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!

I think my dh stuck his foot out when someone was shop lifting

thieving is awful

I get annoyed seeing shoplifting but I wouldn't call it scary. Though I didn't appreciate being stoped by a guard the other day when the shopping my elderly mum just bought set off the alarm. I was relieved we had a receipt.

it's definitely happening more often, I've seen it a few times lately, lunchtime in sainsbury's local which was packed with office workers buying lunch and 2 blokes walked in in front of me, put their hoods up as they went through the door, grabbed a pile of steak and meat off the shelf and ran out!
Heard someone ask in Tesco if they had any 1litre bottles of vodka and his response was "no, they've all been stolen"!

My local M&S was recently refurbished with all the cheap perfumes behind locked glass doors. It doesn’t stop people just walking out with a trolley full of giant bottles of vodka, which are on open shelves.

I suspect the OP has agenda. It is very unlikely that she saw several incidents where shop staff confronted shop lifters- they are specifically told not to.

No, the answer is to enforce the law.

Yet another person has been wrongfully accused because of that stupid facial recognition The shops dont seem to have a problem with approaching older ppl or middle aged women. The six foot druggie? Not so much. Its blatently obvious THIS is to make it LOOK like they are doing something.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0e56wjz6wo?fbclid=IwY2xjawQL3R9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBRQVBUaEI4QkJPNm15OEYwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHqFX7StLRIRcPMV5-greqHTB6uS_886IhQUjRUlS2pPV26qiE9mHuL7sQxnS_aem_V6ZIcsbZ3lDatLj8TN6oTw

Croydon High Street has brought in facial recognition, so I'm hoping the police will swoop in when criminals are detected on it.

My daughter works for one of the major supermarkets in a smaller 'local' store. We're in a market town and theft is prolific. The policy is for staff not to tackle them and in fact they are disciplined if they do. She's had death threats, threats of sexual assault as well as pervy behaviour by some supposedly 'normal' customers asking for her to reach the top shelf on the cigarette kiosk so they could see her stretch. Yuk! The rubbish that retail workers have to deal with for their rate of pay is shameful. As far as I can see supermarkets seem to be picking up the slack in terms of dealing with people with no end of issues with the care/education/social sector being so underfunded. In essence people are just left to get on with it Add to that the organised criminals who steal to order and are actually pretty frightening they definitely deserve more per hour than they are getting.

Agenda? To achieve what?? I was genuinely scared yesterday seeing what I saw. And I do see it a lot. Usually it doesn’t bother me and I just gawp but yesterday, the fellas were bloody horrible and it was scary.

It really isn't. Lots of people who shoplift can afford to buy the stuff - they just don't want to because they know they'll get away with it.

In our little village co-op, I see it almost every week. Usually 2/3/4 workmen from a skip/scrap van, scaffolding wagon, or roofers vans, just stroll in, take their "lunch", usually consisting of sandwiches, pies, drinks, chocolate bars, etc and just walk out without making any attempt to pay and making no attempt to hide what they're doing. They're not poverty stricken benefit claimants! They do it because they're arrogant!

I don’t think shops are any scarier than they’ve ever been, shoplifting has always happened.
I worked in a popular discounter when I was a student (early 00s) and we regularly had shoplifters, even young teenagers, and I remember a knife being pulled by a group when senior staff tried to chase them.
Don't know what the answer is, it will continue to happen. The cost of living doesn’t help.

Nail on the head. We need the police to actually start enforcing the laws, as when people get away with "little" things, it makes them more prolific and they start doing "bigger" things.

I doubt that impoverished families are stealing high value bottles of Vodka. More likely organised criminals. The answer is to catch them and lock them up!

A while back a woman was stopped in Iceland for trying to carry out a bottle of Vodka. I wouldn’t like to work in a shop that expected me to apprehend shoplifters, it must be quite scary.

Its horrible isn't it. I've seen thieves three times in shops now robbing goods, in my case it was steaks, haribo sweets and Greg's sandwiches that were stolen. It is upsetting, ai think i would react by tripping them up ir pushing them hard so they fall over but that'sobviously assault 🙄. Disgusting brazen people.

There have been a LOT of cases of mistaken identity. I was wrongfully accused last year Not by facial recognition though.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/legal_matters/5394731-wrongly-accused-of-shoplifting-and-harrassment?page=1

Just live outside the cities. Generally cities are havens for criminals because there are more opportunities there. Shops to thieve, stuff to break into, dealers to buy drugs from, betting shops, pubs to sell stuff in etc etc.

If you live in nowheresville in the countryside then there is much less chance of this (not zero chance but much reduced).

And everyone knows everyone anyway, so if the kids are nicking stuff the shop owners generally know which parents to talk to.

I'm in Ireland, I was watching crime watch the other night. They showed a good few people stealing large amounts of alcohol from shops. I've seen shop owners here saying it is terrible. In some areas under 18s are sent in to do it because they won't get prosecuted. I saw a video with about 6 under 16s running riot in a small shop stealing alcohol/ cigarettes etc

I worked in a small shop as a teenager so 20yrs ago. We had shop lifters some were brazen but we never intervened we were told not to. But I can only think of one big incident

I've seen a number of incidents outside our local shop. The police are regularly around.

As I say there was an incident last week and the poor staff were not intervening. They were the target. It wasn't a shop lifting incident. It was an anti-social issue.

I know there's been abuse and harassment. I reported a kid shop lifting a couple of weeks ago and had a conversation about it with staff.

I don't think for a second the OP has an agenda. If this shit is going on where I am, I'm confident it's worse elsewhere.

We know that there is dealing going on outside too and there's a big issue about county lines which the police are doing fuck all about. (I mean it's not difficult to know this in a small community. All the kids know what's going on and who is involved). It's worst on a Friday night. The night parents are out and kids are left to do whatever unsupervised...

It's awful. And yeah I do think it's scary.

Acknowledging reality and there's a growing issue that didn't exist a few years ago, isn't 'pushing an agenda'. It's saying this is happening, what can we do to address it and take it seriously.

Why should these staff be subject to this? It's not ok.

I use the shop regularly (often on a Friday night too as it goes). If it continues it may impact the viability of the store. If it carries on, the reality is that someone is going to get hurt because of how much it's escalated. It could be staff. It could be a customer. There's lots of elderly who use the store and don't shop further away.

I don't live in the city.

YANBU to be cross at how blatant it all is, but YABU to be nervous. Why? You are under no threat whatsoever. Unless you decide to be a Have A Go Hero, which I highly doubt from your post.

I live in the most boring place in the universe and the only shoplifting I've seen is people pulling a few grapes off a packet and eating them (leaving the packet behind), putting large eggs in a small eggs case, or swapping price / bar code labels on flower bouquets. Always lovely-looking elderly people but I live in a retirement area

Interested to know what part of the country you're in where you're seeing this OP? I've not witnessed anything like this where I live.