How Shoplifting Epidemic Is Changing Grocery Stores 

Who would have thought that if you don't punish shoplifters, shoplifting would increase? It blows my mind!!!

It’s like we’re at school and all being punished for the bad kids.

This is what happens when you don't prosecute shoplifting.

My local Target started putting laundry detergent and soap under lock and key. It’s insane that it’s reached this level. Now you have to press a button and wait for an employee to come open it up for you. And they don’t always come right away.

What sucks is you’re more likely to get arrested for stopping a shoplifter than the actual shop lifter getting arrested.

When you don't punish bad behavior this is what happens. When you make excuses for bad behavior you get this.

There’s always one person to ruin it for the rest of us. People that do that should feel ashamed and embarrassed. 🤦‍♀️

It is so sad I stolen one thing from the store when i was younger back in the early 90s and that police man had a long talk with me and because of that police officer showing me that it’s better to be honest then to lie all your life I didn’t realize what he meant at the time but i do remember he said son nothing is free in this world he then told me see everything has a price and everyone has to pay that same price if they want to buy something he said if you come in and steal something then the people shopping here has to pay for it so that really stuck with me and I always try to do the next best thing for people less fortunate than me I am so proud and blessed everything I own I have worked for it’s the most rewarding feeling to talk to my children and tell them stealing anything is not the right way to go you have to work for what you have and be proud because you got it the right way.

This is so sad. I remember going into a store in LA and they had the qtips cotton balls, nail files locked behind a shelf. It’s getting crazy out here.

There wasn't a crime problem but when I was a kid there was a big retail store with only display units for everything and if you wanted it you just grabbed a ticket. When you were done you brought your tickets to the register, paid then picked everything up by the exit. I loved it because you didn't have to push a cart around or lug things down from shelves.

If this doesn’t tell you that society is about to collapse, nothing will.

Take it back 20 years ago to a retail store chain called Service Merchandise if anyone remembers the instore catalog system. It was cool until consumers felt the extra inconvenience waiting for something to be brought out from the warehouse. That experience and a slew of other things brought the company to a halt. I’m sure theft was at a record low in those stores.

Reporter: “how bad is the shoplifting here?” Worker: “oh um it’s bad!”

Stores used to have to worry about single shoplifters which were mostly people who just needed something and couldn't afford it. Now they have to worry about teams of organized criminals who take stock and resell them online for profit. It's essentially an online business stealing from physical businesses. SMH.

YES shoplifting has really gotten out of hand!! A LOT of Walmarts across the country have CLOSED because of this but Walmart doesn’t directly come out & say it!! In a small town (forgot the name) Walmart CLOSED the store 1 year after opening but FORCED the ONLY general store that had been in the town for decades to close!! The residents really 💭 & assumed the owner would REOPEN the general store 🏬 he REFUSED!! Now the residents have NO choice but to drive 30+ minutes away to do their grocery shopping 🛒!!

Reason why thieves were highly disliked throughout history with the worst punishment coming to them.

Please don’t get mad at the workers for this! It’s not them making these rules. their underpaid and overworked. They don’t deserve to be screamed/cussed out because of companies new rules :(

I used to work for Dollar General and in the CBL videos we had to watch on theft, we were told not to confront the person, or stop them. The video told us to offer the thief a basket to "deter them". If you got into a confrontation with a thief, you could lose your job. But then when your stores shrink (loss of product/money) was high, we would all get reprimanded. It made absolutely zero sense to me.

At some of our stores where shoplifting is rife, they'll have a security guard search your bags when you leave, check your receipt to make sure that you payed for whatever you're leaving with plus security on the floor, cameras manned all the time... It's annoying and can be uncomfortable to be shopping with someone looking at you suspiciously but it's understandable.

In my local pharmacy chain, you have to pull a "coupon" off the shelf. You bring it to the sales counter, and the salesperson goes to a locked cabinet and brings your item to the register for you to pay for it. This process is for store protection of theft. But this increases the wait time in line to pay for your purchases. A new way of the world.

