How supermarkets know if items have been stolen?

[Libertyscribbles]

I am writing an essay on compulsive behaviours specialising in non typical low level shoplifting so have been reading lots about how we are a nation of shoplifters and how a staggering amount is stolen from uk supermarkets on a daily basis. However, aside from those they catch in the supermarket, how do these supermarkets actually know exactly which groceries and items have been stolen? I worked in asda over the summer and don't recall inventories being taken?! Does anyone know how for example they know if 1 yoghurt was stolen in a day? I am trying to link this with the idea of people viewing this as an undetectable crime and looking at the impact of this on triggering compulsive anti social behaviours. Any heads up appreciated! I am writing this as part of my degree but struggling as never written one before and I'm not good at this side of things! Thank you!

As people have posted, its all done through the EPOS, when I worked in retail once a year we would have an audit, where we would have to count everything. We would also do stock checks on empty gaps, so that would give us an idea of when something was stolen

If you really wanted to, you could ask about their budget for missing stock, different stores call it different things, but basically every store has a budget for how many things they can have nicked.

When I worked in food retail we had to do counts every day on various items. The computer knew how many had been delivered and how many had been sold or damaged. Therefore the remaining number should be left on the shelf. We regularly caught members of staff stealing using this electronic system.

My son works in retail (not a supermarket) and they have electronic guns to check gaps on shelves. Some of it is written off as shrinkage (broken, damaged etc) They know approximately which day it was stolen as they scan every few days. They also spend a lot of time tidying the store after hours so if you left a bottle of shampoo by the shower gels then it would be returned to the proper place before being scanned.

There's a number of repeat shoplifters who visit regularly and the people who work there look out for the regulars. Some of them apparently believe that shops are insured against shoplifters so it's a victimless crime.

I guess that the cost of theft along with the rent & business council tax etc is why shops selling non-food items find it hard to compete with on line/internet shopping - (slightly off subject but its a point op!)

dh and i watched a bizarre scene. apparently a repeat shoplifter entered the chain shop. a code ?? in aisle?? was called. numerous staff rallied to the site, surrounded the person and without touching them repeatedly called out "your not allowed in here" "you must leave the store" loudly in such a way that the person was effectively guided to the exit. obviously something they trained for.

I'll try explain the process that the big T use.

Gap scans, staff go round everyday and scan gaps on the shelves where there's no products. They do this for every area of the store, everyday. They then get a print out and search the store and warehouse for these items. If not found, it contributes to shrinkage.

Everyday counts are required to be done, the computer prints off a list of things to be counted and you go round and check the shop floor and the warehouse and count how many there's. Staff are also encouraged to randomly count what's on the shop floor as they go if they've a pda and time to spare.

Scans are done as well, where we count how many cases are in the warehouse.

Every item that goes through the till will take 1 item off the stock record. Stock controls job is to make sure the computer records is as close as or better then the figure given.

What's not found or less is counted, counts as shrink and at the end of the day we print out a sheet showing us every item that we've lost money on and the overall shrink. Managers and head office will then do some wizardry and calculate where the items have gone or why we've less

@BertieBotts
Semi related question - if I change my mind about a yoghurt and decide to put it back, will it still get recorded as wasted stock if I left it in a different fridge department instead? I always think it's probably fine as long as its at the right temperature but obviously it would be better to run an the way back to the yoghurt section and put it back there. If it's really bad though I'll stop doing it

Please stop doing it. Things discovered in random places are recorded as ‘waste’ which is unknown loss. These are NOT put out again for sale in their normal place as they can’t be guaranteed as safe to consume by other customers.

The company don’t want to be out of pocket so it is things like this that keep prices high for everyone. Anyone that sticks a sandwich they changed their mind about on a shelf, a packet of green beans in the frozen chip freezer, a pack of butter in the beer aisle (all things I’ve seen) means increased prices for every shopper to dilute the cost of such wastage. It doesn’t matter if you stick your chiller yogurt in a fridge 3 aisle over, as its in the wrong place it is assumed it’s been out of chiller for too long to be safely sold to other customers
and disposed of as waste.at least it was, and was company policy, in the multiple Tesco stores I worked in over the last 15 years.

I think how you should approach this depends on the context of the essay. If it is for a sociology or psychology course, it would be approached differently from if it is for an economics or business management course.

In terms of your reference to compulsive behaviour, is it possible that it creates a slight thrill that raises endorphin (?) levels and becomes addictive? A bit like a fairground ride or a dangerous sport.

