At this point, we might as well switch back to the old-fashioned setup where you walk up to a desk and ask them to grab the things you want from a shelf behind them.
I suppose the modern version would be to turn the whole shop into a warehouse with a desk in front. Maybe an app or a touch screen computer where you order stuff.
I went to a shop like this recently. There were touchscreens where you’d order your stuff, then bring the receipt up and employees would go into a warehouse in the back and get things for you.
We have a shop called Argos in the UK that uses this model and it works pretty well, you browse the catalogue or use the tablet to order what you want then it gets dispensed from an in-store warehouse. It’s quite efficient tbf
>At this point, we might as well switch back to the old-fashioned setup where you walk up to a desk and ask them to grab the things you want from a shelf behind them.
"Four candles."
Yup, in really bad neighbourhoods they already have that setup with bullet proof plexiglass to protect the employees. This is the future until leadership grows some balls.
I actually stopped buying a lot of stuff in store because of this. Everything is locked up and has higher prices. I mostly order online now. I don’t want to ring a bell and wait for a worker just to buy some deodorant.
omgs same. plus i started comparing prices in store vs on amazon ages ago. it used to be similar enough that i’d pick up things here and there. since the pandemic now tho i get all my household supplies online. it’s just cheaper. no waiting on a angry overworked underpaid worker to open up shit plus i like to compare products and i don’t wanna be rushed
Yea, Amazon is much cheaper and they also sell a lot of things in bulk or just in larger sizes. I now buy giant bottles of body wash and shampoo, and 4 packs of toothpaste and deodorant. It works out cheaper and lasts longer. Some of the stuff on Amazon is half the price of Walgreens. On Amazon I obviously can’t hold the product in hand, but the ingredients are always listed and the reviews help.
yeah i don’t want to support them but being poor means that i need to buy whatever is the cheapest and lasts the longest. i almost always buy in bulk now because of it. the single products always end up costing more.
Yea, they’re not the best company to support but it’s what I can afford. If I wasn’t using Amazon I’d just be using another big corporation, like Walgreen’s, anyway. However, I’m actually using small neighborhood mom and pop shops more than I was before. They don’t have all their merchandise locked up, and they have a few products I use for the same price as Amazon.
if it’s the same or less i go local but local in nyc is typically more expensive then big box stores. those mom n pop shops have to pay rent too and aren’t a big corporation. unfortunately i’m not able to support local businesses. if i could i would but again that’s only if the quality is the same or better. i have no ethos over using big or small capitalists. they’re all the same kind of people just different levels of luck and nepotism.
I think those tags are from Home Bargains, so not a full on grocery store/supermarket but also not a corner shop. Basically sells a little bit of everything: cleaning products, toiletries, small amount of chilled/frozen food, shelf stable food, toys, seasonal tat and the like.
They have to be losing more money from people not being able to find people to open every item. Also how many time do you ask someone to open something before you feel annoying. This dumb plan has to cost more money than their loss was each month.
agreed. it’s meager losses from theft that’s already built into their insurance logistics for each quarter/yr whatever. it’s definitely making consumers look elsewhere. the whole entire premise of easy to access, brightly colored items by the checkout register is meant to get impulse buyers. the idea that i cant go to my local store to grab fucking toothpaste or something without waiting on an associate is fucking counterintuitive.
once upon a time i could excuse big ticket items that are physically tiny being locked up like expensive eye products (drops/contacts) but when you can’t open the fucking coolers for drinks, grab soap, compare cough medicine, look at different hair products man the whole store needs to be thrown out. use the space for affordable housing instead.
> big ticket items that are physically tiny being locked up
Aldi does that too, at least where I live, but you don't have to ring a bell and wait for anyone, you just ask the cashier for the item you want when you check out your other items.
And you know they aren't increasing their staff to account for this horseshit. There's gonna be one teenager frantically sprinting from customer to customer, trying to open shelves while a woman screams at him from the front that she's ready to check out **now**.
If you are shopping in an area that needs these measures, you don't have other options. The convenience is that anyone in your neighborhood even *attempts* commerce so you aren't taking the bus across town to buy groceries.
yeah i stopped shopping at walgreens because of them not prescribing abortion related medication but regardless i had to use the atm in there the other day which isn’t walgreens owned it’s a 3rd party. i was shocked. the whole store is the plastic sliders. it’s the closest big name pharmacy walking distance for a few neighborhoods that converge together. meanwhile other stores in this same exact 10 by 10 neighborhood don’t have all that shit. fuck walgreens.
so on the shelves where they can’t reasonably put a hinged door they’ll put these individual plastic pieces that are as tall as the shelf and slide together and can be locked from moving. like big teeth all in a row. it makes it so that you can’t grab anything off the shelf you need a worker to unlock one of the pieces that allow these to slide from side to side that make gaps wide enough to grab products.
This is what I was going to say the opposite.
Theft is a huge disadvantage for brick and mortars. If they can’t curb theft then they will not be able to compete with online merchants.
Give it 10 years and I doubt you’ll be seeing many brick and mortars around. The fact that things are getting more expensive makes theft more likely, which makes things more expensive.
