7 ms·

This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end. First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting in

This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end. First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting incidents, because every order was fulfilled by their employees, who would pick from the stock room and present the customer with a ready-to-take bag of their goods, and a purchase receipt. Shoplifting in this context was basically impossible. The advent of customers picking out their own goods let to the introduction of customers attempting to leave the store without paying, but it also saved retailers incredible amounts of money, not having to pay to have employees both stock and pull orders. However, because nothing is ever profitable enough, much further down the line (and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows) we get self checkouts, which are basically honor boxes with speakers. And that's fine, I love self checkout and my only complaint with it is now retailers are over-reliant on it, and, again in the name of cost-cutting, have 6 to 10 registers overseen by one worker, who has to sprint between them to sort out when the stupid things can't detect a light item, or have a conniption fit when you don't place a 75" television on them, and of course they have to also make sure all of those registers are ringing up the correct items, which has itself then given rise to bag checkers at the door. And to be clear, I'm not like, endorsing any particular system here. I don't care how stores want to convey products to me terribly, just make it clear what the fuck I'm supposed to do, and I'll do it. What I am saying is retail theft is largely enabled by retailers who do nothing but chase the bottom line and constantly try and make their stores work with fewer and fewer people who are less and less skilled over time and are then SHOCKED when someone just takes something, because their ludicrously under-staffed stores are incredibly easy to steal from, if you want to. And I would ALSO point out that throughout this long history, the cost of slippage has been built into the business, because theft is far, far from the only reason a product that is purchased wholesale may not make it all the way to a paying customer. Retail supply chains and especially grocery ones are simply AWASH in waste, and somehow, all the time, these stores make money. So no, as a customer and taxpayer, I don't particularly give much of a shit about shoplifting.

reliabilityguy 1y ago
> and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows Depends how you count. If suddenly any theft below $900 is now a misdemeanor (as opposed to, say, 100 previously), then sure, the crime stats will show the crime is low because many retailer simply won’t bother to report it. I think once this whole idea of crime became a political issue recently, all these stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt
TulliusCicero 1y ago
> However, because nothing is ever profitable enough This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer. If you think they just kept those new profits forever -- where did they go? Because grocery is an infamously low-margin business to be in, even now.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  > This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer. NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action. Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid. As far as I'm concerned this is a straight fucking myth until I see proof. Like, surely, nearly 40 years on this planet, surely, by the law of probabilities, I would've seen SOMETHING get cheaper. SOMETHING. ANYTHING. And before anyone says “TVs got cheaper,” yeah—because they’re made in sweatshops with subsidized rare earths and sold at a loss to get you into the ecosystem. That’s not market efficiency, that’s strategic manipulation.
  - TulliusCicero 1y ago
    > NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action. Then show me the profit margins? If they just pocketed all the money, where did it go? > Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid. I'm pretty confident this is one of those situations where as soon as I start to lay out out examples, they'll immediately be dismissed, but just in case that's not true: Full price video games are WAY cheaper than they were in the SNES era that I grew up in. Factoring in inflation, even $70 games today are like half the price, or close to it. Even most digital deluxe and similar versions are substantially cheaper than SNES games were. It's way, way, WAY easier to get by with cheap or free games these days. Free games basically didn't expect in the 90s other than demo discs maybe (and those typically were still bought as part of a magazine issue), whereas now there's plenty of free games where you can just ignore the gacha/skin elements if you want, and there's a bajillion demos that can be accessed totally free on every storefront. Indie games? In the 90s, games from small development teams would still cost the full price or close to it, something like Silksong that's high quality and costs only $20 -- even at launch -- didn't exist. I remember the 90s, I remember how most middle class families couldn't really afford all that many games each year, especially in the cartridge era. People are practically overflowing with video games now in comparison, it's crazy how much easier it is to build up a huge library. Really, tons of electronics are way cheaper now than they used to be. A $1500 desktop computer in the early 90s was a reasonable mid-range price; even if you ignore inflation, you can get a perfectly capable desktop or laptop today for less than that, and if you factor in inflation, computers today are way cheaper (unless you want a high-end gaming PC).
j_w 1y ago
You got super down voted for this, and my post was not popular either, but you seem to be one of the few here that get the sentiment. There just isn't a huge energy to do something about a lot of petty crimes, therefore nothing is done. Like you, many people have complete apathy for the pursuit of minor shoplifting (I'm making an assumption here that you would be against large scale crime ring level shoplifting). There isn't the will from the people or the politicians to care about petty crimes like this, until there is. People like you have explicit reasons why you don't care, and many people have the implicit "it just doesn't directly effect me therefore why should I care" reason.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Exactly. Also worth noting: any store worth a SHIT that carries high value goods fully insures their inventory too, for stealing, and for their employees breaking one getting it out, for natural disasters, for fires, for boomers driving their SUVs through the front windows, and for like... a toddler running through one on the display floor. Like I'm just... I'm fucking done listening to the endless bitching and crying on the part of corporations about how HARD it is to do business. If it's so awful, shut it the fuck down then. And I genuinely wouldn't care apart from this is just a BOTTOMLESS well that reactionary politicians use to constantly divert money from anything we actually need to give yet more of it to fund yet more policing that doesn't do anything apart from murder black teenagers and shoot people's dogs, and no that's not JUST because Walgreens won't stop fucking whining in the news about it, but it isn't disconnected either. Crime has NEVER been as low as it is now, the only increases of any note were the ones that cropped up during the pandemic. Apart from that every single kind of larceny and theft has been on a steady downturn since the 1990's. Quit. Fucking. Whining. About. Crime.