“We have cameras”. Why does that matter?!? When you let shoplifters go and don’t prosecute….why does it matter if you see them or not??

I went to Walmart a while back for some vitamins and some tooth ache medicine. I reached for a bottle of vitamins and it was light as a feather. I realized the bottle had been opened and was half empty. I reached for tooth ache meds and the box was empty. I grabbed another and it too was empty. Wow! I got another and you guessed it, it was empty. I went through 4 box,s before I found a full one. Shop lifting is definitely out of control.

Working at Albertson's I saw the problems up close and personal, and I believe the answer is locking the front doors and installing to-go windows for walkups. All orders will be placed online, and store employees shop for the items and brought to the window where the customer will be waiting with a paid ticket voucher.

- How bad is shoplifting here? - Mmm... It's Bad. Pure gold)

My dad was a thief growing up. He would do it right in front of me and my sister. But he didn’t steal steaks. We went to the Kmart down the road and we got canned goods, milk, cereal, lunchables and things like that. He would put bags in his pockets and use them to put the food in while going down a random isle. I was old enough to know better and I told him he would get caught and I wouldn’t go to the store with him anymore. Eventually, he was caught and got a misdemeanor in front of my little sister. I knew it was wrong…but I still appreciate everything he tried to do. Because we didn’t have anything growing up. All he knew to do was landscape and he was battling skin cancer anytime he worked outside and my mom had some pretty bad mental health issues and brain damage from an attempted suicide. It was brutal. I eventually got custody of my sister and when the state provided us with WIC, we had to meet him in court and he was put on child support he couldn’t pay. I just eventually got a second job and got rid of the WIC cause I knew he would never be able to pay the state back and he was already in a world of debt, lost the house, the car, I didn’t want him to owe more.

Maybe if the stores and local DAs actually prosecuted these thieves, regular customers won’t have to deal with this.

We don't punish criminals, so now we all get to be treated like one! THE MORE WE DON'T FIGHT THIS, THE MORE WE DESERVE THE OUTCOME.

Crazy how prices have gone up so much that people have resorted to shoplifting

As a retail worker I’m not surprised this is happening! It’s tiring constantly going from register to the floor to unlock things. And we still getting stolen from, they probably have to lock everything soon

Remember the general stores, 100 years ago, where they had a huge wall of shelves, and the customer would just tell the clerk what they wanted? Might have to bring them back. That would be more convenient than the clerks walking back and forth to unlock purchases.🤦‍♀️

Till we get a society where stores have the authority to hire security that can use a taser another non lethal force to stop you it will continue. Look at Milwaukee I drive by five people every night no lights, burnt out light, no registration etc and MPD doesn't bother. I got robbed for $50 in groceries. I would have paid double to catch the person.

Funny that. Worked for multiple chains over my 32 years of working, never had shoplifting problems like we do today. Of course, at no time I worked for those grocery stores was there Any self-checkout lanes. We always had multiple cart pushers, and every open lane had 1 cashier & 1 sacker. Now? There have been times I've gone into a store, only to see nobody, or 1 or 2 employees in the entire store. Not the 20 to 50 employees at a minimum I'd work with -- 2 or less employees. Wondering where the "Trickle Down Economics" is. When is it gonna show up?

When people allow shoplifting to happen, by not punishing the criminals and then California saying you have to steal $1,000 of items for it be a felony is outrageous. Stealing is stealing

It's sad to see this is the way America is heading. Protect yourself and your family. We need to raise our children to be better.

They were drastically raising prices before the shoplifting started.

