And of course, while working at Kohl's, you had people occasionally put items away in the back, tucked behind shelves, so that when they went on ultra-clearance they could pull them out and buy them.
About a week later, loss prevention called me in and asked me a ton of questions about the luggage and how it came to be behind the shelves. It was before I worked there so I had no idea. The whole thing seemed weird to me at the time. Now it makes sense. Wild.
If you find something wedged behind a shelf it's sometimes a customer just putting something back where it doesn't belong, other times it's the long-con.
Some stores won't clearance below a certain point because of this; they'd rather ship pallets off at 20% "loss" to an outlet broker than enable clearance shrinkage.
The next day, security called him in to the office, which freaked him out a little, of course. They asked him why he had bought that vacuum cleaner. He said I'd asked for it. They then all laughed, and told him that it was a commonly stolen model and they were using it as a honey pot. When he walked over and took it off the shelf, they were concerned. When he then went up to the front and bought it, they were confused. They said now they understood. It was always the dad causing problems. And they sent him back to work.
What could possibly be confusing about a person doing what most normal people do in a store?
People will get mad because they visually saw someone steal a tube of toothpaste, but not care about other forms of mass-theft because it's not on YouTube.
You can either go to costco which is always mobbed, or if you make the mistake of going to Target, you will have to repeatedly get someone to unlock cabinets which hold laundry detergent, deodorant, toothpaste, etc.
I don't know why you're continuing to absolve the well-capitalized corporation of responsibility for their choice of dumping externalities on legitimate customers, except as part of some gish gallop of reactionary talking points that lash out with blame for everyone but those directly responsible for the frustrating conditions.
Yes, indeed. I don't understand why you're not blaming the criminals and the incompetent government enabling them, rather than merchants with thin margins. Or us, for not being enthused about paying for the thieves.
Meanwhile, a large store full of goods manned by a skeleton crew, which doesn't even hire a single person to chase down thieves, seems like quite the attractive nuisance. Why is it governments job to subsidize the security of this store's stuff through the threat of expensive post-facto enforcement against a bunch of judgement-proof perpetrators? Why do you keep absolving the well-capitalized corporation of responsibility and even agency ?
What was done all the time was a simple, templated, paper-based process that managers went through each month. I believe the gist of it was that it recorded sales for each shift in the month (7am-3pm, 3-11, 11-7), and who worked them. Some simple stats highlighted low sales correlated with employees, to point out who was likely entering smaller prices in the till and pocketing the difference. Now it's all bar-code scans of course, but it was a common problem at the time.
But even then, it was common knowledge that most "shrinkage" (generic term for stolen/damaged/expired/destroyed merchandise) was from employee theft (except in grocery stores... there it is second to expired goods).
Criminally minded employees are good for the bottom line in finance.
The firms in question will filter accordingly.
Having owned a liquor store for a while, it's not paranoia. The majority of the people you can get to work low end retail jobs will try to rip you off in any way they can.
or so the saying goes
One of Kanye's early songs he mentions stealing kakis from his job before he quit to become an artist. Not surprised, if you're an employee you have access to all sorts of things a customer does not. I imagine you also have access to areas where there are no cameras.
Often employees with talk about the other crimes they committed while being interrogated. He just plays along, ".. yes we had that too ... and that too". Give them enough evidence and they will hang themselves.
The hardest to catch are the slight of hand employees that can take money from the safe while it looking like they put all the money in. This is even with cameras watching the safe.
“Take a seat, the door is unlocked and you can leave at any time.”
Why wouldn't everyone just leave at that point? That's what I'd do, since if I'm being investigated, then my job there is over anyway regardless of my guilt or innocence. I'd have nothing to gain by volunteering to be interrogated.
most people will comply esp. if slightly distracted or thrown off a little; the serious hoodrats would be picking a fight or pushing back and the pros would already be walking out the back door ASAP
Loss prevention isn't like the cops, they actually want to catch the thief because if they don't, the thief continues to operate. Cops just need someone to pin it on. Crime continues regardless of whether or not someone was wrongly convicted so what does it matter that one guy got away as long as the public thinks you're doing a good job? LP looks bad if theft continues, no one is applauding them for doing their job.
