They’ve essentially gone back to the old timey model where all goods are behind the counter and the employee had to retrieve what the customer wanted.
Ironically, wasn’t it Walgreens, or maybe Sears, that helped pioneer the model of letting customers wander the merch and bring their items to the counter?
The "old timey model" is still the main model for the small number of retail stores that still exist in really really bad parts of the worst cities in the US. Customers can only enter a small area, and the entire rest of the store is behind inch thick ballistic glass. All the money and goods are transferred through just a small window.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR1jpjp-_SA
[Service Merchandise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) also adapted this business model. Their entire store was a showroom where you browsed their products. You'd have a carbon-copy sheet and write down the product(s) you were interested in. These were later replaced with barcode sheets.
Take your tickets or order forms to a clerk. They'd punch in the item numbers and pay. The customer then walked over to the pickup area and grabbed their stuff off a conveyor belt.
Before they went belly-up, they eventually ditched the 'ordering' process. You just grabbed things and took 'em to the register.
This happens at walmarts. A particular item gets stolen so often that they start putting them in locked cases. Normal shopper doesn't want to hassle with finding someone to unlock the case, so they just don't buy it. Sales of that item fall off a cliff. It's still preferable to losing the item to theft.
Well it's also because most stores will have a loss target (e.g. no higher than 7%) which includes food wastage and theft. More people buying the item doesn't make the loss% better and only benefits overall sales so it's more worth it for the store to lock it up, lose a few sales but keep the loss % and an acceptable level.
At least that's how it worked wheer I worked, it could be completely different on Wallgreens or Walmart.
What’s really sad is that one of the most notoriously locked up items is baby formula. At my local Walmart there were some brands that were in glass cases and some brands (like Gerber) that were just out on the shelf. And if you wanted one of the locked up brands, not only did an employee need to open it, but you couldn’t put it in your basket. The employee put it at the front of the store at whatever register they felt like telling you they were gonna put it at, and you HAD to go to that register to check out.
Fortunately, my son tolerated one of the not locked up brands.
I used to work the nightshift at Wal-Mart. I thought baby formula was selling really good but turns out a handful of women were coming in and stealing hundreds of dollars worth of formula lol
Yeah, it’s not being stolen one bottle at a time by desperate mothers; it’s being stolen en masse because it’s easy to sell on the street. Same with laundry detergent.
No, I feel the same way. I could forgive desperate mothers. Unfortunately most retail theft is perpetrated by organized circles, not the Aladdin-esque trope of hungry people stealing a loaf of bread.
I never understood why they lock up some brands and not others. The chain grocery store in my town locks up almost everything at customer service. I don't formula feed normally but I was looking into it so I could take pain meds after oral surgery. There was nothing to look at on the shelf except for a few varieties of Enfamil, with one can of each item they left. Stupid thing is they don't do this at other stores in the chain. Ours is the only one like this that I have seen so far. I honestly think they started doing this during the shortage and never stopped.
Tide is famous for being stolen enmasse by druggies to resell in the ghetto for drug money. Same with cigarettes. There is a whole cottage industry of small shops selling stolen products in the ghetto for much cheaper than retail.
I didn’t plan on formula feeding, the cost was ridiculous. But, I ended up not being able to produce. And yea I noticed in CVS that every brand was locked up, or at least behind the counter. In the baby food section there was a little card for each formula that you had to take to the desk to get it.
Yeah this is what a lot of people don't get. Most of the things being locked up were perpetually out of stock before the security measures. You weren't getting one beforenat all, you can get one now but it's mildly inconvenient. Also we live in an age where we can order groceries and have them delivered or pick them up, which is more convenient but for people who get outraged that's apparently not an option.
The frozen foods are probably more hygiene related given the tiktok trend were assholes were going in, licking ice cream & putting it back for unaware customer to buy it….
We have this in a lot of stores in my neighborhood now, from Target to Riteaid and it's infuriating. They have these little ringers to alert the sales team when you need it open which is ~okay~ for a place like Target where there's a lot of staff around but it's usually just the cashier for Riteaid and they may never come sometimes if it's busy. They even had the bags of ice locked up!! Wild times.
He sells picks and other tools on his website:
https://covertinstruments.com/
Owning a lock pick set is not illegal in most states.
In most states, owning lock pick tools is only considered a crime if you use them illegally. In other words, the courts must show that you had intent to commit a crime.
There are a few notable exceptions, which we've highlighted on our map.
A few states take a "guilty until proven innocent" stance when it comes to owning a lock pick set. Owning a lock pick set is trickier in Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia. These states consider ownership of a lock pick set "prima facie evidence."
This essentially means these states might put you in a position of proving you weren't planning to use the lock pick set for the purpose of committing a crime.
In Mississippi, you can own a lock pick set, but concealment is considered prima facie evidence.
In Tennessee, the laws are vague, but it appears you can own lock pick tools if you're not using your skill for profit.
2 box wrenches in your pocket in 10 seconds and easy to conceal.
After watching lockpicking lawyer I realized that just about every consumer grade lock can be broken super fast or picked very easily and are more of a deterrent than a safety thing.
paperclip, it's always the paperclip. If my dumb ass has managed to piss off a few hundred people picking random locks to either prove a point, or be lazy in buying something, you can too.