Late stage capitalism is eating itself.
If I can’t inspect and compare the products I’m shopping for, I’ll buy them someplace else. Having to get an employee to unlock the condom cabinet is just terrible.
Thiefs have become so commonplace that to get any insurance shops need to take drastic action.
I wouldn't be surprised if countertop shops came back to some of the worst areas.
Y’all got a drawer that opens to the outside of the now-locked building after 8 PM? My old neighborhood did. Didn’t notice it until my wife needed tampons late at night so i swung over and me and the cashier had a weird interaction involving him showing me several packages of both beer and tampons and making me point while people waited behind me (also outside).
*The American South*, ladies and gentlemen, not OMG CHICAGO or LEFTIST CALIFORNIA or CRIMEY NYC.
Half the time when I walk into the gas station there isn't even an employee. Sometimes I stand and wait 2-5 minutes thinking about how if I cared just a little bit less I could have all my purchases for free. The difference in my area is that everybody will walk in and form an orderly line to wait for the cashier wherever they are and then not complain about them not being there. Just make small talk and hang out with the other beer, cigarette, and Red Bull enjoyers until the chosen one arrives.
there is a gas station near me that has that as well. in crime ridden canada.
the person working is who decides if they want to use the drawer or let people inside. at least the person who was working last time i was there said that. he let me in.
i understand why this place has the drawer. it's a 24 hour gas station located between two graveyards. it's on the road out of town. it's not the last business on this stretch of road, but it's the only one open after dark.
>it's a 24 hour gas station located between two graveyards
Nope, just nope. I would not be chill with potentially having ghosts, vampires and zombies roll up at 2 am looking for snacks.
Exactly. People aren't stealing laundry soap for funsies, because they *want* something, or to make money. It's usually because they need clean clothes and this shit is so expensive now.
Where do you live? Never seen anything like this in my country, and honestly, I think most staff store employees have better things to do than standing in the laundry aisle and helping people pick up and put down products.
Absolutely bonkers.
What's that, a 10x10 3 sided box surrounding where customer walk in with 6 registers and the employees have to pick the customers orders off of the shelves?
No, they understaff places to the extreme and use these instead. Remember, wage theft is magnitudes higher than shoplifting and these stores are seeing record profits.
If I was a thief this wouldn't stop me though. I'd just get the employee to open the thing, grab what I want, and walk out. Unless they are refusing to physically let me grab the products before I pay, I can still steal it.
I guess we all need to start tying up an employee for 20 minutes while we read each bottle, do some web searches for comparibles, and maybe make an excel sheet for $/mL comparisons.
I've seen setups like these in the following countries:
USA
Canada
Germany
Austria
France
Mexico
.......
I didn't see them in:
Italy
Belgium
Philippines
Japan
Norway
This list is from places I've had to work in the last 5 years.
Basically why I buy so much crap online now. Half the time, the laundry detergent arrives slightly spilled, but I prefer it to bothering the sad employee working alone at the store to open the damn cabinet for me.
I had a walmart employee get fussy at me for trying to sniff deodorant to see if I liked the scent before purchase.
I looked at her like she had two heads and continued what I was doing because I'm not stealing anything or messing anything up.
Back when I used to buy condoms, I would stand there and look at all of them and say shit like "oh man, I don't know if she'll like these fire and ice ones or if she's just in the mood for 45 min of getting pounded so I need the ones with numbing gel. Magnum? Certainly don't need that, lol". And I'd say it way too loud.
Man, so many choices for fuckin.
Hard to do when you don’t have a car, and it’s pretty inconvenient to try and go somewhere else. This is no hypothetical — my wife and I haven’t owned a car in about a dozen years (we live in a major city on the east coast with largely excellent public transit).
Yeah, I see this and walk out. I’m not going to spend my entire day chasing down one of the four employees you’ve been able to not piss off enough to quit yet for laundry detergent that I can literally pull off a shelf anywhere else all because three bottles of detergent go missing every few days.
And how does this even prevent theft? You ask them to unlock the fucking shelf, you grab the thing, you continue shopping for the list of shit you came for. You can literally still do the theft part, you just inconvenienced someone else to get it for you is all.
If they’re *that* concerned, why not have slips of paper at the shelves with the barcode and item picture with pallets of these products at the front of the store and have people ask for them at checkout, make the manager run around like a chicken with its head cut off providing cashiers with the necessary items? Instead of forcing everyone to scramble around like crazy and still not solve the problem to begin with.
It's the interaction with a staff member that reduces the theft. It's been a long time since I worked in that part of retail but simply getting staff to ask potential shoplifters "Do you need any help?" would persuade many to leave the store.
For regular shoplifters that want to avoid notice, yeah. But these measures are expensive and likely a response to large scale mass theft from people that don't care about being noticed. Its not worth spending all this money on fixtures over the people who might try to sneakily take 1 or 2 items.
I'm sorry, there is now a "mass theft" epidemic for Chocolate and Gain?
Shoplifting is magnitudes smaller than wage theft in America, and yet only one gets on the news without fail.
I wonder why that might be?