If stolen goods under $950 is not a felony then Why don’t the shops just sell everything at $950.00 and give scannable coupons to customers for the actual price who actually pay at the check out counter 🙁

A large, large part of the problem is that some retailers aren’t doing their due diligence to stop this. I worked at a big box home improvement store that had a non-interference policy and no loss prevention or security employees. And while that’s great for keeping employees safe, if you don’t even so much as turn footage over to the police, you’ll quickly gain a reputation for being raidable. And they were. Hundreds of dollars worth of power tools were stolen almost every night. It arguably makes the workplace just as unsafe, just in a different way.

Hmmm if prices rise and wages stay stagnant, everyone just has to get squeezed more. No wonder people resort to shoplifting. Notice that little snippet about the shareholders needing to see profits? That’s the real story, yet they just want to play around with blaming the guppies.

Theres a differences between professional shoplifters and regular shoplifters who do it outta necessity and being poor

How about you start prosecuting shoplifters instead of inconveniencing the rest of us?

I remember back in the 80s and 90s at Toys R us. You had to take a piece of paper of the video game you wanted with you and handed to the cashier to get the game.😃

After the pandemic, almost all stores in Manhattan have their merchandise locked. It gets really annoying if you can’t find an employee to open it for you.

I work in retail. There's certain items I only put one on the shelf so there's less to steal. One store I worked at, the temporary cavity filling stuff got stolen so much I turned automatic ordering on the item off so we no longer got it ,because I was sick of seeing it stolen all.the.time. One item that gets stolen at my current store, oddly enough, is a small tube of catnip that comes paired with a cat toy. The tube would always be ripped off the packaging. I started taping the tube down with lots of packing tape every time they come in now. The theft has gone down on them quite a bit. Lol 😆 and no we can't interfere or confront suspected thieves. managers will stand at the doors to try to scare them from exiting with merch.. other than that they get all the info they can to the police. I think we should just bring back chopping off hands (but we can start with one finger for the first offense....)

Wow who could have thought that letting people get away with shoplifting would lead to this?!?!

I once got in trouble at the store I worked for because someone was stealing a bunch of liquor and I noticed so I told the manager. Unfortunately the real criminal was me because I had an earbud in and got written up.

If you ain’t stealing from a big chain, you ain’t tryin!

We all know who's responsible. Them folks that just won't work.

Soon we'll be back to the "catalog showroom" model of retail. I remember as a kid going to BEST and you would take a ticket for items you wanted, give the tickets to the cashier, and then they would deliver all your stuff from the stockroom down a conveyor belt and load it into your cart. Honestly, that would be preferable to trying to find an employee anytime you need a case to be unlocked.

Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse.

I shop at the Safeway 6 miles away in the suburbs because the one 5 blocks from me in the city has everything locked up

Its amazing how pointed and direct the media can be in blaming when it wants to -------------------- and how it can also really avoid the subject when it wants to --------------- and avoiding the subject in the media is a large part of the problem in the first place

I literally just saw shoplifters on my way out of a Vons the other day run out with a bunch of food and what looked like liquor. They were not masked or anything and were laughing on their way out! I just stood there in shock for a few seconds. Couldn't believe it. They had a car waiting outside. This is way too common nowadays.

Or they could make stealing in general illegal. Instead of considering it stealing once they've stolen a certain price amount

A lot of places near me have more and more employee pickers, a lot of people shop on-line and just pick up their order

A security guard with crocs on and a flash light lmao 🤣

It's sickening how far shoplifting has gone, and it's offensive for those of us who respect the law and get treated like thieves.

Shoplifting has been insane lately!!! I work at Victoria Secret and my whole 7 months of working there I had not witnesses the stealing with my own eyes til these past few days, its like in every corner there’s someone sneaking items in their bags and like this one man literally walked out with maybe 6 boxes of our perfumes in a JCPenney bag! My managers had gotten overwhelmed with the consistent shoplifting this past Sunday that literally no one had the energy to stop the man. There’s been many cases at the children’s place also!!! I witnessed it whole shopping there! Its insane!

guards got his crocs in sports mode, mans ready

When I was young very little stock was on the grocery shelf. You gave the Grocer your order, and they brought it out or delivered it in their wagon. My Dad had a grocery.