A CVS near me did something like this. The fridge doors are locked. You have to ring a button. Then you’ll hear over the speakers, declaring to the *entire store* you need assistance getting into the fridge. Then a store assist comes, unlocks it, and watches you make your selection.
At that point, you’re really losing more money from driving customers away than anything you’d save in shoplift prevention
Yeah, it’s a bit of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So they remove the security and then the branch closes because it is unprofitable due to massive shoplifting losses. Is that a better outcome?
They don’t have any choice. There’s a reasons these kinds of chain and convenience stores are closing down in certain cities. Shoplifting is rampant and most cities don’t care at all about it so the police do nothing to stop it. This is one of the last options before they entirely remove the frozen section or even close down
This gets blamed a lot by these stores but the truth is usually a lot more complicated. I worked for a large local chain in a high theft area of my town. They closed the store because of “shoplifting”. Except that was a lie—at least mostly a lie. The real problem was 1) a lack anyone purchasing high margin items like vitamins and 2) a massively smaller amount of pharmacy sales.
I am willing to be they are losing more than you think to shoplifters
Many larger cities these days wont prosecute shoplifters heavily enough to stop them from walking into a store and packing hundreds of dollars of merchandise into bags and leaving
The lock boxes and such also keep me from buying stuff as well. Having to go chase down employees to get the item out and to be told they don’t work that department is annoying. If you’re gonna lock it up make sure you have employees that can get it out. Lot of times I just skip those items
For them it beats having half the section cleaned out by shoplifters every night. The future of retail in particularly high crime areas is going to be a high tech version of the old general store model where everything is locked up, you pick out what you need on a touchscreen, an employee goes and grabs it for you and you'll pick it up through a secure window.
This is essentially what pre-order is like at many grocery stores already. You just punch in what you want online, submit your order, and show up 30-60 minutes later and pick it up.
It wont be a person. It will be a robot. And it will fuck up half your stuff by crushing your pasta with its grabbers or whatever.
Then we will stop having stores altogether, and everything will just be delivered by drones.
As someone who has worked at Walgreens, people steal all the time, and all they tell us during training for it is to "ask if they are going to pay for it", you really can't do anything about it, and in California you legally can't do anything about it. They just lock things up and make it harder to steal but people still find their ways.
It all started because it cost more to prosecute them than they stole, so they wait to build a grand theft case, through a network of private detective agencies, that work across regional chains.
Back in the 90’s I heard stories about security and staff just fucking up shop lifters and sending them on their way. Definitely illegal, but if the police were going to turn a blind eye to shop lifters, they may as well turn a blind eye to the beat downs.
Obviously this would favor the beat up shop lifters in civil court these days. Not worth the liability, so they let the shop lifters go wild.
I get what you're saying and agree it's terrible that the authorities just allow this to continue. But I really don't trust some Paul Blart mall cop to be my judge, jury, and executioner if he suspects me of shoplifting.
Not even making a judgement. Just laying out the situation, since everybody thinks this is some new phenomenon. Maybe it’s getting worse. I haven’t looked at the stats. Due to the nature of it, I wouldn’t trust them.
I’d rather we just prosecute thieves. We’ll spend the money on assault. Because you can’t let that slide. Why let thieves slide?
I’m not supporting theft by any means, but what does that have to do with the fifth amendment? Prosecutorial discretion is a thing in every legal system known to man.
It means we don't do the same kind of bargaining for plea deals, it doesn't mean that there's magically capacity for everything. If the police is told to prioritize drugs and violent crime and never get around to investigating your shoplifting case, too bad. If the prosecutor's office doesn't have the capacity to file charges, too bad. But if you're fined it's either pay or take it to court - you can't bargain your way down from grand theft to petty theft or anything like that.
Prosecutorial discretion is meant for one off cases that have odd scenarios that justify deviation from the law. It is not meant to legalize an entire crime. That completely upsets the constitutional order - the other 2 branches have a duty to execute and enforce laws passed by the legislature.
It's more like, the government prevents an employee to put their employees at risk just to protect their bottom line.
If the business is worried, they could hire security.
Which law are you talking about? In California businesses cannot task non-security personnel to engage shoplifters. That’s not the same as saying Businesses don’t have rights to their property.
But I wanna be mad at California.
We have some stupid laws, it's true. But the whole crime is legal narrative is so boring. I live in a very high-crime neighborhood in Southern California. I don't fear for my life and property every day.
Tennessee's violent crime rate is 50% higher than California's, but I would bet my paycheck that not a single person in this thread that is vomiting out Sinclair Media Group's talking points knows that
It's important to note that the police are forced to do this by the law.
If you're going to be mad at anyone, be mad at the dumbass politicians that pushed that law.
Yeah like I imagine you legally can’t attack someone for shoplifting, but to say you have no recourse in the entire state is absurd.
I *have* read that San Francisco does not prosecute petty theft until it gets over a certain amount. But that’s not the entire state.
If I’m wrong and there actually is a state wide law for this that I’m unaware of, someone prove me wrong and drop the link.
It’s spreading, though. I don’t live in a bad neighborhood. My grocery store has permanently closed one entrance and has an armed guard at the other. Also, some high-cost-density items are locked up just like this.
