Remember when Target blamed theft for closing stores? It's all lies.
Remember when Target blamed theft for closing stores? It's all lies.
On September 26, Target announced it was closing nine stores "because theft and organized retail crime are…contributing to unsustainable business performance." Target said that before making the decision to shutter the stores, it had "invested heavily in strategies to prevent and stop theft and orga...
Never trust the corporations excuses.
PS: I wasn't sure if this was a good fit for this community, but I couldn't think of another. Any suggestions?
Walmart in Pico Rivera California closed the store for 9 months for "plumbing problems" after the workers started to organize a union a few years back.
Rite aid always claiming theft in all their stores for loss but also part of the reason they claim for their bankruptcy.
Walmart shuts down immediately if a store tried to unionize.
If we ever got every store to try to unionize simultaneously Walmart would just shut themselves down and cash out. Hint hint if you wanna destroy a large Corpo.
the unfortunate reality is that many stores cannot even afford to unionize. the existence of Walmart had already destroy the local markets and no strings attached terms offered from the local government would crater the economy if Walmart just take the ball and go home.
Walmart preys on these towns and offers them deals they cannot refuse, because they can always open one up next town instead.
ever wondered why the techy bay area has only 1 Walmart while there are at least 5 across the bay? it's because the bay area is rich enough to not agree to Walmarts bullshit terms.
when the end result of unionization is plunging the entire town into economic hardship I wouldn't do it either.
The Great Unionization at Unison of the United States.
So you're saying that I should go to corporations with flyers and give them to employees so they'll unionize? I'm just asking questions!
Grab that car union guy and make a push.
A walmart in Tulsa, OK shut down for "plumbing problems" years ago before opening back up, amd I wonder if the same thing waa happening...
Our city's most profitable Rotten Ronny's closed down with the public excuse that it's not profitable.
This location was in the heart of downtown, directly across the street from a University with a daily population of about 30,000
The location was so busy they had two kitchens - one upstairs and one in the basement where they fed orders up on a conveyor system.
If you made the mistake of going there from 11am-1pm you were going to wait a minimum of 10 minutes just to get into the door (pre app days), another 10 in line, and 10 more for your order.
The real problem was that they were unionizing. Uh oh!! A new Rotten Ron's was opened next door 18 months later. Weird how they'd open again in such an unprofitable location!!!
You're probably right, however, you can also be not profitable because of shitty business decisions, ineffective management, embezzlement, and inventory waste. It could have been the two kitchens and various levies and taxes in that location. If they had lines, it also means they had a finite cap of serving customers per hour, and if cost or any other of the things I mentioned could still outweigh what they made per night.
The unionization could have been a scapegoat, when they secretly declared bankruptcy, sold the assets and name to another owner, and reformed in a second location. That happens in nightclubs a lot in popular districts.
What is with the zeal to step up and find some scenario you think might apply here? Is this some kind of tacit effort to excuse what they did?
You can read right in my comment that a union was forming and magically the most profitable location in our city closed under the public guise of not being profitable. And then opening up as soon as the wind blew over, right next door to the original?
I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling and you're just trying to have a lively discussion, but it couldn't be more inappropriate for the situation.
As an outsider I fail to understand why the reason to close shops is so critical. Can’t they just say « fuck it we’re done here » at any point in time? What’s the point on pinning the closure on fictional crime level?
They are generating political action on an issue that is undeserving of resources. It is also about covering bad choices so investors don't lose faith.
covering bad choices so investors doing lose faith
That's a bingo.
Because the immediate thought from the plebs is "the blacks shut down my favorite store by robbing it all the time" and they go vote GOP harder so that Target gets lower corporate/wealth taxes etc.
I know this because I live in a red state and anytime the locals hear about a store closing "due to theft" a sea of slurs gets echoed at full force.
In order to keep investors basically so that they don't look like they are failing. Just shift the blame
It’s kinda like waking up late for work because you didn’t set your alarm, then telling your boss and everyone who will listen that the reason you’re late is because there was a shooting on your street.
Why would a megacorporation spread a lie that feeds into right wing propaganda?
If they told the truth, for example "The employees were trying to form a union, so we shut their store down as a warning to all the other stores." Then they could be sued.
I dont trust this article.
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The author of this article is also a co-author of the other popular info article that keeps being cited.
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The popular info article cites this website as the proof for the crime in the area. The headline on this says that it doesn't guarantee accuracy and that it requires a police to be involved. I would hazard that most of the theft dont involve police and probably unreported.
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If you have ever lived in the area, you would know that nobody reports small crimes. Its hard to even find an article on this.
