid enough to care anyway. And then you have store managers who are bleeding out, basically, because they have a lack of payroll, they don’t have enough staff just to get their basic functions done.”

Jun83• 3 years ago

You're right that store workers cannot be expected to interfere. What I meant was that they are reluctant to take more draconian measures, e.g. armed guards at the store and calling police immediately.

qingcharles4• 3 years ago

I knew someone who did 7.5 years in prison because he was the getaway driver for his female friend who stole a $5 hat from Walmart on the way out of the door and the shelf-stacker tried to be a hero and chase down the car, had to jump out of the way, hit their head on the kerb and was in a coma for months.

Walmart paid the medical bills which came in at over $2m.

Source: they were my cellmate in jail

Edit: but I live in the hood, and twice recently I've seen shoplifters beaten to shit by retail workers in Family Dollar and Walgreens for being caught stealing...

coleca• 3 years ago

After having worked in retail for 20+ yrs, both in the field and in IT, what I saw as the largest cause of shrink was always just simple accounting errors.

For example, I saw all the time a store would receive a case of merchandise from a vendor containing 100 toothbrushes, the computer says it's a qty of 100 for $2.99, but the receiver scans in the barcode for the whole case instead of the individual toothbrush and puts in a qty of 100 received. Now the retailer thinks they should have 10k instead of 100 brushes on hand, which gets picked up as a loss. I've seen similar things where the case pack sizes or prices were fat fingered by the corporate buyer and wrong in the system causing massive perceived shortages.

xethos• 3 years ago

But that would only explain the ~20 billion dollar increase in shrink if stores had very high turnover due to low hourly pay (and a recent push for employees attempting to demand more), a strict immigration policy (or the afteraffects of low immigration during a recent pandemic) and poor working conditions (for floor employees), resulting in poorly trained employees that may not realize their mistake!

...which actually adds up.

Nifty39292• 3 years ago

I think the largest part of the problem are actually the 2nd and 3rd order effects of retail theft. The shrinkage itself is only a small part of the cost.

Stores might attempt to address theft with preventative measures like locking things up, but this hurts the shopping experience for legitimate shoppers and encourages them to shop elsewhere, reducing sales at that store.

And what of the morale of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day?

Aside from the inconvenience of asking for the toothpaste cabinet to be unlocked, who wants to shop in a place where low-lifes are wandering around shoplifting in plain sight?

Staff shortages lead to messier, less organized stores, with less help and longer lines.

Overall this leads to a general degradation of the store, reduced sales, higher turnover, lower employee moral, and eventually closing the store outright in many cases.

And it's not fair to focus entirely on what the stores can do - this should be a job for the police and justice system. That's what we pay them for. And we don't allow (and wouldn't want) stores meting out their own justice either.

Edit: moral->morale

dmoy• 3 years ago

And what of the moral of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day?

Do you mean morale or moral? The sentence reads a little differently if you actually mean the latter.

Jaepa4• 3 years ago

Its worth mentioning that this is somewhat a manufactured moral panic.

The Rite-aid referenced in the article cited shoplifting as the reason for closing but provided no numbers & the numbers of reported shoplifting incidents have been pretty much steady. Its worth mentioning that about a year after this happened the company filed Chapter 11.

There is no good data on this, and the data that does exist shows that shoplifting is down from 2019. Its only up it you compare to during the pandemic.

throwaway626• 3 years ago

Michael Hobbes has spent some time debunking the panic articles coming out of mainstream media on this topic.

https://x.com/rottenindenmark/status/1596614556448882688

He also covered an article a while back about a Target in (I believe) Brooklyn allegedly closing because of OCR only to reopen three blocks away. Yep, that’s gonna stop the alleged hordes of roving gangs of shoplifters.

It’s hard to make any conclusive claims without more evidence, but both retailers and police seem reticent to give any hard numbers.

gustavus5• 3 years ago

I mean cities in California have legalized all shoplifting under $900, which is more than most people's grocery bill. But you're right it's just a moral panic by those darned conservatives trying to push their racism and bigotry by demanding that their society have "laws" and rely on outdated ideas like "criminals" instead of realizing the truth that crime is not a societal problem but rather a daring statement by marginalized groups striking back against their vaguely defined "oppressors".

Jaepa4• 3 years ago

No-one legalized it. Prop 47 was meant to reduce shoplifting under 900(950 actually) from a felony to a misdemeanor. This bring is it rough inline with other states such as Texas (at a cap of $2,500) and North Carolina ($1,000).

Also please don't put words in my mouth, its distasteful.

sct202• 3 years ago

All the crime numbers are trash. In my city the police literally won't enter a case in to the system to even record that something has happened unless you go in person to the precinct or call them repeatedly until you get an officer willing to submit the report, and there's an online system that just auto-rejects anything submitted. And this is for theft like storage unit break-ins, bikes, mail, pick pockets.

Jaepa4• 3 years ago

Yeah the PD numbers seem pretty crap universally¹.