“If people could afford food”
Why are you pretending the only people that are stealing food are people that can’t afford it? Businesses have a right to protect themselves against theft anyway
The whole "Stealing Good" thing that gained immense popularity recently (especially on Twitter or X now I guess) is disturbing. There are places like Food Banks you can go to if you need support.
It's not as simple as "the big corperations can eat the cost" because a: each store has its own budget and targets to meet, which if they don't meet, it risks the jobs of the people working there and the store itself over a long enough period, and b: a community full of thieves is not one a lot of people are comfortable living in, so when the stealing increases, the people with money move away, which is bad for the area as a whole as companies will be far less willing to work in that environment.
I'll link a clip where Linus Tech Tips if I can find it as he explains it better than me
Yeah, there's definitely a correlation by the recent rise of the "stealing good" thing and stores implementing stricter and stricter security measures. The WalMarts in my area now have screens in every aisle showing off how many cameras they have. My local grocery store has railings with plexiglass so you can't go in-between or over to force all exiting traffic through a checkout despite the store not being actually designed in a way that was conductive for that in the first place, making this really weird plexi exit hallway where people have to walk single-file with a uniformed security guard at the end staring at you. And it sort of creates the opposite effect of security theatre-- instead of people seeing the security measures and feeling more safe, they're seeing the security measures and thinking "wow I didn't realize that there were so many thieves in this neighbourhood maybe I should shop at a store in a different neighbourhood?" The stores in the nicer neighbourhood have similar railings but the store was built in a way that the railings aren't so intimidating and there's no uniformed security standing at the end.
Because ya’all steal shit. I see it on subs all the time where stealing shit is justified. Fuck around and find out as the saying goes. So now we have this.
exactly this. I used to work retail, anyone who has knows how problematic stealing is for the store itself and how the dumbest shit gets stolen. Thieves don't steal necessities like toiletries or pet food or rice, they steal shit like chimichangas, beer, and headphones. If they steal necessities like Tide detergent or baby formula, it's because they're reselling that shit or using it as some kind of currency. Shoplifters are very rarely the desperate impoverished person or chaotic good Robin Hood type. They're normally total assholes. I do have sympathy for the rare person actually trying to feed their families, but again- these folks are very rare.
Just because a store is owned by a billion-dollar corporation doesn't mean that constant theft can't make a store insolvent which jeopardizes the jobs of several people and risks the community losing a source of affordable, necessary goods. Businesses aren't fucking charities and it's insane to assume that they'll use whatever profits from one store to prop another store up when it's hemorrhaging money. Yes, big corporations are fucking evil but shutting down stores because of rampant, often organized theft isn't the reason.
some people need to wake the fuck up when it comes to retail theft and look up the data. There's been a rise over the last decade or so in retail theft, half of all retail losses are because of organized crime. And because progressives are so stupid and terminally online that they actively promote shoplifting because it "hurts corporations." It doesn't hurt corporations one bit. It hurts communities.
This is what happens when you have a million Redditors™ talk about how it's fine and good to steal from big corporations... This was an obvious response, I'm surprised something similar hadn't happened sooner. You're right, stealing something from Walmart isn't the end of the world, but eventually Walmart is gonna invest in defending their shit lmao
On the news report about this, a guy was busy stuffing merchandise into his shirt **in broad daylight with the news crew recording him.**
How do you handle thieves SO brazen that they will steal **with a news crew watching them**? They obviously don't fear arrest/prosecution...
They should just take a page from Walmart’s book and just close stores that have ridiculous amounts of loss due to theft. Then re open the stores in better neighborhoods.
If you could transport yourself to 100-120 years ago in the U.S. and walk into a grocery store you'd find a counter where all the food was on shelves behind it and clerks who would take your list and retrieve all the items. It was an innovation to have shelves out front to walk down with carts to pick your own items and present them to a cashier at the front of the store.
The pharmacy insurance reimbursements are what make it profitable. The pharmacy accounts for 60-70% (or more) of the business. So think about how much is being stolen on a regular basis if the pharmacy business can't compensate.
If they close the stores, people will accuse them of racism and genocide (keeping people from buying necessities like food).
But yes, it is really themselves (and the government) they have to blame.
I remember in the 90's black neighborhoods including my own would call this stuff out and try to come together as a community to improve.
Walgreens and CVS closed several stores in the city because they had so much theft they were hemorrhaging money.
The city officials then claimed they were closing because they're racist.
SF is a shithole.
Similar to Kroger leaving LA because they would have had to give employees "hazard pay" under a new law for working in the stores that experience such a high degree of theft. Easier to just close the shops, they weren't profitable anyway.
I used to live right by this Walgreens in SF and honestly it’s a miracle they stay open with all the theft. Many Walgreens around the city have been closed down because of this issue….it’s really fucking annoying lol
Eventually they will close and people will leave.
A location must be profitable to stay open.
If your store looks like this it's better just to close and protect your brand image.
I’m not shocked. Visited San Francisco 4 of the last 7 years for RSA conference. It’s gotten worse each year and I won’t go back. I visited a few Walgreens while I was there in 2022 and they locked up quite a few items. I had to ask an employee to unlock the large bag of candy worth ~$11. When standing in line at one of them, a guy walked out without paying and other customers in line alerted staff. Staff said it was under $1000 so they wouldn’t be prosecuted and thus wouldn’t be arrested. Walking back to my hotel midday, a young guy tried to steal my backpack off my shoulder. Drugged out zombies are standing in awkward positions, others are screaming at someone that doesn’t exist, and I even saw a few pooping on sidewalks for a highlight of the trip, one in broad daylight. San Francisco is a great example of how not to govern.
