Woman passively outed for shoplifting and I did nothing?

[Juliesdagger]

Weird one that’s rolling in my mind as I’m wondering if I should have stepped in ☹️
busy well known coffee shop in a supermarket this morning. As I was queuing, a man in front of me said loudly to the lady paying at the till “don’t forget the crisps you’ve got” as he spoke so loudly it was hard not to then hear the rest - she looked confused and said what crisps? I’m just getting my coffee” and again in a loud voice the man said “the crisps you put in your shopping bag” again the woman looked bemused, looked down at her carrier bag and said oh gosh they must have fallen in when I got my phone” (or similar, I didn’t get the exact words) and took them out to be scanned. She looked a bit upset and I heard her apologising to the barista at the till saying they were for her kid’s snack and she couldn’t believe she’d nearly forgotten to pay for them. The man who had called her out then started scoffing loudly saying “oh yeah, that happens to me allllll the time, things just fall into my bag and I forget about them” and smirking and rolling his eyes, clearly insinuating she had stolen them or tried to. The woman just looked clearly flustered and by this time had paid and she left looking like she was going to cry.

I then to my surprise saw the man leave
the queue (despite him being next in line to order) and head for the staff only door so he must work there! And was only waiting in line to see if she paid at the till for the crisps.

it’s been playing on my mind all day. The woman was clearly upset but I would have been too if I’d Been passively accused like that 🤷‍♀️I know you can’t type cast but she was buying an overpriced coffee and pastry, the crisps couldn’t have cost more
than £0.60 extra 🤷‍♀️and she looked well dressed, a bit flustered but not wonder and really just like your
average mum rushing Round supermarket etc so I guess I’m doubting if she was stealing? And I feel bad I didn’t challenge that It felt unprofessional of this man who clearly worked there to passively accuse her?

or am I being naive and she likely was attention to shoplift for a reason I can’t fathom?

Human rights?
Is there a human right to steal at will because any allusion to it will cause unnecessary humiliation?
Don’t publicise this; they’ll all be at it.

I work in a supermarket. I often have to remind people to pay for the toilet rolls tucked under their arm, or the bottle of wine they've left in the trolley. I try to do it with humour rather than sarcasm though, but it is quite easy to tell the ones that just forgot from the ones that never intended to pay.

Sometimes people get embarrassed about being thought of as shoplifters, which I try to prevent and I'm never sarcastic. However, we have had one or two 'repeat offenders', usually trying to tuck a bottle of whiskey inside their coats, and the manager can be quite curt to those (management are watching CCTV in the office and will appear on the shop floor if they've seen an egregious display of lifting).

Those who shout how they've never been so embarrassed in their lives and they will never come back into this shop again and will tell all their friends how they've been treated? They are ALWAYS the repeat offenders who've usually been banned from every other supermarket.

Seeing as OP hasn't come back to update us we have no idea if this woman had been stealing before, but not caught there.

You might think crisps are cheap but e.g. if it was Starbucks Kettle Chips crisps - they're approx £1.30. If she's stolen a bag every week for 4 weeks that adds up to over £5.00. The franchise has to account for this. Say if she also adds a biscuit or wrapped small flapjack, again, more costs add up. The Caffe Nero small Giandujotto chocolates I sometimes buy cost about 45p, that adds up if you just tuck one into your pocket! But I'm not a twat and always pay for them! I'm sometimes given things for free there.

A few years back when we had Safeways, a friend of mine (male) was employed by them to be undercover (he had a crutch) as a store detective. I saw him doing this once. He said it was amazing how many people would swipe items into a tote bag within his view and not care.

If they were for the child's snack she knew she had them and had to pay for them - the member of staff had obviously been watching her for a reason.

You are being incredibly naive OP.

a coffee shop coffee is hardly vital is it, she’s not the bloke in les mis stealing bread.

Yes and to her first lie sorry reply she didn’t know they were there so he did her a favour highlighting that to her as she’s not have paid if she didn’t know of their existence.

This thread does make me roll my eyes but also be glad for a lot of people who’ve not had to deal with /are not aware of the kinds of people who do this and so are leaping to her defence. May that long continue for you.

If your child was starving though you’d probably not be treating yourself to a coffee shop coffee!!

I think she was stealing but I’d have been sickened by how much that man was enjoying humiliating her.

If he'd come out to check the queue then I'd guess that she'd been spotted as she came into the shop, either as a 'previously banned customer' or that she'd been flagged up on the system as a lifter in other branches of the same coffee shop. Management don't stand around watching generally, or challenging people, especially for one random packet of crisps. She was likely trying out the shop to see if she'd get caught and coming back later for more.

Not quite so dreadful in chain places, but hitting the profits of small independent places can cause an impact.

The man was being a twat, but here is the caveat you don't know what the back story is to this incident. She may be a serial low level shoplifter who targets this store. Rather than let her get to the exit and detain her by security staff someone decided to shame her instead. Whatever the back story he was a twat to shame her as he did, he could just have taken her to one side and dealt with it quietly but it's the risk she takes for pinching stuff

People do this all the time, they do it once, get away with it and think why not? They can pay for the stuff but as pp have said, there's a little dopamine hit from getting away with it, and as we all know to some people that's addictive. Nevertheless it was a bit of a strange way to go about things,a more professional way would have been to wait until she'd paid and if the crisps remained unpaid for, to then pull her to one side. If she has done this deliberately though it will give her a fright and she'll maybe think about getting her thrills elsewhere!

I have some magic beans to sell you if you're interested

Goodness. Not allowing people to get on with their shoplifting undisturbed is now a human rights issue, apparently?

Do the people who come out with this stuff have any idea what real human rights issues or real abuse looks like?

OP she wasn't rushing around the supermarket, you said she was treating herself to a overpriced coffee and a pastry (and a free bag of crisps that were probably more than 60p) in the attached coffee shop

really want the Op to confirm what she imagines she could have “done” in this scenario!

OP was probably more uncomfortable than the woman challenged. People do avert their eyes when someone is confronted like this - it's a kind of second-hand cringe.

but she says she “did nothing”

as though she wishes she had done

She was stealing.

He acted accordingly. As others have said, she's probably done it before so the staff were suspicious and wanted to catch her in the act.

Her story kept changing. She knew what she was doing

What? How the hell is asking her if she's going to pay for her goods bullying? I know MN hate men but he was not bullying her.

The mortally embarrassed party and the OP both have the option to take their business elsewhere..I think this incident maybe have been the 'yellow card' for the first and a eye opener for the latter, yes a bit of an uncomfortable and squirmy situation for sure-but a brilliant debate for MN. The supermarket was lucky the crisp packet was still sealed, many think it's OK to graze and shop these days because nobody can prove whether you were intending to ultimately pay or were going to bin the empty packet on a shelf along the way

He did her a favour. Staff can't accuse someone of stealing until they actually leave the shop without paying. Had she done that, and had he followed her outside to accuse her there, she would have had to answer to the police. All for a bag of crisps. She got off lightly.

With all this talk of the humiliation violating human rights, I cannot wait until customer facing staff can start suing customers for shouting at them, being intimidated by them, being humiliated by them, being actually verbally and physically abused by them - absolute gold mine there 😂

Your being naieve prob watching her a repeat offender.

She could have defended the woman's right to steal...?

People saying that you have to leave the shop to have committed a crime but that's not strictly true. Businesses leave it until that point because it removes ALL doubt, but making a concerted effort to hide something about your person, or moving past the point you're expected to pay at could actually be enough, but obviously it's harder to prove than someone being actually outside the shop with the stuff on them