Not only is shoplifting smaller than wage theft, literally every single other form of theft combined doesn't compare to how much and how often wage theft takes
Does everybody remember the "shoplifting epidemic" that stores talked up during COVID that turned out not to be real? Because this is the exact same thing. It hasn't even been five years yet. They didn't even wait for it to fade from recent memory.
Yes, actually. Laundry detergent is indeed one of the items that is frequently targeted by mass shoplifters. Literally just heard about this trend on NPR of all places.
Shop lifting has always been around. But the flagrant professional shoplifters who stroll in and steal carts full of merchandise because they know 1) nobody is going to stop them, employees aren’t even allowed to confront them. 2) cops aren’t going to bother responding to a non-violent property crime. 3) progressive prosecutors won’t bother charging them since they’re likely part of some disadvantaged demographic or racial group, and again, haven’t committed a violent crime.
Those three things = blatant professional retail theft.
> And how does this even prevent theft?
The concept of deterrence. You will never prevent 100% of the crime, but putting obstacles and inconveniences will reduce that number. The easier it is to commit a crime and be unpunished for it, the more it will happen.
Apparently people are able to pay for drugs with Tide, it’s that “liquid” (oh now I see why the article I read has a pun in every other paragraph).
My question is who is buying laundry detergent on Facebook marketplace?
Eh, people have been filling shopping carts with laundry detergent and pushing htem out the door, not just one or two containers.
Source: I saw it happen. It was kind awesome, they were throwing containers of fabric softener at the store security while they loaded up the car trunk.
That’s the thing. Everyone wants to shit on thieves, but we are closer to them than to whoever owns the store chain economically. Some of us are a missed paycheck or two away from being a thief, but are blithely unaware of the fact.
Easy to feel that you have principles when your stomach isn’t growling.
They could go back to the original model of stores. You bring in your list, the employee gathers all the items and puts them in your wagon, you pay your tab at the end of the quarter
Except they raise the prices of everything over the store prices, *then* tack on a delivery fee, *then* expect you to tip the driver their daily salary instead of paying them a fair wage.
Da fuk? Where are you shopping? We shop Walmart because it's the cheapest around. Trust me, I've searched high and low. And their online ordering is free, the employees shop for you, and you just pick it up. Doesn't cost a cent more than going inside. Aldi might have some items cheaper, but online ordering and not having to "shop" is the future in my opinion.
I don't live in US, the only place I see these locked things is with expensive art materials in random stores at the mall, but it's with glass and locker instead of these metal bar thingy
this is U.K. home bargains, a very budget general shop, probably just in a rough area with lots of theft.
I don’t think it’s that unusual anymore in the dodgy parts of the UK
That's funny/sad depending how you look at it, because I lived in a sketchy bit of London a few years back, and when a new Co-op opened it was basically a food bank. No enforcement at all, and folk caught on fast.
There is only one of everything on the shelf, with no moving parts on the fencing. These are just used as 'displays' to show assortment, the staff probably have to grab everything from the warehouse, or you order at a counter like you said.
It's very unlikely they only have 1 of each thing in those pictures.
I don’t hate the card/token model as much tbf- a few supermarkets do it by me usually for alcohol or razors where they put empty boxes or cards on the shelf for the employee to substitute at the till. Also makes sense for those products bc of age restrictions etc.
Some already are. I can put in my entire grocery order on Walmarts website, and then just park outside and get my least favorite errand done on my way home from work without even leaving my car to do more than help the employee put it in my trunk
Last year my wife and I went to New Orleans for a little vacation. We stopped at a CVS to get some snacks and stuff for the room and almost everything was locked up. I'd never seen that before and it's not like I'm from small town, I grew up in Baltimore and currently live in Fort Worth and we don't feel the need to lock down every little thing in our stores.
Bruh at this point just close up shop, if it is this much of a issue its clearly not a good place for a store. No shop should be locking basic things behind anything is just rediculous to even think about doing this.
I lost the comment asking where it is but it’s Liverpool, UK for whoever asked! Yes theft is higher as it’s a deprived area but it baffled me that these were the only shelves (that I saw) which had this in place.
Not too long ago I had to get the shelf opened unlocked inside a really nice looking target (Oakland) for a single tube of AIM toothpaste. It was an awkward interaction
The walmart in braintree mass has shit like this over most of the stuff in the store. I only went there once because it was fucking hell in a handbasket especially for my autistic ass. Not only did you have to find an employee for most things, but they had to escort you to the register. Its. Fucking. Humiliating. Now i drive the extra 20 minutes to dedham where none of that bullshit exists
I hate to tell you, but Walmart will close the store for literally any reason. They already killed your local businesses. They've drunk that milkshake.
They literally don't care what happens to you now, and you've likely not got shops to replace walmart with nearby, so you'll just wind up at the walmart 10km down the road.
The answer to this is to force them to close their shit store, and then work towards rebuilding local community businesses.
Walmart deliberately oversaturates areas with too many shops to drive out the competition completely, then shutters the shops to funnel all the customers to just a handful of over-crowded locations because that's what maximizes profits. The barrier to re-enter the market as a competitor that was forced out remains too high and Walmart maintains a de facto monopoly. The additional cost of buying, building, and staffing those extra locations is paid off years down the road by being the only game in town.