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Known as the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, the bill seeks to create an “Organized Retail Crime Coordination Center” under the Department of Homeland Security. The authors of the bill claim that “organized retail crime…has been a growing concern to retailers, industry, and law enforcement.” The center, the bill says, will oversee “federal law enforcement efforts related to organized retail crime” and align these activities with state and local investigations. Its director would be appointed by the head of ICE.
This sounds eerily similar to the creation of TSA and the federalization of air security.
It also sounds like the creation of the DEA. Special crime-specific law enforcement subdivisions di not actually reduce crime but get people killed and fill up impacted prisons.
No one should ever take Target public relations at their word. DHS either.
It’s overstepping far more than the TSA, since at least air travel IS a matter of national security. Retail theft absolutely is not.
Every mention of Organized Retail Crime can be traced back to the National Retail Federation and their ORC reports.
Here's how they define ORC
"The violation of a state prohibition on retail merchandise theft or shoplifting, if the violation consists of the theft of quantities of items that would not normally be purchased for personal use or consumption and for the purpose of reselling the items or for reentering the items into commerce;."
Okay, you've lumped two very different crimes together there, and also most theft is for reselling... I'm not stealing car radios for personal use...
Okay but if that's your definition where are the stats coming from...The report states clearly "Although the above general definition of ORC is widely accepted, there is a lack of consensus among retailers, law enforcement officials and researchers on various aspects of crimes that constitute ORC." Great so even though you're saying it's a problem, you haven't even been able to agree what the problem actually is.
Fine well if that's the data why is everyone so worried about it now...
"The National Retail Federation’s Retail Security Survey between 2020 and 2022 reported annual increases in ORC activity at their stores and retailers reported the number of ORC incidents increased by an average of 26.5% in 2021"
wait you're comparing 2022 to 2020 and 2021? When the whole world was in a fucking lockdown? Yeah I bet it looks like a big increase, I bet there's also been a big increase in the amount of daily foot traffic in retail outlets.
X-ray machines and cavity searches as you leave the store to prove you didn't shop lift anything?
I have a close friend who used to work loss-prevention for Target. They ABSOLUTLEY closed stores due to excess theft. Anti-union may be icing on the cake for them, but I am certain they legitimately have a problem with organized retail crime.
But think how much money was saved by implementing self checkout! Some executives got a cushy bonus.
And now some different executives are going to get a cushy bonus by proposing that employee checkout could save money.
These executive decisions only ever save money!
Police records apparently don’t match up in Portland. https://www.kfyrtv.com/2023/10/20/target-says-3-stores-closing-portland-oregon-due-crime-police-records-dont-match-up/
You only report a crime when it's happening. If someone successfully takes a lipstick without getting caught then it would take until the next inventory for them to catch that it's missing. The inventory discrepancies are sent in to insurance. Cops wouldn't be involved because no one is going to sit through dozens of camera feeds woth hundreds of not thousands of hours of footage between inventories to figure out who stole it.
If I were an investor I think I'd prefer the truth of "these stores aren't profitable so we're bailing" instead of "we didn't like these stores so we made up some bullshit."
I’ve read a few articles on this over the last few days. I feel like this one (and it’s well cited references) finally gets me to the point of being confident that Target is full of shit.
The articles I read before this tended to be vague and focusing on data that is at least a year old if not from 2020 which, while helpful context, doesn’t do much to counter the claim of rapidly growing theft. Additionally, they often focused on national trends instead of store or store-area specific analysis. A particular store or area can have a big problem even if regional or national numbers don’t show the same issue.
This didn’t mean that I thought target was telling the truth—just that there was still room for doubt about the article’s conclusions.
I really like the crime data analysis linked in the article, which is looking at very recent crime data for a couple of the specific stores cited by Target. That analysis is very strong evidence that Target was full of shit… along with Targets continued failure to actually produce any of their own data supporting their claim.
I have a friend that is a DM of a rapidly expanding gas station/restaurant chain here in southeast. They just opened self-checkout lanes in their stores. I asked about theft/shrink and he said it's a tiny part of their bottom line at this point in a GAS STATION, and with the traffic they are getting, the convenience/cost of labor makes up for it in spades. Target, Walmart and the like are full of shit.
edit: There’s my shit memory again. I went to look for the number Target claimed. It appears it wasn’t a specific % growth in organized theft. It was % growth in violent theft. Otherwise, I think the concept I laid out stands, subbing in “violent theft” for “organized retail crime.” The quote: “Unfortunately, safety incidents associated with theft are moving in the wrong direction. During the first five months of this year, our stores saw a 120% increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats of violence.” Remainder of my comment unedited:
And the “organized retail theft” claim they were making was a clear red herring. I can’t remember the number Target claimed off the top of my head, but their claim was something like “organized retail theft has grown 200%”. Yes, a 200% increase makes it sound like a huge problem, but is meaningless without the context of how big it was before the increase. If it had gone from 2% of sales to 6% of sales, yes that is a really big and impactful 200% increase. But evidence shows it didn’t. It appears to have gone from an insignificant portion of sales to a number 3x as big that is also insignificant.