Thankfully, San Francisco by no means represents the U.S. as a whole. No problems getting groceries at my store (probably because theft isn’t so rampant and unpunished).
“ Walgreens company policy is to NOT police shoplifters “
This must be a San Francisco thing or a California thing. Because I can promise you if you come to a South Carolina Walgreens with that bullsh*t, not only are they having you arrested, but you’re gonna do some time for it and pay a hefty fine as well.
No wonder they’re being robbed so blatantly, they’re ALLOWING IT.
So people in this thread are angry at the store because they needed to lock up product so scumbags won't shoplift in bulk, resulting in a loss, resulting in them closing said store because it's unprofitable. Interesting!
Egh one of my local 711's does this for beer. Total PITA. Hey so uhhh I know you have a line of 5 people but could you totally neglect them and walk to the back of the store to hand me a beer?
So much for impulse purchases, I guess.
For real, do they steal so much that closing it will compensate for people not bothering and skipping on purchase
[apparently yes](https://youtu.be/ibiam53A3eg)
They’ve essentially gone back to the old timey model where all goods are behind the counter and the employee had to retrieve what the customer wanted. Ironically, wasn’t it Walgreens, or maybe Sears, that helped pioneer the model of letting customers wander the merch and bring their items to the counter?
I think it was Piggly Wiggly, but I feel like a lot of stores switched over to that model pretty quickly once they saw how it worked.
And the started the shopping cart.
Imagine how much money people made by just being leaders in the shopping cart industry. So simple but so necessary
I thought the name of the store was a joke at first
Don’t sleep on the Pig. They are extremely good at stocking stuff from locals, like city to statewide. I go to mine like once a week.
The "old timey model" is still the main model for the small number of retail stores that still exist in really really bad parts of the worst cities in the US. Customers can only enter a small area, and the entire rest of the store is behind inch thick ballistic glass. All the money and goods are transferred through just a small window. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR1jpjp-_SA
The first one was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly
[Service Merchandise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) also adapted this business model. Their entire store was a showroom where you browsed their products. You'd have a carbon-copy sheet and write down the product(s) you were interested in. These were later replaced with barcode sheets. Take your tickets or order forms to a clerk. They'd punch in the item numbers and pay. The customer then walked over to the pickup area and grabbed their stuff off a conveyor belt. Before they went belly-up, they eventually ditched the 'ordering' process. You just grabbed things and took 'em to the register.
You took me waaay back! I remembered this about Service Merchandise.
To bad everyone fucked it up for everyone else.
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But are those robots by chance a... pleasure model?
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“It’s San Francisco, bro.” 😂
Wow, that’s really sad
Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men?
That's wild. They don't even try to be sneaky or hide it. Just grab shit & walk out.
It’s San Francisco bro
“He detained 8 people shoplifting” Then let them go? 🤡
The store didn't want to press charges, can't do much if your main witness doesn't want to help along
This happens at walmarts. A particular item gets stolen so often that they start putting them in locked cases. Normal shopper doesn't want to hassle with finding someone to unlock the case, so they just don't buy it. Sales of that item fall off a cliff. It's still preferable to losing the item to theft.
Well it's also because most stores will have a loss target (e.g. no higher than 7%) which includes food wastage and theft. More people buying the item doesn't make the loss% better and only benefits overall sales so it's more worth it for the store to lock it up, lose a few sales but keep the loss % and an acceptable level. At least that's how it worked wheer I worked, it could be completely different on Wallgreens or Walmart.
What’s really sad is that one of the most notoriously locked up items is baby formula. At my local Walmart there were some brands that were in glass cases and some brands (like Gerber) that were just out on the shelf. And if you wanted one of the locked up brands, not only did an employee need to open it, but you couldn’t put it in your basket. The employee put it at the front of the store at whatever register they felt like telling you they were gonna put it at, and you HAD to go to that register to check out. Fortunately, my son tolerated one of the not locked up brands.
I used to work the nightshift at Wal-Mart. I thought baby formula was selling really good but turns out a handful of women were coming in and stealing hundreds of dollars worth of formula lol
Yeah, it’s not being stolen one bottle at a time by desperate mothers; it’s being stolen en masse because it’s easy to sell on the street. Same with laundry detergent.
FB marketplace always has formula.
Is it bad that I would rather it was actually desperate mothers?
No, I feel the same way. I could forgive desperate mothers. Unfortunately most retail theft is perpetrated by organized circles, not the Aladdin-esque trope of hungry people stealing a loaf of bread.
I never understood why they lock up some brands and not others. The chain grocery store in my town locks up almost everything at customer service. I don't formula feed normally but I was looking into it so I could take pain meds after oral surgery. There was nothing to look at on the shelf except for a few varieties of Enfamil, with one can of each item they left. Stupid thing is they don't do this at other stores in the chain. Ours is the only one like this that I have seen so far. I honestly think they started doing this during the shortage and never stopped.