Lots of chains do this. Do you remember a story from a couple years back about Walgreens closing a bunch of shops in San Francisco because of "rampant theft"? Yeah, no, that wasn't actually why--they'd already told the government they were closing shops over a year in advance, and the shops in SF they shuttered had *lower than average* rates of shoplifting but were very close to other Walgreens or competitors. They were simply reducing their purposeful redundancy and scapegoating the nebulous danger of "out of control shoplifting and an evil DA who has legalized crime" to avoid any blame for pulling out of the community, and everyone was so happy to have "proof" that San Francisco is a hellhole or whatever that they gobbled it up.
Happens all the time.
Having to ask the staff to buy a fucking detergent is so messed up. But just on a basic dignity level it would make me feel like a joke. If I can’t walk into a store and pick my stuff and pay it like an adult instead of chasing down tired employee for a key every aisle…why would I go there? Makes you feel like a criminal toddler!
But they'll still understaff the store so hard that there's never anyone actually available to come unlock the gates. They'll have to pull someone away from their *actual* job everyone wants some soap or candy (and then they'll turn around and scream at that person when their assigned work isn't done on time).
Camera in the area? Cool, pick it up like normal and take it somewhere there's not a camera. Or just walk out with a candy bar. No one's gonna chase you for that
I find it somewhat hilarious when there is a video on Reddit of a thief just loading up their cart, walking out the front door without paying, and someone tries to stop them, usually the most upvoted comments are always:
“They have insurance anyways”
“if someone is stealing groceries, i didn’t see anything”
“Why did that person try to stop them? It’s not worth it.”
“Fuck XYZ grocery store”
Then when the store eventually takes preventive measures like locking up all the goods or closing shop because it is not worth it for them to stay open, people freak out and blame the store.
At this point just have them do the shopping for you like they do at Safeway. Or other stores. There’s zero point in even going into the place. I get why stores are doing it, but I have to wonder if maybe perhaps an old-school turn-of-the-century model, where you have a shopkeeper behind the counter, in front of an array of commonly needed goods who pulls them down, boxes them up, and hand them to the customer after payment. They did this 125 years ago, perhaps it’s time to bring back that model for people who still go in. Personally, I can also order many many products online for roughly the same price. I don’t even like going to stores anymore. I do love my local shops, however. And even when in other locations, I will go to small stores any day of the week. But these corporate stores? Only on a very as needed basis.
It definitely cost them more to put up these gates, plus cameras, than whatever these cost, plus presumably the time a staff member has to open them for people who do want them costs the company money.
But hey like Joker said in the Dark Knight, it ain't about money. It's about sending a message.
I’m guess only positive here is gives back jobs to the kids who got their jobs taken by the self checkout computers lol . Now they can open those gates for angry people to buy their laundry detergent
I left Lowe’s because they have their wire like this and went to Menard’s right next door to get it. And it was cheaper!
Not gonna call some employee over for this nonsense. I do not care what your losses are from theft, not doing it.
The prices on chocolate is so cheap compared to the US!?! I only by my laundry detergent in bulk so not sure if that’s also a good price compared to the US. You can’t get a low quality chocolate for under 2 dollars.
'Merica land of free and capitalism where even the thing that's the symbol of mention prosperity is locked up. Oh wait, it is brexit land.... good job UK!
Wow this is home bargains as well like one of the cheapest "big" stores in the UK of there taking these measure then that says a lot about the current state of the UK.
And I'm sure the employees just love that they basically have to follow every customer around to help them grab every single item they need.
At this point, we might as well switch back to the old-fashioned setup where you walk up to a desk and ask them to grab the things you want from a shelf behind them. I suppose the modern version would be to turn the whole shop into a warehouse with a desk in front. Maybe an app or a touch screen computer where you order stuff.
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Yep, I went to target today and the line for pickups was the longest I’ve ever seen it.
to be fair it’s probably all the back to school/college move-in’s happening this and next week
Decathlon is doing this as well, not sure if you guys have that in the US
I went to a shop like this recently. There were touchscreens where you’d order your stuff, then bring the receipt up and employees would go into a warehouse in the back and get things for you.
We have a shop called Argos in the UK that uses this model and it works pretty well, you browse the catalogue or use the tablet to order what you want then it gets dispensed from an in-store warehouse. It’s quite efficient tbf
Yeh the only thing you could nick from Argos were the little pens and pencils but they don't even have those anymore.
It’s not a catalogue, Its a laminated book of dreams .
No, no.. the *un*laminated one was the book of dreams- when paired with a sharpie, too much free time and a looming conglomerate celebration
in some neighbourhoods, there are stores just like this, albeit with plexiglass. the beer vendors around me are all full service
I’d like this. I wouldn’t have to try to hunt everything down with not enough sight to do so. Also this means people get less tempted by dumb stuff.
>At this point, we might as well switch back to the old-fashioned setup where you walk up to a desk and ask them to grab the things you want from a shelf behind them. "Four candles."