But I was referring to the the self reported shrinkage numbers produced by National Retail Federation shows that shrinkage caused by external theft. Numbers are only slightly up year but are also way way under the 2019 numbers.

1: My wife works in the DV grants field for a while. PD numbers have always been pretty abysmal.

bonton89• 3 years ago

And that's if you try. Eventually it becomes common knowledge reporting the crime is just a waste of time and most people don't even bother when it happens. This isn't something that will really show in statistics though so it is hard to track.

Jun83• 3 years ago

AFAIK, this is simply not true. If you talk to any retailer, shrink is the number one problem they mention by far, I was at NRF this January and saw this personally in my interviews with several grocery, pharmacy, and apparel retailers.

Also, when you say "manufactured moral panic", who do you think is manufacturing this? Perhaps the retailers, in order to justify the closing of their lagging stores in bad neighborhoods? If you follow the store closings you see this is not always the case, e.g. the Cotopaxi example I sited in my comment above (https://sgbonline.com/cotopaxi-closes-store-in-san-fransisco...). I can provide many other examples.

Jaepa4• 3 years ago

Shrink is a significant problem. I'm not saying that its not. Its especially an issue when you're already being squeezed by inflation while trying to keep prices low. And year on year numbers are up. But most individuals take on this is vibe based.

According to NRF's numbers both shrinkage & external theft are at not historically high, and are still down from pre-pandemic numbers.

There will be cases like Cotopaxi where a store goes under, but

1. The plural of anecdote is not data. 2. These types violent smash and grabs & resulting closures are not new, they are however going viral.

2Gkashmiri2• 3 years ago

Would it be possible to go back to basics and have "smaller shops" instead of multi level shopping industrial complexes that has fuck tone of space and millions of dollars worth of product?

In other countries including mine, traditionally there have always been small shops at every corner, each seeking something different and the owner sits there and has help or usually not. The result, the owner or the help get to know their clientele and its a matter of social contract that no one steals from the small shopkeeper. If someone does, the other shopkeepers come to help because its a scratch my back and I will scratch yours.

psychlops3• 3 years ago

You are coming dangerously close to questioning globalization.

2Gkashmiri2• 3 years ago

It works for most of the world so I guess its the problem on your side.

Paul-Craft5• 3 years ago

What's dangerous about it? I'll do it openly, right here. Look, nothing happened.

knallfrosch• 3 years ago

Incredibly naive solutions offered by the workers: Hire more colleagues and watch all aisles at all times and hire full-time security guards as well. They really don't seem to understand that this costs more money than it prevents thefts.

I've followed this with San Francisco, where taking $1,000 worth of items from a store is now de facto allowed. (I won't call it theft anymore because of this.) Target, a retail chain, moved to shorter opening hours there, and only there, to slow the bleeding in 2021 and closes ever more stores.

You can see people riding bikes into stores, stuffing a plastic bag full of items and leaving, in full sight of what appears to be a security guard: https://twitter.com/LyanneMelendez/status/140457407915631821...

In any case, the market takes care of this: Any population that tolerates this kind of behaviour (whether that's a city jurisdiction, or on the council/state level) will, sooner or later, find its stores closed. Delivery trucks - less attractive targets because of missing information about their wares and whereabouts - will be the next victims.

TMWNN2• 3 years ago

I've followed this with San Francisco, where taking $1,000 worth of items from a store is now de facto allowed. (I won't call it theft anymore because of this.)

And of course, already you have people like jaepa say elsewhere that ackshually TX has a higher dollar amount for when shoplifting becomes a felony.

TX doesn't have DAs that refuse to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting charges. CA does. That's the important difference, not so much the dollar amount.

denton-scratch2• 3 years ago

I think the main purpose of store security guards is to protect staff, not goods. And they're more a theatrical deterrent than anything else; at least, the store guards around here are unarmed, over 50, and don't look fit. They seem to spend most of their time doomscrolling on their phone.

The fact is, the self-service supermarket retail model is a compromise; a self-service store can sell more goods with less staff, at the cost of "shrinkage". That is, shoplifting is the cost of doing business, and business is still more profitable than the old-fashioned model of keeping goods behind a manned counter.

LanceH• 3 years ago

Retailers would rather complain about shoplifting than invest in fighting it.

It's amazing how "blame the victim" is either ok or not ok, depending on the victim.

WalterBright5• 3 years ago

She tries not to take anything from mom-and-pop stores, only big chain retailers.

She "tries" not to?

even if that was going to cost them a little more.

Hiring more staff is not a "little" more. Staff is very expensive.

a man walked in with a gun ... the robber actually showed more concern for our well-being than my manager or the police did.

Threatening people with a gun does not show concern for well-being. (I've been threatened with a gun twice.)

satellite2• 3 years ago

So Vox is not GDPR compliant? It's the worse joke of a banner I've seen. It says that to opt out of tracking you need to disable cookies at the browser level.

America's shoplifting problem, explained by retail workers and thieves

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