I've read about this in Vegas, where there are people who can palm the the chips so quickly that they weren't able to discern it on 30fps cameras (they had upgraded to 120fps, I think). Didn't know if it was the sort of bullshit people like that like to tell stories about without any evidence or not.
back when bookstores were a thing most places I used to work in one, and had a manager watch us, the entire time, as we took romance novels we couldn't sell out back and ripped off the covers before tossing them in a ship-back bin. Ditto for a few others like best sellers and some mags
she took two us out back to do it, leaving only one person on the floor to run the checkout -- field day for any serious thief. but they were more worried about us...
https://privacysos.org/blog/target-is-really-really-into-sur...
I predict a new class of machine learning model that will ingest a large number of low resolution video frames and dump high resolution facial reconstructions.
This stuff will probably be sold to both private and public sectors.
https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machin...
https://www.aclu-il.org/en/campaigns/biometric-information-p...
I can't believe there isn't a society or couldn't be one where all this shenanigans isn't necessary.
So, I consider self-checkout a real plus, not them stealing my labor. The exception is when the system is ill-designed or ill-tuned, so it halts and I'm effectively debugging it for them, except nothing is fixed b/c the employee just logs in and waves it through. With that exception, I still much prefer self-checkout.
On the flip side, you could also sue and win lots of money. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/walmart-shoplifting-la...
It has, a couple of times (that I noticed). It's a hassle because it meant that I had to return to the store to pay for the item that was accidentally skipped.
All that theft! no more profits. fuck me.
All major businesses have insurance to cover all losses from internal and external theft. Those same lossses are tax right-offs. in other words, the amount of money lost to shoplifting is less money they pay in tax.
I wonder of all the cctv, facial recognition and monitoring costs work out more than the actual shoplifted losses.
there is more to meet the eye than a lowly shoplifter here.
“It’s a write off Jerry. It costs them nothing. They just write it off!”
Of course that Kramer also didn’t had any idea of what a “write off” was. He was also just throwing words around to justify theft.
(Typos / spelling mistakes certainly fit this category)
Here's my favorite way of explicating that guideline: it's not that these things aren't annoying—they are annoying! That's why people make posts like this and upvote them. It's just that, at a global level, they aren't optimal for what we're, er, optimizing for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Hence that guideline.
A surprising number of people commented about how Target had made sure they got long sentences by waiting and recording them until they would get serious charges.
I'm from Belgium, and at least where I grew up at, the stores are much more corralled. One way in, one way out.
But this forensics is also why I don't use self-checkout. Not that I steal stuff, but I don't want to end up in a situation where I forgot to scan something and get in trouble.
I've had it happen to me that something was missed at Costco, you just walk back and pay.
kemiller2002•1d ago
tencentshill•1d ago
kotaKat•1d ago
I was amused finding out that cashiers basically no longer sign onto the registers using the register. They sign onto a myDevice (a Zebra handheld) elsewhere and keep it with them, then use that to scan a rotating PDF417 on screen on the register to complete signon as a 2FA device.
That’s on top of a lot of built in POS restrictions now to limit where certain transactions (like gift card functions) are completable to avoid people trying to swipe devices or signons from outer area unattended registers.
bombcar•1d ago
eichin•20h ago
lotsofpulp•1d ago
Zigurd•1d ago
vlovich123•1d ago
B) such activities can reduce revenues in the first place. For example I don’t even bother going to retailers because they have so many obstacles with locked cabinets that online shopping is just a smoother experience.
hnlmorg•1d ago
I get there are overheads but that’s spread across all products and supermarkets have a lot of products.
So you’d still have to have a lot of theft in a supermarket before you get close to a dent in those 2% margins.
Edit: as an aside, this is also why high value items such as alcohol are usually at the back of the store. It’s easier to identify and catch someone stealing if they’ve attempted to conceal a product for the entirely length of the shop.
mikkupikku•1d ago
hnlmorg•1d ago
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
———
My point is that shop lifting is small scale compared to legal sales. So for a supermarket to make a loss from shoplifting, they’d either have to see a significant jump in items stolen.
