THE president of Giant Foods has spoken out against bands of thieves stealing groceries and warned that stores could close from the increase in retail crime. Retail theft has become a nationwide is…
I don't personally steal at self-checkout, but if saw anyone stealing I'd just ignore it. As far I'm concerned, they deserve to be stolen from. Zero interest in hearing the crocodile tears of those who were complicit in price gouging.
I hear what you're saying, but we're not talking about a single-mother sneaking diapers out because she needs them or a Jean Valjean-type taking bread because they're hungry...
This is OCR (Organized Retail Theft) where a team of 3+ people coordinate with phones, distractions, and a driver, to quickly get as many high-dollar, shelf-stable items out of a store as possible to resell on Facebook marketplace/eBay/etc. It's typically at least $1000 per store.
If you hate large organizations, you should hate the greed of criminal rings like this, because we all absolutely pay more because of it...
EDIT: I'm just talking about what the article is referring to. I'm not saying companies don't pass the costs on to consumers, and I'm not casting moral judgement.
I'm torn on this one. On one hand, fuck the money grubbing corporations that got themselves into this mess. On the other these closures are creating food deserts.
Yeah it's not the customers at fault here. Nobody asked for the cashiers to be cut down to 1 or 2 (ever) and replaced with self checkouts.
I was at one such shitty grocery store the other day. We'll call it Roger but with the letter 'K' omitted. They have these large self checkouts with conveyors. Up until about 2 weeks ago, you could scan your items at a normal rate like the regular cashiers do. It was convenient, and it was glorious. The older self checkouts were horribly slow and were only meant for a basket's worth of groceries, so this was a welcome, but very temporary, improvement.
An employee told me they "cranked up the security" as he came over for the third time because that self checkout bathroom scale with delusions of grandeur kept calling for backup. You can only scan items once every 3 seconds and have to wait for it every time. I've got a cart full of groceries, and they expect me to scan them at a snail's pace. If you scan too many items (5 apparently?), you have to walk to the end and bag them even though there's plenty of goddamned room on the conveyor. Then walk back and scan a few more. Rinse, repeat. (Until recently, you could scan your whole cart, load it on the conveyor, pay, and then bag everything up at once like a normal person.)
I was absolutely livid, grabbed what few groceries I'd already bagged, put them back in my cart, abandoned the transaction, and waited in line for the one lonely human cashier.
She was confused because some of my stuff was already bagged. Told her why and she just sighed and said yeah. I jokingly said I'd like to give the manager an earfull and she said I should, but it won't do any good. And she was likely right because this reeks of corporate heavy handedness.
Needless to say, I'm never going back to Roger (with a K) anymore. I only went there for the fuel points and because it was close to my workplace, but it's no longer worth it.
Stealing isn’t OK, but I always found it a bit disjointed how making “mistakes” (minor or large) at self-checkouts basically has zero recourse. They really do need to be reworked
I live in a very conservative place in the states. There are legit people who won’t go to a Walgreens anymore because they think it’s a crime ridden shit hole that people from the big town one over come to to steal for crack money.
I mean, what was supposed to be the pay off for Walgreens? Did they think people would show up to donate money to the stores?
The only reason people go to Walgreens is because their prescription is there anyway and while I’m here might as well buy some chips, razors, and a toy for the kiddo.
If you tell everyone your stores are crime ridden shit holes those folks will just get their meds delivered to their door, and the only people you’ll attract are people who want to capitalize on your crime ridden shit hole of a store.
The payoff was closing some redundant locations without admitting they were redundant and getting some free LP courtesy of the cops. Plus getting a bunch of free propaganda against mild criminal justice reform efforts via local news channels.