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?

I’ve never shoplifted in my life but I do despise the supermarkets. The level of greed and profiteering is disgusting.

I went into Boots once, baby in buggy and I think I had the toddler with me as well. I was looking for something but they didn't have it and I totally forgot I'd picked up a tooth brush. I walked out carrying it proudly in front of me, think Penny Mordaunt carrying the sword at the Coronation! I walked off down the High St and suddenly noticed what I'd done. Went back in, I was in a total state, and the staff laughed as I was apologising so much. My husband was the Police Inspector on duty at the local station and all I could think of was his face if me and kids arrived at the station with me under arrest for theft of a toothbrush.

People do sometimes make a genuine mistake.

What did you expect him to do, take her discretely into a corner and say can you not steal from us please?

The way she styled it out it doesn't sound like it was her first rodeo.

He could only have called the police is she had walked out of the shop. Up until that point she could have used the excuse that she was meaning to pay for them. That’s why shop security staff always wait until the shoplifter has left the store before challenging them.

Nobody has to buy a watery overpriced cup of dishwater from a chain 'coffee' shop. And don't get me started on the nutritional value of crisps. Money presumably isn't the issue.

Who cares if The shoplifter was a woman , she was lucky she was only humiliated and not prosecuted.

Why shouldn't thieves be shamed? It might make them think twice next time! She obviously wasn't doing it out of desperation, given the nice coffee.

He didn’t actually accuse her of theft, he reminded her that she hadn’t paid for the crisps.

I'm old enough to remember the time the not-exactly-poor Winona Ryder went fucking tonto down the t-shirts aisle at her local Saks Fifth avenue store.

I wonder how security handled her?

Why should he have minded his business? He worked there didn’t he? So it was his business!

I was stopped at a supermarket petrol station. I had a problem with my debit card so had to put it through twice at the pay at pumps. Attendant came out and blocked me leaving until I showed him my receipt. I got compensation and an apology from the supermarket chain as I had been illegally detained (think that was what was said) and embarrassed in front of other shoppers including a mum from school.

You do have to be careful when you accuse people.

You're not unreasonable to feel bad about it all, I would too.

If someone is suspected of shoplifting and needs to be questioned, they should be taken aside discreetly, not publicly humiliated. They may not be stealing, it could be an honest mistake. Whatever, the staff member was wrong to make a public show of it and a security person would have known how to behave.

However, there wasn't much you could do, op, so please do stop torturing yourself about it. It's over.

I’ve worked retail and training videos tell you that if you want to confront a shoplifter then it should be done in a roundabout way. Eg “Can I offer you a basket?” sometimes makes the shoplifter put the shoplifted items back on the shelf and leave.

I’ve never seen security in a coffee shop but I assume that this is a cafe in a supermarket.

Based on her behaviour it sounds like she did try and shoplift (denial then excuse) Maybe the barista know a that she does it regularly and gets in trouble for missing stock ? Accidents do happen ( l’ve seen children sneak stuff into trolleys) but when the adult finds it, they ditch or buy.

Getting a security guard to come and deal with it could embarrass her more. They are in uniforms and people will be gawping or possibly filming.

How? It affects all of us. She was stealing and it's people like her who make others pay to cover shops' losses. I believe it adds approx 60p overall to each transaction that you and I have to cover. Good on him and hopefully she will think twice before doing it again.

Totally different scenario. She was caught and deserved the shaming.

Although personally in your situation I would have thought, technical issue/misunderstanding, heres my receipt and that would have been the end to it. Unless they were rude and unprofessional it was not worthy of a indignation or complaint, staff need to be able to do their jobs and sometimes that means checking.

Sounds like they might have been waiting for her. Like this is a regular thing for her. Her nice attire might have been disguise for her.

I don't think what the person who spotted the thief did was that bad? The woman was stealing from the shop. Maybe rubbing it in a little bit will make it less likely to happen again.

If she was caught stealing baby food from a budget supermarket then I may have sympathy for her circumstances, but if she can afford the price of the coffee she can afford the price of the crisps.

I don't understand why some people seem to have an issue with the fact the thief was a woman and the person who saw her was a man. It was her choice to steal.

My point is you have to be careful about loudly embarrassing someone like that as you might just be wrong.

You think someone jumping in front of your car to prevent you leaving is OK? You think announcing I hadn't paid loudly in front of a crowded forecourt is OK? Well it might be OK for you but it wasn't OK for me and the company agreed, gave me compensation and an apology.

WTF? Now he's the villain for asking her to pay for them while she was still in the shop, instead of letting her leave and then following her outside to confront her (complete with some bizarre comment about how he didn't want to go out in the cold)?

I swear, the mental gymnastics MN will do to cast a middle-class woman as the victim are insane!

Some people just feel entitled to steal.

I was next to a wealthy looking couple who were caught at the self scan with several beef roasts and a leg of lamb hidden under potatoes and carrots that they had "forgotten" to scan

Perhaps they are wealthy because they never pay for shopping

Nothing class related about my comment. !

Simply pointing out the law here

Shocked how many MNs don’t know it

My friend worked as a store detective in a,local supermarket and she,would have called her a posh pincher its a lot more common than people think. Well to do people stealing.She would probably be known to the store they would have had suspicions and just took the opportunity to call her out.It will make her think about doing it in future. She got off lightly really.

In my toy shop, little cars went missing whenever a certain customer came in. I knew her husband was a consultant at the nearby hospital. On her final visit, I saw her hide three little cars inside the papers she carried and hold them in place with her left hand. She put a tub of bubbles on the counter and its price. I asked her to pay also for the cars in her hand. She flung them down, did the 'I've never been so insulted in my life!' act and stormed out. I've found the affluent steal as easily as the poor, if not more so.

But he didn't say she had broken the law yet, he asked her to pay for the crisps in her bag.

As it's already been said,some people do get a thrill out of stealing things that they could pay for 100 times over. It could well be that she's done it before and he decided to tackle her today.

She's probably a regular shoplifter & that's why she was targeted by staff