So Target took the approach of (1) find a topic that sounds big and scary: “organized retail theft”, and (2) find a way to spin the stats related to that topic to make them sound big and scary: 200% increase (or whatever it was).
Well, yeah. It's same the lie that publishers use to justify the use of unethical, anti-consumer, customer-punishing DRM.
Make some bad business decisions? Make a bad game? Sales not meeting projections? Need a scapegoat so the investors don't rebel? You just need to blame something other than your own incompetence. It's the same thing conservatives do.
I'm shocked, shocked I say!
The article is pure speculation.
Target may be blaming increases in theft to "mask other issues."
It might also be assigning a pet parrot to every store. Doesn't mean that it's true.
I am not denying that the author could possibly be proven correct at a later date, but that date is not now because they didn't cite any evidence in their article. As it stands, this is an opinion piece. If you read it as fact (i.e. "it's all lies"), then you're consuming it as propaganda.
Did you read the article?
On October 5, Popular Information analyzed publicly available crime data for the stores Target is closing in New York and San Francisco. This data revealed that stores that are being closed had lower levels of theft than nearby stores that have remained open. A report by the Seattle Times of the stores Target is shuttering in the Seattle area follows a similar pattern.
Did you read the article?
Of course.
The data they are talking about is interesting and related, and while it does have correlation, it's missing causation. There could be unreported theft, they might be closing stores with lower theft to move traffic to other stores (with higher theft) for other reasons, etc.
I'm not taking Target's side, but I still wouldn't say this is immediately conclusive.
Really getting sick of seeing people circle jerk over headlines from opinion pieces. Wasn't this supposed to be better than reddit?
Personally watched people walk out with goods they stole all of the time in Santa Fe NM. Anything totalling under $100 estimate they had to let them walk.
I don't know why you got downvoted for this. It's your experience, and it's related to the content of the article.
I managed a grocery store for 6 years, and we had a very large homeless population nearby. They might steal little bits sometimes, but they mostly bought stuff with their EBT cards because they didn't want to risk losing access to a bathroom and a place they weren't kicked out of.
The people who were really problematic were actually what I had to assume were reselling the food to local restaurants. In my case, they were almost exclusively Philipino, but they would try to steal like $600 worth of steaks, frozen shrimp, ribs, scallops, and chicken. These guys had resources, and if I didn't catch them building the cart, they would hit my store 3 times a week. We knew they were also going into the other stores in the area multiple times a week (we shared footage).
Of those dozens of times, there were only a couple that resulted in a police report. The cops won't come if you have no one there for them to talk to. The only time cops came quickly is when I let them know one of the guys who threatened me with a chefs knife was back in the store.
I personally ordered over 800 shopping carts for this store over the years as well because they were all stolen and the property managers wouldn't let us install cart locks because it would mean blocking part of the parking lot entrance for a night or 2 supposedly.
The location was still profitable, but it was getting less and less so as I couldn't keep carts (always on backorder from the supplier) and people could only shop with hand baskets.
Of course it was
Many of "the stores closed by Target are smaller format locations, a concept the company started rolling out more in 2018." The report notes that "after making a big push into smaller format, Target has not discussed the initiative since 2020." According to the report, Target may be blaming increases in theft to "mask other issues." Walmart, the report notes, closed four smaller stores in Chicago in April 2023 and "did not blame crime or theft and rather acknowledged strategies like downsizing it (sic) footprint…underperformed expectations."
Apple opened something like five "mini" Apple Stores in the early-to-mid aughts. Those went away when they realized it was a bad strategy. Can't help thinking of that.
They seem to be having theft issues in the San Francisco region at least. All the stores in the area are locking up various areas of the store they never have before.
Do these corps pull shady stuff around unions? I'm sure. Are they also seeing extreme theft at the moment? Looks like it. Because those security boxes really tank your sales on anything in them as people refuse to wait. You don't do that unless you think you are losing significantly more than you are selling, and it's not a practice that really has anything to do with unions.
Where I live most stores like target and Walmart and Kmart lock up all the black people hair and body stuff. It’s insane. The worst part is I’m white but have black grandkids so now even I’m affected! Disgusting. (The last sentence was sarcasm. All true but not really the issue that pisses me off. So no one trip on me, fuck)
Wal-Mart did exactly the same thing. The CEO upfront threatened to close stores if they didn't clamp down on theft. Maybe if the idiot didn't build said stores in places where theft is prominent, there wouldn't have been much of an issue.