If you work in retail (shop floor) have you personally witnessed an increase in thieving?

[SaturdayGiraffe]

Someone just told me there’s conspiracy theories that the shops are lying to raise prices.
I’ve seen one theft this year (as a shopper).
Suppose the AIBU is “To believe that theft has indeed increased.”

I would say yes but most of it is not people trying to feed family. It is organised trolley pushes of certain goods usually well above £200. This has always happened but it is happening much more frequently.

As @sweeneytoddsrazor says - organised groups 'pushing thru' trolley loads of luxury items (steak, premium alcohol, gift sets etc)has increased by quite a bit.
Not so much the stealing to eat, although I have seen some folk taking a few items out of the food bank donation trolley 😔
I've worked in retail for about 20yrs

Yes several times a day the same people half the time literally fill trolleys full to the brim then just walk out and no i aren't stopping them for £10.90 an hour it's not worth getting stabbed for.

It's gone through the roof this year. I work across a number of stores and they are all experiencing more theft. But as above, it's definitely all stolen to order. People bringing carrier bags and clearing shelves and just walking out. I've never seen the odd person stealing something to make the ends meet.

I'm a manager for a large retailer and my God yes! As others have said lots of multiples of the same items in different sizes. A lot of them not really caring about how obvious they are either. I'm talking bag fulls or sometimes even suitcases!

Yes its rife where I work. They don't seem to care, they just pick up whatever they want and walk out with it.

Thanks, it seemed pretty far fetched theory. I mean, shops can just put their prices up anyway, they don’t need to concoct a story.

But I’m not sure how we return it to the way it was before. The social contract has broken.

I saw it in Boots a few days ago as a customer, the security guard tried but couldn't stop the thief.

Yes it’s awful at the moment.
It’s endless all day long, some grab armfuls of whatever is in reach and run.
Others have detaggers and you find the security tags hidden all round the shop. They know that nothing is going to happen to them if they get caught.
I don’t know what the answer is.

I work in retail (one of the retailers who has been leading the campaign against retail violence) and can categorically refute this. Huge rise in organised raids and high levels of aggression and violence.

Be clear this is retail violence not 'shoplifting'.

Some people just love their conspiracy theories. I find the need to see conspiracies in everything that happens deeply concerning.

My daughter worked in retail and, yes, people would walk into the (large) shop, grab a load of bags off the stand, go round the shop, fill them up with stuff and then walk out.

She challenged a group of women on their way out with their loot once and she got thumped in the face.

I was in Tesco the other day and someone had ripped open a whole row of toy boxes, taken the toys and left the ripped up packaging on the shelf.

I was in sainsburys the other week and saw someone stopped by security for shoplifting nappies and shampoo - I actually considered going over and offering to pay for them but the person I was with talked me out of it as they didn’t feel it would help as by then they were already having an argument with the security person

I work in a supermarket - there is constant theft, often multiple incidents in a day. Often repeat offenders who know security are on to them but they come back anyway. They can be very brazen.

Someone's buying it off the shoplifters though.

I don't work in retail but am responsible for our energy bills at work. We've just been told that the amount of 'missing' gas in the system has risen massively. The cost of that is distributed across all bill payers and will increase our bills.

Do you mean people finding ways to use gas without paying for it?

If so, surely the key factor in that is the prohibitively expensive cost of gas that people need for basics like heating and cooking?

If your children are freezing and hungry, what else do you suggest people do?

Someone is probably so skint they cannot afford to eat but don’t formally qualify for help 😢

It's not the families with children who are stealing this. It's organised criminal gangs and businesses. Ordinary families, in the main, have neither the wherewithal nor resources to be able to siphon gas and power from the grid. I mean would you even know where to start, without killing yourself in a gas explosion? I know I wouldn't and I'm an educated professional.

The nice branch of Boots in my nearest big city has gotten rid of all their testers and locked all the makeup up in drawers. Ten years ago it was a great place to shop with a lot of high end products. Now I’m going to have to stop referring to it as the nice Boots!

I can’t imagine they would make it so inhospitable if nobody was actually stealing.

@PaperSn0wAGhOst I know - it breaks my heart (& I couldn't bring myself to report it)
Along with an increase in theft, there's been a marked increase in verbal & physical assaults on retail staff since the beginning of the pandemic.
USDAW has some stats about it on their website. I'd link, but working early doors tomorrow.

Who are these people offering to steal to order? No thief has ever offered their services to me

I’m a probation officer and there has been a definite increase in people coming to us due to shoplifting or reoffending while already on probation.

It’s not directly to feed themselves or their families, it’s to sell on. It’s always alcohol, washing powder, candles, meat and Ferrero Roche (no other type of chocolate, they must still be seen as posh to some people). Oh and handbags from TKMaxx, it’s a wonder they have any handbags left in store!

Mostly, it’s to fund a drug dependency, drug addicts call it “grafting” but in January time we’ll get an influx of ladies who have shoplifted to fund their children’s Christmas presents.

They usually live on the big estates and all know each other, so you’d know to knock on X’s door to get your joint of meat for Sunday dinner or Y’s to get your washing powder.

A friend of ours was actually approached on a night out and offered 3 bottles of high end spirits for £50. He was well chuffed with his bargain. I said to him, “you do realise they were stolen?” but it hadn’t even occurred to him!

I work in a charity shop and we are hit every day. Every single day. We have stopped stocking some brand new stuff and this year we will not stock any Christmas items apart from cards as we now lose about 60% of it to shoplifting.
In the run up to Christmas last year a shop a few doors up from us ( a well known retailer) had a gang go in every day and empty their shelves into bin bags and just walk out - on the worst day it happened four times. They have already been hit three times this week and it's not December yet.

The people who steal from us fall into two groups. One is the genuinely destitute who 'just' steal a pair of socks or a jumper because they need it and have no means to pay - it's annoying but we understand why. The other is the type of thief who sees it as a victimless crime. This type sees all shops as fair game on the shoplifting front because we're insured for theft right? Well we're not. I've been working at my current shop for over three years and shoplifting has definitely got worse. Three years ago we maybe had one or two incidents per week but now it's every day and multiple times a day at that. Shoplifting is no longer about need. It's about an increasing sense of self entitlement (like the woman who tried on some boots then walked out in them) or how much can be made selling stuff on (like the person who stole all our new packs of socks last month).

So, yes, shoplifting is at record levels being conducted mostly by the greedy and those who wish to make a quick bit of money for very little effort. They get away with it as we are told by the police to just let them go. It's that or get a punch in the face.