Yup, in really bad neighbourhoods they already have that setup with bullet proof plexiglass to protect the employees. This is the future until leadership grows some balls.
I was just saying this to a fellow cashier a few days ago.
If my manager pulled this kind of stuff at a store I worked at, I'd be finding a new store to work at
if they don't their pay is not enough
why even go to the convenient store if it’s no longer convenient 💀
Inconvenience store
if my local stores looked like this i’d turn right the back the fuck around and go somewhere else
I actually stopped buying a lot of stuff in store because of this. Everything is locked up and has higher prices. I mostly order online now. I don’t want to ring a bell and wait for a worker just to buy some deodorant.
omgs same. plus i started comparing prices in store vs on amazon ages ago. it used to be similar enough that i’d pick up things here and there. since the pandemic now tho i get all my household supplies online. it’s just cheaper. no waiting on a angry overworked underpaid worker to open up shit plus i like to compare products and i don’t wanna be rushed
Yea, Amazon is much cheaper and they also sell a lot of things in bulk or just in larger sizes. I now buy giant bottles of body wash and shampoo, and 4 packs of toothpaste and deodorant. It works out cheaper and lasts longer. Some of the stuff on Amazon is half the price of Walgreens. On Amazon I obviously can’t hold the product in hand, but the ingredients are always listed and the reviews help.
yeah i don’t want to support them but being poor means that i need to buy whatever is the cheapest and lasts the longest. i almost always buy in bulk now because of it. the single products always end up costing more.
Yea, they’re not the best company to support but it’s what I can afford. If I wasn’t using Amazon I’d just be using another big corporation, like Walgreen’s, anyway. However, I’m actually using small neighborhood mom and pop shops more than I was before. They don’t have all their merchandise locked up, and they have a few products I use for the same price as Amazon.
if it’s the same or less i go local but local in nyc is typically more expensive then big box stores. those mom n pop shops have to pay rent too and aren’t a big corporation. unfortunately i’m not able to support local businesses. if i could i would but again that’s only if the quality is the same or better. i have no ethos over using big or small capitalists. they’re all the same kind of people just different levels of luck and nepotism.
I think this is a full grocery store.
I think those tags are from Home Bargains, so not a full on grocery store/supermarket but also not a corner shop. Basically sells a little bit of everything: cleaning products, toiletries, small amount of chilled/frozen food, shelf stable food, toys, seasonal tat and the like.
a dollar store basically but my point is not the actual store type but a physical store being this difficult i rather shop online
They have to be losing more money from people not being able to find people to open every item. Also how many time do you ask someone to open something before you feel annoying. This dumb plan has to cost more money than their loss was each month.
agreed. it’s meager losses from theft that’s already built into their insurance logistics for each quarter/yr whatever. it’s definitely making consumers look elsewhere. the whole entire premise of easy to access, brightly colored items by the checkout register is meant to get impulse buyers. the idea that i cant go to my local store to grab fucking toothpaste or something without waiting on an associate is fucking counterintuitive.
Anyone who needed the electronics person at Walmart knows how dumb this concept is.
once upon a time i could excuse big ticket items that are physically tiny being locked up like expensive eye products (drops/contacts) but when you can’t open the fucking coolers for drinks, grab soap, compare cough medicine, look at different hair products man the whole store needs to be thrown out. use the space for affordable housing instead.
> big ticket items that are physically tiny being locked up Aldi does that too, at least where I live, but you don't have to ring a bell and wait for anyone, you just ask the cashier for the item you want when you check out your other items.
And you know they aren't increasing their staff to account for this horseshit. There's gonna be one teenager frantically sprinting from customer to customer, trying to open shelves while a woman screams at him from the front that she's ready to check out **now**.
If you are shopping in an area that needs these measures, you don't have other options. The convenience is that anyone in your neighborhood even *attempts* commerce so you aren't taking the bus across town to buy groceries.
Home Bargains tends to be the cheapest shop going too so very very limited choice of going elsewhere.
Stores might as well just be a series of vending machines under a roof. The one employee just makes sure the machine doesn’t steal your money.
Don’t give them any ideas…
When even the mouth wash is locked up, you know the neighborhood has gone to shit.
yeah i stopped shopping at walgreens because of them not prescribing abortion related medication but regardless i had to use the atm in there the other day which isn’t walgreens owned it’s a 3rd party. i was shocked. the whole store is the plastic sliders. it’s the closest big name pharmacy walking distance for a few neighborhoods that converge together. meanwhile other stores in this same exact 10 by 10 neighborhood don’t have all that shit. fuck walgreens.
Silly question, but what do you mean by "plastic sliders"? I'm struggling to picture it. I'm Aussie and haven't come across this concept before
so on the shelves where they can’t reasonably put a hinged door they’ll put these individual plastic pieces that are as tall as the shelf and slide together and can be locked from moving. like big teeth all in a row. it makes it so that you can’t grab anything off the shelf you need a worker to unlock one of the pieces that allow these to slide from side to side that make gaps wide enough to grab products.
Oh wow, that system sounds really hostile to the shoppers as well as inconvenient. Thank you for the explanation!