Also op apart from actually catching people in the act or following them via cctv and then the data being recorded on how much they stole, supermarkets don't know. They know they've this much shrinkage, but shrinkage can be lots of things, damaged products, products not found, an error in counting, a gaps error, theft, misrecorded incoming stock etc

I was in a South London Tesco recently and two men charged out with a trolley each of prosecco. Everyone chased them. Even the security guard noticed and moved, a little.

Big theft is kind of obvious.

I had no idea stores folded clothes to make sure there wasn't another thing inside! I thought the assistants were being polite.

I had no idea stores folded clothes to make sure there wasn't another thing inside! I thought the assistants were being polite.

Me neither, but I’ve often wondered why they fold them in a manner more likely to lead to lots of creases. Now I know!

@Zaphodsotherhead has described the procedure perfectly. However because supermarkets use good faith receiving in store eg they just book the stock on to their system that the warehouse claims is on the delivery, the store's stock is often completely wrong before it even gets into shopper's baskets. Theft doesn't only happen by the public, much of the lost stock is taken by staff (warehouse, drivers, store colleagues) who are aware that the stock system is, at best, inaccurate.

It might be difficult if you are looking at a specific type of shoplifting. All stores know the amount that gets nicked and what type of theft it is. Sometimes based on location. Most people just walk out with stuff and some shops limit stock based on the issues they have.

So if there is such a huge amount of shoplifting, why have self checkouts at all?

I'm sure that the supermarkets have weighed up the risks vs benefits, i.e. the amount saved by employing fewer staff is more than they will lose from shoplifting.

In the store I work In we do gap checks. This means if an item isn't on the shelf we have to check the inventory.
When an item comes into store on a delivery the quantity is added to the inventory.
When an item is sold or wasted off due to damage or out of date the quantity is removed from the inventory.
We have sales based ordering so if the quantity of an item gets below a certain level it will come in on the next delivery, thus ensuring we shouldn't have any out of stocks.
If an item is out of stock we investigate why.
If the inventory shows zero stock it means they have all sold out before the next order arrives due to erratic sales or the warehouse not having any.
If the inventory shows we should have stock of an item we need to investigate this.
First we check the warehouse to check it's not stacked away in the wrong place.
Next we check the quantity missing, if it's a large number we then check when it was last delivered as it could mean it was missing from the delivery
If it's only 1 or 2 items it could be a number of things.
It could be mis scan at the tills, not wasted off correctly or theft.

I am writing an essay on compulsive behaviours specialising in non typical low level shoplifting so have been reading lots about how we are a nation of shoplifters and how a staggering amount is stolen from uk supermarkets on a daily basis.

Thank you very much, I feel much better equipped and informed to go direct now and to hone my questions. I am worried I have taken such a wide subject matter that it's going to be difficult to come to any conclusions at all so i am going to revisit my hypothesis etc. I can't thank everyone enough for the useful information.

My theory is that people assume stealing food of low value will gp unnoticed and unpunished and either carry on or begin stealing higher value items because it can become a compulsion but I don't know how to get it down in words.

Is this a school project?

I have to say, if you are looking at compulsive behaviours and/or non -typical low level shoplifting then I think you are asking completely the wrong questions. Perhaps you do need to look again at your hypothesis.

You are asking how shops know what is stolen? What has that to do with 'compulsive anti social behaviours'? Do you know what compulsive means for that matter? Some people are genuine kleptomaniacs - I don't think anyone else is considered compulsive. They are mostly simply opportunistic and criminal. They do it for gain.

So someone sees that a self-check till can't tell if an item is scanned or not, and takes something without paying. Is this compulsive would you say? Is it spur of the moment? Is it planned?

You seem to be interested in whether they are doing it for kicks, for the thrill of it, and that perhaps this is addictive (my words rather than your word, compulsive). Maybe that is true for some, particularly teenagers. But later there will be more complicated reasons, including financial hardship, entitlement, the belief that big companies are 'rich' and that therefore it doesn't matter if they lose money (I see this a lot on threads here, in fact) and the simple seeking to get something for nothing, which is what theft is. -How much stuff is stolen won't tell you anything about who is doing the stealing or why.

If you want to know if people who nick a can of beans go on to have a career in theft and end up doing big stuff like robbing banks, then perhaps you need to look at studies of criminals and criminal behaviour. But it won't tell you how many people simply stay stealing the odd can of beans when they think they can get away with it.