reliabilityguy 1y ago

> and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows Depends how you count. If suddenly any theft below $900 is now a misdemeanor (as opposed to, say, 100 previously), then sure, the crime stats will show the crime is low because many retailer simply won’t bother to report it. I think once this whole idea of crime became a political issue recently, all these stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt

TulliusCicero 1y ago

> However, because nothing is ever profitable enough This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer. If you think they just kept those new profits forever -- where did they go? Because grocery is an infamously low-margin business to be in, even now.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
> This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer. NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action. Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid. As far as I'm concerned this is a straight fucking myth until I see proof. Like, surely, nearly 40 years on this planet, surely, by the law of probabilities, I would've seen SOMETHING get cheaper. SOMETHING. ANYTHING. And before anyone says “TVs got cheaper,” yeah—because they’re made in sweatshops with subsidized rare earths and sold at a loss to get you into the ecosystem. That’s not market efficiency, that’s strategic manipulation.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  > NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action. Then show me the profit margins? If they just pocketed all the money, where did it go? > Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid. I'm pretty confident this is one of those situations where as soon as I start to lay out out examples, they'll immediately be dismissed, but just in case that's not true: Full price video games are WAY cheaper than they were in the SNES era that I grew up in. Factoring in inflation, even $70 games today are like half the price, or close to it. Even most digital deluxe and similar versions are substantially cheaper than SNES games were. It's way, way, WAY easier to get by with cheap or free games these days. Free games basically didn't expect in the 90s other than demo discs maybe (and those typically were still bought as part of a magazine issue), whereas now there's plenty of free games where you can just ignore the gacha/skin elements if you want, and there's a bajillion demos that can be accessed totally free on every storefront. Indie games? In the 90s, games from small development teams would still cost the full price or close to it, something like Silksong that's high quality and costs only $20 -- even at launch -- didn't exist. I remember the 90s, I remember how most middle class families couldn't really afford all that many games each year, especially in the cartridge era. People are practically overflowing with video games now in comparison, it's crazy how much easier it is to build up a huge library. Really, tons of electronics are way cheaper now than they used to be. A $1500 desktop computer in the early 90s was a reasonable mid-range price; even if you ignore inflation, you can get a perfectly capable desktop or laptop today for less than that, and if you factor in inflation, computers today are way cheaper (unless you want a high-end gaming PC).

j_w 1y ago

You got super down voted for this, and my post was not popular either, but you seem to be one of the few here that get the sentiment. There just isn't a huge energy to do something about a lot of petty crimes, therefore nothing is done. Like you, many people have complete apathy for the pursuit of minor shoplifting (I'm making an assumption here that you would be against large scale crime ring level shoplifting). There isn't the will from the people or the politicians to care about petty crimes like this, until there is. People like you have explicit reasons why you don't care, and many people have the implicit "it just doesn't directly effect me therefore why should I care" reason.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
Exactly. Also worth noting: any store worth a SHIT that carries high value goods fully insures their inventory too, for stealing, and for their employees breaking one getting it out, for natural disasters, for fires, for boomers driving their SUVs through the front windows, and for like... a toddler running through one on the display floor. Like I'm just... I'm fucking done listening to the endless bitching and crying on the part of corporations about how HARD it is to do business. If it's so awful, shut it the fuck down then. And I genuinely wouldn't care apart from this is just a BOTTOMLESS well that reactionary politicians use to constantly divert money from anything we actually need to give yet more of it to fund yet more policing that doesn't do anything apart from murder black teenagers and shoot people's dogs, and no that's not JUST because Walgreens won't stop fucking whining in the news about it, but it isn't disconnected either. Crime has NEVER been as low as it is now, the only increases of any note were the ones that cropped up during the pandemic. Apart from that every single kind of larceny and theft has been on a steady downturn since the 1990's. Quit. Fucking. Whining. About. Crime.