This doesn’t mean that I condone theft; it just means I’ve ran the operating costs and margins for running retail stores and thought I’d share that insight.
cogman10•1d ago
Businesses price in shrinkage. The more theft occurs, the more employees they hire and the higher they mark up goods.
There's a difference between having a 2% margin and having a 30% markup. Margin includes things like employee salaries, spoilage, theft. That's why buying goods in a remote location will often carry a high price tag. The store selling that produce needs to account for these things in order to stay afloat. So even though they are selling something for $10 that you can get in a city for $5 that doesn't mean they aren't making the same 2% margin.
tomhow•8h ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
etchalon•1d ago
A 30% markup spread across 1 product or 3000000 products is still a 30% markup.
cogman10•1d ago
I don't think the comment you responded to was arguing that theft was moral or companies were being greedy. Rather, just that 30% markup is typical and it takes a fair bit of theft before that starts closing the gaps on the margins.
etchalon•1d ago
cogman10•1d ago
etchalon•1d ago
hnlmorg•1d ago
Thus what you’re describing simply has no basis in reality.
Furthermore, you’ve completely misread every single comment in this thread and taken the least charitable conclusion from them.
etchalon•21h ago
hnlmorg•21h ago
So your figures are flat out wrong.
And I get it’s a gross figure, I was just putting it into simple terms for you because you’ve managed to misunderstand every other comment thus far. I was hoping turning the figure into a fraction might help you understand the ridiculousness of your comments. It was meant as an illustration rather than a literal scenario.
Anyway, like the other guy, I’m done chatting to you now. I’ve done business studies and worked in retail before moving to IT. Clearly you haven’t. And if you’re going to keep repeating incorrect figures then you’re beyond reason anyway.
hnlmorg•1d ago
The part you missed is that supermarkets sell a significant amount of stock.
If shop lifting is a serious enough problem in a particular store to make it financially unprofitable then there’s more at play than just the theft:
1. The store isn’t following best practices of having electronics tagged, and high value items at the back of the store.
2. The store isn’t making enough legal sales. This could be for a multitude of reasons from the stores location to its cleanliness. Or maybe they’re just stocking stuff people don’t want to buy or at the prices they’re advertised for
3. The overheads are unsustainable regardless of the sales. For example the land rental might be so high that the store wouldn’t turn a profit with the types of products they’re trying to sell.
Shops also factor in loss of stock in their margins. Eg spoiled food, damaged products and theft. This actually comes to less than the cost of personal nor rental costs.
There is still value in anti-theft measures. But that doesn’t mean that the GPs comments were correct when they said:
> it doesn’t take much theft to put the business in the red.
…because if you run a supermarket correctly then it does. Despite what the knee jerk reactions to my initial comment suggest.
etchalon•1d ago
Let's assume an average marginal loss of 2% of gross sales to theft at a business with a net margin of 4% (typical of retail). Let's also assume wholesale markup of 50%, just to be conservative.
On two million in gross sales, a 2% loss equates to a $40,000. Assuming a 50% markup, the retailer has lost $20,000 in COGs. We'll ignore the other $20,000 for now.
On two million in gross sales, and a 4% net margin, the retailer can expect to make an annualized profit of $80,000.
We deduct the $20,000 in COGs loss, the retailer is now making only $60,000 a year, that's a loss of 25% in profit.
And that's using 50% markup.
In your stated case, with a 30% markup, the retailer would have lost $28,000 dollars in COGs, meaning the retailer is now making only $52,000, a reduction of 35% in net profits.
There is no universe in which this is a non-meaningful amount or to be dismissed as "well, something else has to be going wrong. Theft just isn't that big a deal."
hnlmorg•1d ago
> Theft just isn't that big a deal."
That’s absolutely not what I said and if that’s the message you’re taking then you’re looking for an argument instead of discussing the facts.
So I’m done.
NoMoreNicksLeft•20h ago
etchalon•14h ago
nothercastle•1d ago