In California, its common knowledge inbetween retail workers that you arent allowed to stop shop lifters. The people stealing know they can get away with it as long as there isnt a police in the parking lot. Its a heavy practice within California to 'boost' products from stores. Stealing it outright and then selling it at a lower price for your friends. Its quite sad.

Another thing that's a high theft item right now is toys, any kind of toy really. I work for Target and every day we find ripped open packages or boxes or completely missing toys. It adds up to a lot of shrink.

I hate it when they make it seem like people stealing is the only reason is surcharge on things

i saw a flash shoplifting mob 2x, at the liqueur store and a hi end clothing boutique. Clearly they knew exactly what they were doing, it seemed to be planned to the second! Pretty much emptied the store completely within about 20seconds, all in one fell swoop, as they say. i was way too stunned to react, was SO fast, but another customer raised their hand as if to protest, the store clerk immediately told the customer we dont want ANYBODY to get hurt, please. just saying

I used to work retail, when the whole covid thing happened the pressure became immense, I had to quit a year ago cause I couldn't take the impossible things my boss wanted from us anymore, I feel so sorry for all the retail workers that have to do so much more work for the same amount of minimum wage everyday.

It's frustrating. It's not just us having to pay more because of them but if the shrinkage goes on that's going to hurt us in more ways than one

Bruh, my social skills doesn't want to talk to the cashier for a product

I have stores around me like CVS/Walgreens that locked up some merchandise and they haven't ever dealt with theft. Just a kid stealing candy at most but the candy isn’t ever locked up. Actual workers have confirmed that there isn’t theft. The stores around me that have dealt with some theft don’t have any security measures besides a few clothing stores that have the sensor as you walk out. Some grocery stores thefts have been busted.

About a year ago I accidentally walked out of a grocery store with a shopping cart full of groceries I hadn't paid for yet. I had something on my mind so I wasn't thinking about what I was doing. When I got out to my car I realized in "horror" that I didn't pay for the items. I literally ran pushing the cart back into the store. I went to the manages office and told her what happened. She was so causal about it. She said: "Oh that's ok you can just go ahead and check out". To this day I can't figure out why the alarms didn't go off.

I remember when my husband and I were dating, he worked at a liquor store. He started a trend of running after thieves and catching them. They calling the cops to come and get them. He just got so sick and tired of the store being robbed. The cops told him to not do it again, but thanked him. After he did that, other employees in stores and gas stations in the area did the same until the sheriff put out a warning for them to stop. They said they will when the cops start getting the thieves. So they did.

I once caught 2 ppl trying to put $40.00 shoes in their backpack. They had another pair of pink shoes which I think they were going to put in there, but I didn't see them do that I only saw them try to put the first blue pair in there. They got angry and they left cussing quietly. There were only there maybe 10 or 15 minutes!!

😮😮😮😮 it’s really sad that it’s come to this I can’t even go to the store and buy some things that I need this is frustrating .

Cashier here, recently we had a person try to shoplift and knocked over someone else in an attempt to get away. He was tackled by 3 people and then later arrested.

I went to buy body wash the other day, walked down the lane and the damn shelves were empty except for a few low end products. I was like damn, this transportation issue has got to end...as I was standing in line waiting for the cashier to ring me up, I'm just casually looking around and notice behind the customer service desk all the "good" body wash is locked behind a glass shelves. I guess thieves want to smell nice too...

U gotta love that guard in crooks!!!

The company I work for has a store in Brooklyn, and I'm very certain that a sizable chunk of their daily orders is to replace shoplifted product, but they aren't telling us about it

I used to work at stores located in Asian neighborhoods, and I've never had a single issue with Asian customers. Dear Asian people, thank you for keeping up with basic human decency and minding your own business.