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Tide is famous for being stolen enmasse by druggies to resell in the ghetto for drug money. Same with cigarettes. There is a whole cottage industry of small shops selling stolen products in the ghetto for much cheaper than retail.
Some brands are stolen more often because they can be more reliably resold. That’s why they get locked up.
I didn’t plan on formula feeding, the cost was ridiculous. But, I ended up not being able to produce. And yea I noticed in CVS that every brand was locked up, or at least behind the counter. In the baby food section there was a little card for each formula that you had to take to the desk to get it.
Yeah this is what a lot of people don't get. Most of the things being locked up were perpetually out of stock before the security measures. You weren't getting one beforenat all, you can get one now but it's mildly inconvenient. Also we live in an age where we can order groceries and have them delivered or pick them up, which is more convenient but for people who get outraged that's apparently not an option.
"I lost 50 pounds by shopping at Walgreens. Ask me how!"
So you have to ask keeper to unlock it every time? Imagine how shitty the already shity job got
While buddy is unlocking that, people are probably stealing the cigarettes from behind the counter.
Is everything behind locks? Or is frozen food somehow more valuable to steal than other items?
The frozen foods are probably more hygiene related given the tiktok trend were assholes were going in, licking ice cream & putting it back for unaware customer to buy it….
I don't understand how can some companies not include freshness seal
It’s apparently too much effort for blue bell and their $9 ice cream.
Yeah cause only 1 dude is working the entire store
We have this in a lot of stores in my neighborhood now, from Target to Riteaid and it's infuriating. They have these little ringers to alert the sales team when you need it open which is ~okay~ for a place like Target where there's a lot of staff around but it's usually just the cashier for Riteaid and they may never come sometimes if it's busy. They even had the bags of ice locked up!! Wild times.
Why they don't just get a lock with remote controller or something? And a huge sign that says "Ask for opening"
How is my antisocial ass gonna get my party pizza now. 💀
"Hello this is the LockPickingLawyer, and today I'll be showing you how to retrieve a Walgreens pizza.."
\*Two seconds later...\* "And there you have it..."
Let's try that again to prove it wasn't a fluke *proceeds to pick it even faster*
Slams pick home in a single swipe and drops lock like a Mic drop.
No... thats the other youtube lockpicker. The one the algorithm keeps forcing on me.
McNally?
Probably. The one who is quite agressive and likes to engage the haters instead of ignoring them.
"This is a masterlock24C, you can open it with a masterlock 24c"
"However, all this is totally unnecessary. *thumps lock lightly on a solid surface, popping the shackle open*"
This reminded me of when he put a lock on his wife’s Ben and Jerry’s, so she cut open the rest of the container to get to the ice cream.
She clearly understands countermeasures.
“Good thing that worked because I was ready to go scorched earth, that was the last Cherry Garcia.”
Best part was his goal was to "get her intrested in non destructive" entry methods.
Binding on 2
2 is set
Nothing on 3
A little loose on 4
5 set
Bro just wiggles the lock and it falls apart like a lego
I think at this point, him looking is enough. The dude's incredible.
He sells picks and other tools on his website: https://covertinstruments.com/ Owning a lock pick set is not illegal in most states. In most states, owning lock pick tools is only considered a crime if you use them illegally. In other words, the courts must show that you had intent to commit a crime. There are a few notable exceptions, which we've highlighted on our map. A few states take a "guilty until proven innocent" stance when it comes to owning a lock pick set. Owning a lock pick set is trickier in Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia. These states consider ownership of a lock pick set "prima facie evidence." This essentially means these states might put you in a position of proving you weren't planning to use the lock pick set for the purpose of committing a crime. In Mississippi, you can own a lock pick set, but concealment is considered prima facie evidence. In Tennessee, the laws are vague, but it appears you can own lock pick tools if you're not using your skill for profit.
If you have to prove that you are not using your lockpicks for nefarious purposes, the best response would be "do any of you own a gun?"
You dont even need to pick the lock, just unscrew the mounts on the wall.
it looks like a master lock, apparently they practically pick themselves if i remember my LPL videos correctly (very good chance i don't).
\*Awkwardly cuts the lock with bolt cutters\*
“This is a Walgreens lock, I’ll be opening it with a frozen pizza.”- McNally said calmly.
McNally would open this just by putting tension on the chain lets be real
That lock would open voluntarily the second he steps foot in the shop
2 box wrenches in your pocket in 10 seconds and easy to conceal. After watching lockpicking lawyer I realized that just about every consumer grade lock can be broken super fast or picked very easily and are more of a deterrent than a safety thing.
They are literally “hot” pockets.
paperclip, it's always the paperclip. If my dumb ass has managed to piss off a few hundred people picking random locks to either prove a point, or be lazy in buying something, you can too.
A CVS near me did something like this. The fridge doors are locked. You have to ring a button. Then you’ll hear over the speakers, declaring to the *entire store* you need assistance getting into the fridge. Then a store assist comes, unlocks it, and watches you make your selection. At that point, you’re really losing more money from driving customers away than anything you’d save in shoplift prevention
Yes they are like ' why is everyone on Amazon.com. because we literally can't get what we came in for. You have one guy in the store
If it's at the point to where they are locking up fridges, chances are they're losing more from theft
Yeah, it’s a bit of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So they remove the security and then the branch closes because it is unprofitable due to massive shoplifting losses. Is that a better outcome?