In a way, a more interesting question is why do some people steal when they have the opportunity, and why don't others when they have the same opportunity... Because that choice is being made every time someone uses a self-service till. Why doesn't everyone steal? Would they, if they were not afraid of being caught? What makes some people steal and others not steal?

Maybe you could start a thread asking people to say whether they have ever taken anything, and if they do it regularly. And what stops them, if they don't.

This is a REALLY odd thread! I'm amazed people have replied without questioning that!

Either

You really are a (crap) student who is basically trying to get mners to do their "homework" for them

Or

You're a thief/potential thief trying to (badly) get clues as to how to shoplift without getting caught!!

As it happens this used to be my mums job (security manager in a branch of a major supermarket)

There are a LOT of "checks and balances". Even aside from the things that are obvious to customers like uniformed security workers, security tags on high value OR often stolen items (like ibuprofen as previously mentioned) and CCTV. There are also many "unseen" measures - more covert CCTV, that CCTV is monitored and not just left recording until checked, "plain clothes" security officers (how mum started out, thieves never suspected a "wee auld wifey" as being a store "detective", info sharing between police and shops so photos of known/repeat offenders are shared and basically quite a few of these become so well known it's pointless them trying to steal where they're known so they're forced to go further and further afield to try. There's other stuff too.

Knowing what I do even if I was sorely tempted and desperate it's one of the last things I would do not only because of the moral aspects but because you are HIGHLY likely to be caught these days.

Even the layout of shops is designed so that there aren't "blind spots".

So...I'm curious, but doubt I'll get an honest answer - real student? (Who needs to learn how to do research properly fast! There are some serious issues with how you're approaching this!) or wannabe thief?

"I left my purse at a self checkout and it wasn't handed in. I asked if they could check cctv and they said no, they don't have people to do that! What's the point of it then?! I never got it back!" Far more likely they were unwilling to risk giving info out about other customers gathered from CCTV without the police involved. Seriously what did you expect them to do if they DID see someone lifting your purse aside from tell the police? They're not going to just tell you and risk you (or your 6' brick shithouse of a boyfriend/brother/mate) "challenging" the apparent thief! Not to mention the breach of GDPR!

"Semi related question - if I change my mind about a yoghurt and decide to put it back, will it still get recorded as wasted stock if I left it in a different fridge department instead?" Funnily enough this was MY last retail job - chilled and frozen dept management. We'd throw it and class it as "damaged" - reason being we don't know how long it's been out the chiller for and so cannot guarantee it from a food safety perspective. It's far cheaper for a supermarket to throw out a 60p yogurt than RISK a customer buying it, getting food poisoning (especially if that customer is in poor health and the food poisoning caused complications) and suing not to mention a possible investigation into our food safety standards. So please be SURE you want a chilled/frozen item BEFORE you put it in your basket/trolley.

ZaphodsOtherHead IF what you said is true I'd LOVE to know which shop you work for - so I can avoid shopping there (and possibly report them for poor food safety regulation!)

"So if there is such a huge amount of shoplifting, why have self checkouts at all?" Because most people ARE honest and the amount lost through theft/shrinkages is still much less than the savings of not having an employee covering that role are. There are also checks and balances for these too.

"I thought the assistants were being polite" 😂😂

Graphista - it's a tiny little supermarket and if we threw away everything every time someone moved a yoghurt to get to the ones behind (because EVERYONE wants the longer dated stuff that they suspect is hiding right at the back...) and put it on the next shelf down or in the next door section, we'd have no stock left.

If anything is moved within the shop (we only have one fridge section) so it had been out of the fridge for any length of time, then of course it would be wasted. Which is what I said above.

Graphista I really doubt Tesco can be sued for food poisoning in your scenario - it is hard enough when lots of people get really sick, to trace it back to a common source so I doubt anyone is going to get too excited about one yogurt making someone ill. Plus almost impossible to prove that Tesco must have stored that one yogurt incorrectly. Could have been the long drive home, fridge at home too warm, etc. and that is if the ill person is 100% confident that it was the yogurt, not the curry or anything else they ate.

Our local Lidl has an enormous shoplifting rate, according to the manager. A huge number. But with so few staff working, they can't even get the bread out when the timer is chiming so no chance of anyone running over to check why the security door is beeping. I just think that it is disgusting that plenty of people steal for fun, or out of a sense of entitlement. Then there are good people starving because they don't feel like they are entitled to use the foodbank because they are working. What a messed up world.

Stock checks, I think all stores do it.