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.”

My DD works in a clothing shop in a big shopping centre and they regularly have shoplifters. They caught one couple recently who were on their "most wanted" list. The man would go in and browse to identify items and put them on the end of a rack and the woman had a device hidden in her bra to remove security tags before they bagged them. These aren't people struggling to feed their kids, they're career criminals. On this occasion the couple had hundreds of pounds worth of clothes they'd de-tagged.

Yes and the character of the theft has changed from surreptitious to blatant

I saw a bloke shoplift the other day. He’d gone to the self checkout till, scanned his loaf of bread and 6 pack of eggs (£2.28) and his card was declined. He popped them in his bag and walked out of the store. No, I didn’t report him.

I don’t work in retail and have never seen the full trolley load thefts but I fully believe it happens. That to me is wrong, the person who obviously stole the bare minimum of food was more likely to be desperately hungry imho.

Seen a massive rise in thefts this year. One town has 3 or 4 branches of my shop and has a man doing the rounds daily. He tells them 'you can't stop me'. And they can't.

My neighbours selling electric toothbrushes, mens tops, gift sets and other random stuff she's stolen to feed her habit. Got myself a new toothbrush for 1/4 of the price.

Oh, you're going to get savaged for admitting this lol

My DH was at the Co-op tonight. He saw a group of lads (about 17) stealing all sorts, chocolate and pizzas and being completely blatant about it. He said to the woman on the till "You know they are all stealing?" She said there's nothing she could do, as the security guard was on his break.

In the city centre, I regularly see shoplifting. Yesterday I saw one guy steal about 10 bottles of coffee. Drug use is rife in the area though so assume it's to fund a habit.

Goes hand in hand with the increase in drug and alcohol dependence in society today. You see the same sorts staggering around in every town and city up and down the country.

Scummy twats, there’s too many of them for the prison system to handle, although anyone caught thieving should be rewarded with a 3 month stay in a Thai style prison, 30 to a cell and just let nature play out.

Definite increase here as well, mainly in the stores without security guards. It’ll end up like in France soon where you’re not allowed to take any larger bags (like rucksacks) into many stores and have to leave them at the entrance or till, including other shopping bags. Then still get challenged by security on leaving the store wanting to check every item in your bag against the receipt after you’ve come from the self-checkout. Though I guess as the main problem here seems to be that they know they can get away with it all of that probably wouldn’t make any difference unless there’s security in all the stores.

I don't work in retail but have seen lots in shops I visit, seen 2 women "trolley dash" 3 shops in a row earlier in the year. Both bold as brass piled trolleys full to brim walked out and flung everything in to back of a flashy range rover and drove off. Seen a woman literally sweep a shelf of men's toiletries into a huge shopping bag in Wilko's. One Lidl near me has 3 security guards on the door.

I don’t work in retail, but have heard of a lot of retail theft. I actually wonder if it keeps getting worse a lot of places will only do click and collect rather than let customers actually in the shop.

Well they’ve done away with lots of staff -once the stealing takes more than the cost of wages they’ll do something about it.

My DD has recently left retail she just couldn't cope any more , the large scale theft , sexism to name a few has seriously damaged her MH. I'm so pleased she's out of it .

I've not been offered but a few years ago I was in the local pub chatting to a member of staff on her break.

She got a phone call and responded with, "Get everything out of the house now, everything"

She ended the call and said to me, "my mum's just been arrested, she's a shoplifter so the police will be searching the house soon".

It was as though she had said, "My mum is a nurse" or another job.

I don't think that the police saying that they won't attend the store for theft under the value of £200 helps matters either.
Criminals know they can get away with it.
I was in a pub one evening at a seaside resort last year and a young woman came in offering still packaged expensive razors for £5 each, amongst other things.
She looked coked out of her head.
The landlord immediately threw her out. Then he explained that she goes round all the pubs in the vicinity daily trying to flog her stolen goods, while her ' boss ' waited in his van down the road with the supplies.
The stores round that area must be losing a fortune.

In my local co-op 2 men in balaclavas emptying the booze shelves in to 2 big ikea bags. 2 members of staff in the shop - one on the phone begging police to attend, the other staying firmly behind the counter/screen.
I don blame the staff for not getting involved, it’s just not worth the risk. I worked in retail for years, it was never like this.

I was in town a few weeks ago looking to buy my son a new coat and a lady offered to get it me for half the price so I bought it off her. Times are hard and shops and electric companies are robbing us blind

A little different but I work for an online retailer and we are seeing a change in behaviour too.

Real rise in people ordering and then insisting they only received part of the order or none of it.
Also massive increase in ‘renting’ items. So ordering and using the product for a night out and then returning it.

We sell absolutely non essential items, no one needs what we sell but people seem to feel very entitled.

One lady ordered two pieces pieces of jewellery and then insisted only one received.
We had to refund her for this item.

A week later she emailed furious as the item she ‘never received’ had broken!
We confronted her and she just kept starting new email chains to complain about the defective item.
Imagine she thought we were bigger than we were and was hoping to talk to an agent who was oblivious.
Interestingly, she worked for a bank!

I am so naive! I had no idea people go in and empty whole shelves into bags! That is so brazen and really scummy to be honest. @nancy75 that is terrifying! The poor shop staff.

I've seen people put a bottle of wine down their trousers a few times when I lived near a homeless shelter. A lot of the people that lived there had substance abuse problems so although I wouldn't condone it, I understood it. The trolley dash is grim.

I agree.

Recently bought some clothes from H&M for my daughter.
They had zero staff but a self checkout till, had to remove the security tags ourselves etc.
When we got home realised had missed one tag from a coat (alarm did not go off when left store).

We went back the next day and no staff to explain to or get help from, so we went back to the self serve detached the security tag and walked out.

Obviously, the coat had been paid for but was an eye opener how easy it was to leave store with a detagged coat seemingly unpaid for and not be challenged at all.

Maybe stores like this has done a cost analysis and decided stolen percentage costs are worth it for zero staff or security costs?

And here is the problem.

Staff are not a deterrent anymore - shoplifters used to try to be subtle about it or dash & run - now they shoplift at leisure & don’t give a shit because the police are not coming.
When I worked in retail (years ago) I would & frequently did confront shoplifters, not a chance I’d do it now.
People now seem much more prone to violence & violence with a weapon - what staff are going to put themselves at actual risk for 11 quid an hour?

The real problems with shoplifting aren’t desperate individuals trying to feed their children (or whatever romanticised notion people want to cling to). It’s organised groups targeting shops and particular products.

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/15/its-organised-looting-uk-in-grip-of-a-shoplifting-epidemic-say-store-owners

There presumably is an issue with the people who constitute the market for these products (who may well be struggling financially). People must be buying this stuff. Indeed, someone upthread seems to think it’s ok to pay someone half the value of the item
they’ve shoplifted to order for them on the basis that life is expensive.