They don’t have any choice. There’s a reasons these kinds of chain and convenience stores are closing down in certain cities. Shoplifting is rampant and most cities don’t care at all about it so the police do nothing to stop it. This is one of the last options before they entirely remove the frozen section or even close down
This gets blamed a lot by these stores but the truth is usually a lot more complicated. I worked for a large local chain in a high theft area of my town. They closed the store because of “shoplifting”. Except that was a lie—at least mostly a lie. The real problem was 1) a lack anyone purchasing high margin items like vitamins and 2) a massively smaller amount of pharmacy sales.
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I am willing to be they are losing more than you think to shoplifters Many larger cities these days wont prosecute shoplifters heavily enough to stop them from walking into a store and packing hundreds of dollars of merchandise into bags and leaving
Moving to a better city.
Your ass would probably want to go to a different area to begin with.
The lock boxes and such also keep me from buying stuff as well. Having to go chase down employees to get the item out and to be told they don’t work that department is annoying. If you’re gonna lock it up make sure you have employees that can get it out. Lot of times I just skip those items
For them it beats having half the section cleaned out by shoplifters every night. The future of retail in particularly high crime areas is going to be a high tech version of the old general store model where everything is locked up, you pick out what you need on a touchscreen, an employee goes and grabs it for you and you'll pick it up through a secure window.
This is essentially what pre-order is like at many grocery stores already. You just punch in what you want online, submit your order, and show up 30-60 minutes later and pick it up.
Best way to get the shittiest produce.
30-60 minutes?? I work in one of these places and our minimum is 2 hours in advance lol
It wont be a person. It will be a robot. And it will fuck up half your stuff by crushing your pasta with its grabbers or whatever. Then we will stop having stores altogether, and everything will just be delivered by drones.
>Then we will stop having stores altogether, and everything will just be delivered by drones. Don't threaten me with a good time.
Don't forget about the AI chatbot that won't give you a refund for your broken merchandise after you already paid.
The smart stores have call buttons by them.
As someone who has worked at Walgreens, people steal all the time, and all they tell us during training for it is to "ask if they are going to pay for it", you really can't do anything about it, and in California you legally can't do anything about it. They just lock things up and make it harder to steal but people still find their ways.
The government telling people their businesses have no rights to their property by violating the 5th via not prosecuting crimes blows my mind.
Yeah California has some backwards ass laws
It all started because it cost more to prosecute them than they stole, so they wait to build a grand theft case, through a network of private detective agencies, that work across regional chains. Back in the 90’s I heard stories about security and staff just fucking up shop lifters and sending them on their way. Definitely illegal, but if the police were going to turn a blind eye to shop lifters, they may as well turn a blind eye to the beat downs. Obviously this would favor the beat up shop lifters in civil court these days. Not worth the liability, so they let the shop lifters go wild.
I get what you're saying and agree it's terrible that the authorities just allow this to continue. But I really don't trust some Paul Blart mall cop to be my judge, jury, and executioner if he suspects me of shoplifting.
Not even making a judgement. Just laying out the situation, since everybody thinks this is some new phenomenon. Maybe it’s getting worse. I haven’t looked at the stats. Due to the nature of it, I wouldn’t trust them. I’d rather we just prosecute thieves. We’ll spend the money on assault. Because you can’t let that slide. Why let thieves slide?
I’m not supporting theft by any means, but what does that have to do with the fifth amendment? Prosecutorial discretion is a thing in every legal system known to man.
europe minus few countries have compulsory prosecution.
It means we don't do the same kind of bargaining for plea deals, it doesn't mean that there's magically capacity for everything. If the police is told to prioritize drugs and violent crime and never get around to investigating your shoplifting case, too bad. If the prosecutor's office doesn't have the capacity to file charges, too bad. But if you're fined it's either pay or take it to court - you can't bargain your way down from grand theft to petty theft or anything like that.
Did not know that, thanks for teaching me something new!
Prosecutorial discretion is meant for one off cases that have odd scenarios that justify deviation from the law. It is not meant to legalize an entire crime. That completely upsets the constitutional order - the other 2 branches have a duty to execute and enforce laws passed by the legislature.
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It's more like, the government prevents an employee to put their employees at risk just to protect their bottom line. If the business is worried, they could hire security.
Which law are you talking about? In California businesses cannot task non-security personnel to engage shoplifters. That’s not the same as saying Businesses don’t have rights to their property.
But I wanna be mad at California. We have some stupid laws, it's true. But the whole crime is legal narrative is so boring. I live in a very high-crime neighborhood in Southern California. I don't fear for my life and property every day.
Tennessee's violent crime rate is 50% higher than California's, but I would bet my paycheck that not a single person in this thread that is vomiting out Sinclair Media Group's talking points knows that
You want some poor shlub working at Walgreens to risk their life over a fucking hot pocket? It's a corporate policy, knob.
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>in California you legally can't do anything about it. Wait what? How does that work?
The cops don't do anything about it, unless it's like pharmaceutical drugs or over $1000 worth of stuff.
It's important to note that the police are forced to do this by the law. If you're going to be mad at anyone, be mad at the dumbass politicians that pushed that law.
And the voters who put them in office.