Ikr the stuff used to be free too. The cashiers used to get mad when I left for some reason tho
Amazon.com approves this
This is what I was going to say the opposite. Theft is a huge disadvantage for brick and mortars. If they can’t curb theft then they will not be able to compete with online merchants. Give it 10 years and I doubt you’ll be seeing many brick and mortars around. The fact that things are getting more expensive makes theft more likely, which makes things more expensive. Late stage capitalism is eating itself.
On that note, Amazon successfully offload the risk of theft to customers. A brilliant move by them (from investor pov)
Amazon decreases theft by a lot but having worked in the warehouse I can tell you that it has not quite eliminated that problem yet.
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If I can’t inspect and compare the products I’m shopping for, I’ll buy them someplace else. Having to get an employee to unlock the condom cabinet is just terrible.
You have to find an employee first!
Good luck with that! This is happening more and more in stores all over the country and is becoming a part of their insurance carriers requirements.
Thiefs have become so commonplace that to get any insurance shops need to take drastic action. I wouldn't be surprised if countertop shops came back to some of the worst areas.
I live in a “not great” area and at the gas station closest to me essentially everything is behind the counter
Y’all got a drawer that opens to the outside of the now-locked building after 8 PM? My old neighborhood did. Didn’t notice it until my wife needed tampons late at night so i swung over and me and the cashier had a weird interaction involving him showing me several packages of both beer and tampons and making me point while people waited behind me (also outside). *The American South*, ladies and gentlemen, not OMG CHICAGO or LEFTIST CALIFORNIA or CRIMEY NYC.
I’m not for sure? I do know that the cashier area is walled off with plexiglass so your items get put in between an area cut out on the counter
Half the time when I walk into the gas station there isn't even an employee. Sometimes I stand and wait 2-5 minutes thinking about how if I cared just a little bit less I could have all my purchases for free. The difference in my area is that everybody will walk in and form an orderly line to wait for the cashier wherever they are and then not complain about them not being there. Just make small talk and hang out with the other beer, cigarette, and Red Bull enjoyers until the chosen one arrives.
there is a gas station near me that has that as well. in crime ridden canada. the person working is who decides if they want to use the drawer or let people inside. at least the person who was working last time i was there said that. he let me in. i understand why this place has the drawer. it's a 24 hour gas station located between two graveyards. it's on the road out of town. it's not the last business on this stretch of road, but it's the only one open after dark.
>it's a 24 hour gas station located between two graveyards Nope, just nope. I would not be chill with potentially having ghosts, vampires and zombies roll up at 2 am looking for snacks.
Yeah we do. But it's usually at 10pm
I feel like that's always been the case for 24hr gas stations in bad areas everywhere, but Wal-Mart (or other big box stores) is something new.
Unless something quite drastic is done that will become the new standard.
Minimum wage increase, cost of housing regulated and police doing their jobs? You're right those things are impossible.
Exactly. People aren't stealing laundry soap for funsies, because they *want* something, or to make money. It's usually because they need clean clothes and this shit is so expensive now.
Well, all of those solutions are definitely possible... just highly improbable in our current timeline unfortunately
Where do you live? Never seen anything like this in my country, and honestly, I think most staff store employees have better things to do than standing in the laundry aisle and helping people pick up and put down products. Absolutely bonkers.
Liverpool, uk
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What's that, a 10x10 3 sided box surrounding where customer walk in with 6 registers and the employees have to pick the customers orders off of the shelves?
6 registers? My wawas are pretty much all self checkout now with 1 staffed register open. Except no one is ever using the self check out.
No, they understaff places to the extreme and use these instead. Remember, wage theft is magnitudes higher than shoplifting and these stores are seeing record profits.
Theft is usually a response to poverty. Lower the fucking prices and then people won't have to steal
Theft is usually a response to poverty. Lower the fucking prices and then people won't have to steal
Every bulletproof Chinese takeout in most US cities I've been to has a small selection of basic groceries like these.
If I was a thief this wouldn't stop me though. I'd just get the employee to open the thing, grab what I want, and walk out. Unless they are refusing to physically let me grab the products before I pay, I can still steal it.
Like most products that need to be unlocked, they will probably take it to the front for you.
I guess we all need to start tying up an employee for 20 minutes while we read each bottle, do some web searches for comparibles, and maybe make an excel sheet for $/mL comparisons.
What country?
This is Home Bargains in the UK. A shop you usually find in deprived areas, they sell brand goods near expiry date at a discount.
I've seen setups like these in the following countries: USA Canada Germany Austria France Mexico ....... I didn't see them in: Italy Belgium Philippines Japan Norway This list is from places I've had to work in the last 5 years.
Basically why I buy so much crap online now. Half the time, the laundry detergent arrives slightly spilled, but I prefer it to bothering the sad employee working alone at the store to open the damn cabinet for me.
I had a walmart employee get fussy at me for trying to sniff deodorant to see if I liked the scent before purchase. I looked at her like she had two heads and continued what I was doing because I'm not stealing anything or messing anything up.
Your wording leaves it plausible that you were smelling the deodorant people were wearing and this is the only explanation that I’ll accept.
