Shops are becoming quite scary

[ithinkilikethislittlelife]

I am starting to become quite nervous in shops, primarily shops that sell food stuffs. Just yesterday I saw two men go through a fire door in my local supermarket that takes them straight into the car park armed with baskets of stolen items. The one basket had steak/meats and the other looked like it was all bottles of vodka. The poor staff trying to wrestle the baskets back and stop the two men from leaving was quite upsetting to witness. This was yesterday. Saturday in my local co op a chap was loitering by the alcohol section while I was shopping. Getting into our car outside I noticed him sprinting past us clutching bottles of alcohol. Me and dh see it all the time now. It’s an epidemic. And it usually seems to be men. And I’m not having it that they are stealing milk for babies or bread for their children. I always see them take alcohol. I don’t know what the answer is but yesterday I was frightened for the staff member who intervened as the one chap raised a bottle of alcohol at her and she then backed off but I totally understood her rage at trying to stop the thieves taking from her place of work. I don’t want my children to witness these thieving people and I don’t want to feel anxious just trying to go about my day and buy food!

Perhaps they had a load of hungry rabbits to feed 😂

They were not stealing carrots but weighing beef joints as carrots. Carrots are 20-30 times cheaper than a beef joint. So a beef joint costing £25 will be around 83p - £1.20 if weighed as carrots

I would like my council tax to be spent that way.

Crimefree areas are priceless.

Council tax is extortionate. They really should give the customer a list so we can choose where our money is directed to.

I can't get worked up about things that don't affect me. If I saw this happen I would just watch curiously

If it's vodka and steak it's nothing to do with the cost of living.

Then another thing shoplifters try to do. Is to get a refund on something they stole. No receipt - no refund.

Who do you think buys the stolen food/drink from the thieves?
It is normal people who are feeling the squeeze of the cost of living crisis....

It does affect you though, because shoplifting drives up prices for everyone. Unless you’re so wealthy that that doesn’t matter to you, I guess.

Saw that in boots an out and out junkie trying to spin a yarn his daughter didn't want it..aye aye mine!

I know that he was a junkie I remembered him from Nsoul niters and he had moved up to heroin been on it for decades.

Min not mine ..NE Scottish term.

Nothing to do with the cost of living . They are stealing booze, brazenly and aggressive because they are the dregs of society . Of course opening the prisons to let criminals out early via hardly a deterrent . Catch them charge them, put them in orange jumosuits and get them litter picking

In my area shop lifting is such a big problem. They now leave empty items for you to take to the till and they will get the item from outback. Even the red bulls!
I was in there last year with my daughter during school hours (she hasn't in and she's 7) we was in this small shop and this man ran passed and barged past me and barged past my daughter and she fell!!
I was lividd!!!!
I ended up skipping his foot so he stumbled and fell and I was shouting at him as well as the staff grabbing this from him.
I'm usually one to mind my own business but the fact he made my daughter cry 😩.

I feel so sorry for the staff. The police do absolutely nothing.

Not really. Lots of people who could afford things like to get it cheap. Take the duty free fags and booze that people buy in pubs and from dodgy shops - most can afford to buy legitimately but want the buzz of not paying the tax. It’s very naive to think it’s only the poorest who buy illegal duty free stuff or pay tradesmen cash in hand to avoid vat etc.

Litter picking is not a good deterrent. For these reasons needs good monitoring of the prisoners, they won’t do a good job and sending the wrong message that areas will be cleared of litter by criminals, not by a organised litter picking group.

Being a litter womble, we do a great job of clearing rubbish as we want to live in a world with less litter. Criminals don’t seem to care

The supermarket I used to work at used to sell printer ink cartridges. They were stolen so many times that the store manager at the time asked HQ if we could stop selling them. They said yes.

When Jack Daniels wasn’t on offer - we only could give customers bottle(s) if they paid us first. We had a list of the barcodes of JD. When it’s on offer, it didn’t get stolen

Parents should be teaching their children the ten commandments which includes Thou Shalt Not Steal. Even for the non-religious they are a good set of rules to teach children.

When we were allowed to have sweets and chocolate in front of the kiosk - that stopped for HFSS (High in Fat, Sugar, Salt) about 2022. A few years before this, a kid about 3 years old grabbed a bar from the kiosk - his DM was a few steps away. Opened the bar and ran to her. DM praised him!

This is the behaviour we should not be expecting to be taught by parents

I work in a well known store & it’s got a lot worse since the COL got so ridiculous, although I don’t actually witness much of it personally even though I’m on the checkouts. You do have to watch customers that put items in their bag that haven’t been scanned. Most do it innocently ( or at least I like to think so!) but you can usually tell the ones that are pretending to be dim. One of our Managers tackled a woman who had come in with her husband. It turned out they were well known in the area for shoplifting. I’d served them many times & always had a laugh with them so it was particularly shocking. The Manager wrestled some bags off the woman as she was leaving. She’s the loveliest person you could meet but blimey she can be fierce! I know it was a daft thing to do but I couldn’t help but admire her!
We don’t have a security guard & our alarms don’t work so these issues definitely need to be addressed.

My local food shop security tags the Red Bull but not the Monster. Does Red Bull have a street value but not Monster?

I worked in a food shop in the town centre of a generally quite safe town in the 1990s and people routinely, every Saturday, would come in the back door with large shopping bags, clear the whole shelf of beef joints, and then depart without challenge.

I work in the coop in the evenings, I have never once been told not to challenge shop lifters. Infact, as a supervisor, it has been heavily implied that I should confront them. I don't care because I have made it clear I am not risking my life for a just above minimum wage side gig. Coops are franchised, the owners often care very little about the individual staff members, they care about profits. They aren't big corporations, they are often family businesses who would take the loss from people's pay cheque given half the chance.

Needs to be like the Philippines..security guards at entrance exits..wands to check bags, the uk has become to damn soft

The answer is to get a bloody job...

Have you looked at the job market? It’s crap. I was unemployed for 13 months before I started my job.

Left as couldn’t tolerate the bullying from the store manager much longer. I was crying all the time.

Retail has a lot to answer for regarding shoplifting. Staff are leaving but not replaced. So there are areas of supermarkets and shops that have nobody down them - staff wise. It’s more difficult for SLs to nick stuff with staff nearby

I'm going to hazard a guess that if everyone took your advice and just 'lived outside the cities' meaning your kids couldn't afford a house, their class sizes went up to 38 in a class, your drive from home to work/shop went from 10 minutes to 45 every day because of the traffic, air population increased and green fields got built on....you'd be the first to complain!

Not to mention it's not practical for every to 'live outside the cities' - 83% of britain live in 'urban populations' - if everyone moved to the countryside those little villages would become the new cities! There's not enough space, housing, or services for everyone to live in little hamlets of no more than 200 people, even if they wanted to!