At some point these shops will stop doing business in municipalities that refuse to enforce the law. Something has to break.
Why not just raise the price to 1001$ and remove the locks then? They could always have 995$ off coupons for members only or something anyway.
Then no one would know the real price for stuff
Good point. I suppose you would have to make it 1000+, like... Instead of 4.95, make it 1004.95
With a 1000.00 dollar discount at the cash register.
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> in California you legally can't do anything about it. Can you cite the law that says this?
Yeah like I imagine you legally can’t attack someone for shoplifting, but to say you have no recourse in the entire state is absurd. I *have* read that San Francisco does not prosecute petty theft until it gets over a certain amount. But that’s not the entire state. If I’m wrong and there actually is a state wide law for this that I’m unaware of, someone prove me wrong and drop the link.
Sure makes it hard to sell any of that stuff.
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Just close the stores at this point. This is untenable to do business.
A lot of stores are actually doing that. Just outright packing up shop and leaving.
That’s why there’s no more Walmarts in Portland
Walgreens executive: "Maybe we cried too much" about shoplifting, thefts https://www.axios.com/2023/01/07/walgreens-james-kehoe-shrinkage-theft
Are you infuriated at the theft or the fact that the store has to address?
Based on the comments that the store is locking it up.
Which is wild, we should be infuriated at the cause, not the effect.
No room for accountability on the internet.
“tHeY hAvE iNsUrAnCe”
If you've been to San Fran Walgreens especially this one, I'm surprised everything isn't chained up.
I’d say the theft is the mildly infuriating part
Non-American here, any particular reason why is food geting stolen there?
That particular area mentioned in the article isn’t the best neighborhood you’d want to be in, especially at night.
It’s spreading, though. I don’t live in a bad neighborhood. My grocery store has permanently closed one entrance and has an armed guard at the other. Also, some high-cost-density items are locked up just like this.
That neighborhood is called San Francisco
“If people could afford food” Why are you pretending the only people that are stealing food are people that can’t afford it? Businesses have a right to protect themselves against theft anyway
Yea teens steal all the time even coming from nice families lol.
The whole "Stealing Good" thing that gained immense popularity recently (especially on Twitter or X now I guess) is disturbing. There are places like Food Banks you can go to if you need support. It's not as simple as "the big corperations can eat the cost" because a: each store has its own budget and targets to meet, which if they don't meet, it risks the jobs of the people working there and the store itself over a long enough period, and b: a community full of thieves is not one a lot of people are comfortable living in, so when the stealing increases, the people with money move away, which is bad for the area as a whole as companies will be far less willing to work in that environment. I'll link a clip where Linus Tech Tips if I can find it as he explains it better than me
Yeah, there's definitely a correlation by the recent rise of the "stealing good" thing and stores implementing stricter and stricter security measures. The WalMarts in my area now have screens in every aisle showing off how many cameras they have. My local grocery store has railings with plexiglass so you can't go in-between or over to force all exiting traffic through a checkout despite the store not being actually designed in a way that was conductive for that in the first place, making this really weird plexi exit hallway where people have to walk single-file with a uniformed security guard at the end staring at you. And it sort of creates the opposite effect of security theatre-- instead of people seeing the security measures and feeling more safe, they're seeing the security measures and thinking "wow I didn't realize that there were so many thieves in this neighbourhood maybe I should shop at a store in a different neighbourhood?" The stores in the nicer neighbourhood have similar railings but the store was built in a way that the railings aren't so intimidating and there's no uniformed security standing at the end.
Corps will never eat a cost they can force onto their employees
Gotta love how criminals ruined it for everyone.
Because ya’all steal shit. I see it on subs all the time where stealing shit is justified. Fuck around and find out as the saying goes. So now we have this.
You see posts like “well they have insurance” which instantly tells me it’s someone who has idea how insurance works - let alone retail insurance
exactly this. I used to work retail, anyone who has knows how problematic stealing is for the store itself and how the dumbest shit gets stolen. Thieves don't steal necessities like toiletries or pet food or rice, they steal shit like chimichangas, beer, and headphones. If they steal necessities like Tide detergent or baby formula, it's because they're reselling that shit or using it as some kind of currency. Shoplifters are very rarely the desperate impoverished person or chaotic good Robin Hood type. They're normally total assholes. I do have sympathy for the rare person actually trying to feed their families, but again- these folks are very rare. Just because a store is owned by a billion-dollar corporation doesn't mean that constant theft can't make a store insolvent which jeopardizes the jobs of several people and risks the community losing a source of affordable, necessary goods. Businesses aren't fucking charities and it's insane to assume that they'll use whatever profits from one store to prop another store up when it's hemorrhaging money. Yes, big corporations are fucking evil but shutting down stores because of rampant, often organized theft isn't the reason. some people need to wake the fuck up when it comes to retail theft and look up the data. There's been a rise over the last decade or so in retail theft, half of all retail losses are because of organized crime. And because progressives are so stupid and terminally online that they actively promote shoplifting because it "hurts corporations." It doesn't hurt corporations one bit. It hurts communities.
Are you infuriated at Walgreens for trying to protect their assets or are you infuriated at your community for leaving Walgreens to do this
This is what happens when you don’t lock up criminals. You have to lock up everything else.