Might have something to do with little to no repercussions for theft and that people that may try to stop thieves end up receiving more punishment for the attempt...

1:35 Security guard is wearing crocs and some funny pants too 🤣.

Here in the third world you have bouncers at the exits checking out your bags, backpacks, purses and everything before you leave or in someplaces they dont even allow you to enter with that, you have to put it in a locker

Lmaooo that won’t stop anyone. People will steal literally anything and will always find a way. Now we all have to pay an arm and a leg for the most basic things. I’m tired

love the tuff guy guard in the crocs

I don’t know if many remember Service Merchandise. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) was behind a class and you had to write down the catalog number of the items you wanted on a piece of paper and then go to checkout, pay and then wait for your items to be ready. I can see things coming to that point or limiting the amount of customers coming into stores. It’s an inconvenience, but I can understand the frustration.

the guard wearing crocs? oh im so scared

when i worked at a certain grocery store, a woman would open up a package of meat, scoop some out, leave a bulk of the meat in the package on the shelf she got it from and left. i believe she was caught, but it was weird.

I work at a dollar tree. I’ve never seen so much stealing before in my life and people wonder why prices go up ☹️

Everything is an epidemic these days. Wish we could go back to the times when a shop owner could leave his shop unattended and trust that people leave their money in the box on the table for whatever they take. Places like those still exist, but America continues to prove every day that we can't even trust our own neighbors and communities. Tldr version is: This is why we can't have nice things.

In the UK, we use those cards for small things like SD Cards or gift cards.

It's almost like people can't afford basic needs with stagnant wages and exploding cost of living.

I worked at Walmart and saw this coming several years ago. The electronic dept. was by an emergency door and people would run out. More reason to have stuff delivered or go pick up.

In high school my best friend admitted she shop lifted. My response was twofold. Openly I told her she was going to get caught eventually. Quietly we just didn't go shopping together. I ALWAYs found reasons to avoid shopping with her. 2 years went by and I had moved and received a letter that said I was right. She then described the minor nightmare she went through for her criminal behavior not just police and tickets and the general fallout. Her mother and step father......whooooo. That sucked. My adult daughter got caught around 12 for trying it. I made her work off the ticket and deal with the shame of it all but also made her do a research paper on what ahoplifting does to everyone else. So highlight how expensive all that shoplifting is to consumers annually. The stores only stay in business if they can make up those product losses somehow.

He better be in sports mode with those crocs The security guard

When I worked retail B4 I retired, I know 1st hand customers steal everything!! They carry water bottles under their clothes and pour laundry detergent, etc. into them. It was an expensive loss for the company. Shrink as theft is called has gotten worse a lot of it due to drug addicts. I witnessed that also. Laundry detergent, shampoo, etc. for drugs.

When looking at statistics throughout the years this inflation is highly unnatural!

That's sad... I understand the price of groceries has ridiculously went up. But why screw over others? Our grocery bill was $521 for a family of 3. It will barely last the whole month. We will go shopping in between . But we're not robbing anyones stores. all those detergents aren't for their household. They're selling it on the street.. people will buy it too. Tide is expensive and they're selling it at half the price.

I was shocked to see how expensive the liquid laundry detergents were! I only go for the powdered cheap kind. No need for extra additives to clean your clothes.

They need to worry about these self check outs. Its so easy for customers to steal. Ive seen it happen so many times at walmart. People dont scan all there items. Then they walk out freely.

Horrible that people don’t have values or integrity anymore .. it’s disgusting 🤯

This is an unfortunate side effect of inflation/recession. Those living in poverty become more desperate and basically go into survival mode. Not that agree with it, but I understand trying to survive.

This mostly happening is left cities & states (CA, NY, WA, OR, Chicago, Baltimore etc) where they have eliminated cash bonds, arrests and other things to stop people from shoplifting. Wierd thing eh?!

I blame corporate greed, it's going to get worse before it gets better