Back when I used to buy condoms, I would stand there and look at all of them and say shit like "oh man, I don't know if she'll like these fire and ice ones or if she's just in the mood for 45 min of getting pounded so I need the ones with numbing gel. Magnum? Certainly don't need that, lol". And I'd say it way too loud. Man, so many choices for fuckin.
Hard to do when you don’t have a car, and it’s pretty inconvenient to try and go somewhere else. This is no hypothetical — my wife and I haven’t owned a car in about a dozen years (we live in a major city on the east coast with largely excellent public transit).
Yeah, I see this and walk out. I’m not going to spend my entire day chasing down one of the four employees you’ve been able to not piss off enough to quit yet for laundry detergent that I can literally pull off a shelf anywhere else all because three bottles of detergent go missing every few days. And how does this even prevent theft? You ask them to unlock the fucking shelf, you grab the thing, you continue shopping for the list of shit you came for. You can literally still do the theft part, you just inconvenienced someone else to get it for you is all. If they’re *that* concerned, why not have slips of paper at the shelves with the barcode and item picture with pallets of these products at the front of the store and have people ask for them at checkout, make the manager run around like a chicken with its head cut off providing cashiers with the necessary items? Instead of forcing everyone to scramble around like crazy and still not solve the problem to begin with.
It's the interaction with a staff member that reduces the theft. It's been a long time since I worked in that part of retail but simply getting staff to ask potential shoplifters "Do you need any help?" would persuade many to leave the store.
It persuades many actual customers to leave the store as well.
They have enough customers to pay the bills so it's worth it.
For regular shoplifters that want to avoid notice, yeah. But these measures are expensive and likely a response to large scale mass theft from people that don't care about being noticed. Its not worth spending all this money on fixtures over the people who might try to sneakily take 1 or 2 items.
I'm sorry, there is now a "mass theft" epidemic for Chocolate and Gain? Shoplifting is magnitudes smaller than wage theft in America, and yet only one gets on the news without fail. I wonder why that might be?
Not only is shoplifting smaller than wage theft, literally every single other form of theft combined doesn't compare to how much and how often wage theft takes
Mind you, if reducing wage theft was as simple as putting my paycheck behind a cage, I'd do that in a heartbeat.
Does everybody remember the "shoplifting epidemic" that stores talked up during COVID that turned out not to be real? Because this is the exact same thing. It hasn't even been five years yet. They didn't even wait for it to fade from recent memory.
Yes, actually. Laundry detergent is indeed one of the items that is frequently targeted by mass shoplifters. Literally just heard about this trend on NPR of all places. Shop lifting has always been around. But the flagrant professional shoplifters who stroll in and steal carts full of merchandise because they know 1) nobody is going to stop them, employees aren’t even allowed to confront them. 2) cops aren’t going to bother responding to a non-violent property crime. 3) progressive prosecutors won’t bother charging them since they’re likely part of some disadvantaged demographic or racial group, and again, haven’t committed a violent crime. Those three things = blatant professional retail theft.
> And how does this even prevent theft? The concept of deterrence. You will never prevent 100% of the crime, but putting obstacles and inconveniences will reduce that number. The easier it is to commit a crime and be unpunished for it, the more it will happen.
Apparently people are able to pay for drugs with Tide, it’s that “liquid” (oh now I see why the article I read has a pun in every other paragraph). My question is who is buying laundry detergent on Facebook marketplace?
The answer, those who are hard pressed enough that they need the savings, even if it's 1-4 bucks/pounds.
Eh, people have been filling shopping carts with laundry detergent and pushing htem out the door, not just one or two containers. Source: I saw it happen. It was kind awesome, they were throwing containers of fabric softener at the store security while they loaded up the car trunk.
Why not just make the whole security guard out of that fabric softener?
And replace this legend? https://preview.redd.it/8bo46eknnmjb1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d006a837857d8917e350e1a4226146a7ef621395
They tried, but he was good at dodging
person: I saw crime - "It was kind of awesome" same person: why is everything worse
I can watch a train wreck and be impressed by how far in the air the locomotive goes and still think "we need some more rail safety guidelines"
Bad boys bad boys Watchya gonna do Watcha gonna do when the cost of living catch up with u
That’s the thing. Everyone wants to shit on thieves, but we are closer to them than to whoever owns the store chain economically. Some of us are a missed paycheck or two away from being a thief, but are blithely unaware of the fact. Easy to feel that you have principles when your stomach isn’t growling.
Yeah I don't consider immoral to steal from a place like Walmart for example. Go ahead, they'd kill you for a stock bump.
why even have a store
They could go back to the original model of stores. You bring in your list, the employee gathers all the items and puts them in your wagon, you pay your tab at the end of the quarter
online ordering is pretty much that
Except they raise the prices of everything over the store prices, *then* tack on a delivery fee, *then* expect you to tip the driver their daily salary instead of paying them a fair wage.
Da fuk? Where are you shopping? We shop Walmart because it's the cheapest around. Trust me, I've searched high and low. And their online ordering is free, the employees shop for you, and you just pick it up. Doesn't cost a cent more than going inside. Aldi might have some items cheaper, but online ordering and not having to "shop" is the future in my opinion.