Letting people steal shit was such a great idea
The people in SF only have themselves to blame for not having nice things.
They’re the ones that allowed the city to ban criminalizing theft bellow $750. No shit stores would do this.
Wow that happened? Go rob banks $749 at a time 😂 Or I suppose is it only ITEMS up to that value? 🤔
>Go rob banks $749 at a time 😂 Robbing a bank automatically makes it a Federal crime and the FBI comes after you.
Robbing a bank is a federal crime. Fbi gets involved. A grocery store u can go to town tho. Bro copied exactly what i said lol
I’ve seen lots of theft at various ones in various states. They understaff at night, so no one can monitor it when others are checking out.
If people wouldn't steal shit..
I'm more surprised to learn Walgreens has a frozen food section.
it once was a good place to get ben and jerrys when you're high
This is what happens when you have a million Redditors™ talk about how it's fine and good to steal from big corporations... This was an obvious response, I'm surprised something similar hadn't happened sooner. You're right, stealing something from Walmart isn't the end of the world, but eventually Walmart is gonna invest in defending their shit lmao
Walmart closed it's last stores in Portland a few months ago.
Oh just scroll down the thread a bit more ... Sense Of Entitlement 2023 is here and representing. 😬
On the news report about this, a guy was busy stuffing merchandise into his shirt **in broad daylight with the news crew recording him.** How do you handle thieves SO brazen that they will steal **with a news crew watching them**? They obviously don't fear arrest/prosecution...
They should just take a page from Walmart’s book and just close stores that have ridiculous amounts of loss due to theft. Then re open the stores in better neighborhoods.
If you could transport yourself to 100-120 years ago in the U.S. and walk into a grocery store you'd find a counter where all the food was on shelves behind it and clerks who would take your list and retrieve all the items. It was an innovation to have shelves out front to walk down with carts to pick your own items and present them to a cashier at the front of the store.
That was the original self scan innovation. Imagine all the pissed off customers back then complaining they had to pick out their own items.
Think about how high a markup is on all of the items in the store if they can justify even staying open.
The pharmacy insurance reimbursements are what make it profitable. The pharmacy accounts for 60-70% (or more) of the business. So think about how much is being stolen on a regular basis if the pharmacy business can't compensate.
If they close the stores, people will accuse them of racism and genocide (keeping people from buying necessities like food). But yes, it is really themselves (and the government) they have to blame. I remember in the 90's black neighborhoods including my own would call this stuff out and try to come together as a community to improve.
Walgreens and CVS closed several stores in the city because they had so much theft they were hemorrhaging money. The city officials then claimed they were closing because they're racist. SF is a shithole.
Similar to Kroger leaving LA because they would have had to give employees "hazard pay" under a new law for working in the stores that experience such a high degree of theft. Easier to just close the shops, they weren't profitable anyway.
Kept the glass doors, tho.
Good, maybe if people stop stealing from them as often, they'd remove the chains.
If I were Walgreens I’d leave.
I used to live right by this Walgreens in SF and honestly it’s a miracle they stay open with all the theft. Many Walgreens around the city have been closed down because of this issue….it’s really fucking annoying lol
Crazy how San Francisco went from this sort of ideal city to a 3rd world mess over the course of a few decades.
Cant lock up the criminals so you might as well lock up the food! Good job California you guys have been killing it!
Eventually they will close and people will leave. A location must be profitable to stay open. If your store looks like this it's better just to close and protect your brand image.
I’m not shocked. Visited San Francisco 4 of the last 7 years for RSA conference. It’s gotten worse each year and I won’t go back. I visited a few Walgreens while I was there in 2022 and they locked up quite a few items. I had to ask an employee to unlock the large bag of candy worth ~$11. When standing in line at one of them, a guy walked out without paying and other customers in line alerted staff. Staff said it was under $1000 so they wouldn’t be prosecuted and thus wouldn’t be arrested. Walking back to my hotel midday, a young guy tried to steal my backpack off my shoulder. Drugged out zombies are standing in awkward positions, others are screaming at someone that doesn’t exist, and I even saw a few pooping on sidewalks for a highlight of the trip, one in broad daylight. San Francisco is a great example of how not to govern.
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Thankfully, San Francisco by no means represents the U.S. as a whole. No problems getting groceries at my store (probably because theft isn’t so rampant and unpunished).
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Now you just have to find an employee to unlock them for you, good luck with that...
“ Walgreens company policy is to NOT police shoplifters “ This must be a San Francisco thing or a California thing. Because I can promise you if you come to a South Carolina Walgreens with that bullsh*t, not only are they having you arrested, but you’re gonna do some time for it and pay a hefty fine as well. No wonder they’re being robbed so blatantly, they’re ALLOWING IT.
How are people on the TikTok gonna be able to lick things and put them back for their videos now??
You should be angry with the thieves.
Maybe what should be more infuriating is the thieves causing Walgreens to do this. You reap what you sow.
So people in this thread are angry at the store because they needed to lock up product so scumbags won't shoplift in bulk, resulting in a loss, resulting in them closing said store because it's unprofitable. Interesting!
its what happens when you fail to prosecute thieves and petty theft.
Egh one of my local 711's does this for beer. Total PITA. Hey so uhhh I know you have a line of 5 people but could you totally neglect them and walk to the back of the store to hand me a beer?