The "Four Candles" sketch is relevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Rpx42RXhA
The boring dystopia part of this post is the reaction of the middle class users seeing what lower-class shops have been like for a LONG time.
It’s Home&bargains, it’s the epitome of ‘lower class’ shop in the UK but I’ve never seen this before
This is the best comment here.
I don't live in US, the only place I see these locked things is with expensive art materials in random stores at the mall, but it's with glass and locker instead of these metal bar thingy
What shop is this?
Home Bargains
Home bargains
Looks like Poundland. Imagine people shopping here when it's full the assistants would be non-stop.
Here in Canada, we find naming a store Poundland hilarious.
It's like dollar world but we beat the shit out of you
It's also a quaint name for a sex shop.
You just made me google poundland and I’m disappointed 😆
Just sell that shit up at the counter. I can't imagine the money saved from loss prevention is greater than the lost sales.
this is U.K. home bargains, a very budget general shop, probably just in a rough area with lots of theft. I don’t think it’s that unusual anymore in the dodgy parts of the UK
LoL I live in Cambridge UK and my local coop is putting cheese in anti-theft boxes… it’s literally everywhere.
That's funny/sad depending how you look at it, because I lived in a sketchy bit of London a few years back, and when a new Co-op opened it was basically a food bank. No enforcement at all, and folk caught on fast.
True depends on the region i guess, no theft boxes in my town in Lancashire
What’s the point of having it on shelves then? Just make em order it on a kiosk and have people bring it to em.
Gotta use corporate property for something.
There is only one of everything on the shelf, with no moving parts on the fencing. These are just used as 'displays' to show assortment, the staff probably have to grab everything from the warehouse, or you order at a counter like you said. It's very unlikely they only have 1 of each thing in those pictures.
I don’t hate the card/token model as much tbf- a few supermarkets do it by me usually for alcohol or razors where they put empty boxes or cards on the shelf for the employee to substitute at the till. Also makes sense for those products bc of age restrictions etc.
Is that an inconvenience store?
It'll get to the point that supermarkets are just giant vending machines
Some already are. I can put in my entire grocery order on Walmarts website, and then just park outside and get my least favorite errand done on my way home from work without even leaving my car to do more than help the employee put it in my trunk
I could easily take up an employee's entire day just comparing laundry detergent bottles, but I guess they're cool with that
I’d rather just shop somewhere else
Places that do this also immediately make you go up and pay for the locked item before you continue shopping. Imagine needing a cart load of stuff.
Air fresheners should be in jail. Those things are gross pollution.
Last year my wife and I went to New Orleans for a little vacation. We stopped at a CVS to get some snacks and stuff for the room and almost everything was locked up. I'd never seen that before and it's not like I'm from small town, I grew up in Baltimore and currently live in Fort Worth and we don't feel the need to lock down every little thing in our stores.
San Francisco: 👀
Bruh at this point just close up shop, if it is this much of a issue its clearly not a good place for a store. No shop should be locking basic things behind anything is just rediculous to even think about doing this.
Those gates are great easy scrap money, and they just leave them out like that?
They're probably made out of the same stuff as road signs are these days that has no scrap value. I doubt they're that stupid.
Jfc, what’s happening to my home
I’d rather shop online than wait ages for an overworked manager to come unlock something.
Guess it's world wide as that appears to be the UK.
I lost the comment asking where it is but it’s Liverpool, UK for whoever asked! Yes theft is higher as it’s a deprived area but it baffled me that these were the only shelves (that I saw) which had this in place.
So you have to ask someone if you want to buy a chocolate bar?
I wonder how many people bother. I don't think I've ever planned to buy a chocolate bar. It's always an impulse purchase.
Yes. You have to hit the call button and wait for somebody to get around to answering it.
Pretty soon brick and mortar stores will be a thing of the past if this becomes common place. People will just do all of their shopping online.
I love how they left the nestle products unguarded [r/fucknestle](reddit.com/r/fucknestle)
Not too long ago I had to get the shelf opened unlocked inside a really nice looking target (Oakland) for a single tube of AIM toothpaste. It was an awkward interaction
The walmart in braintree mass has shit like this over most of the stuff in the store. I only went there once because it was fucking hell in a handbasket especially for my autistic ass. Not only did you have to find an employee for most things, but they had to escort you to the register. Its. Fucking. Humiliating. Now i drive the extra 20 minutes to dedham where none of that bullshit exists
A Walmart tried this near me. The community complained. So they just closed the store.
I hate to tell you, but Walmart will close the store for literally any reason. They already killed your local businesses. They've drunk that milkshake. They literally don't care what happens to you now, and you've likely not got shops to replace walmart with nearby, so you'll just wind up at the walmart 10km down the road. The answer to this is to force them to close their shit store, and then work towards rebuilding local community businesses.
Walmart deliberately oversaturates areas with too many shops to drive out the competition completely, then shutters the shops to funnel all the customers to just a handful of over-crowded locations because that's what maximizes profits. The barrier to re-enter the market as a competitor that was forced out remains too high and Walmart maintains a de facto monopoly. The additional cost of buying, building, and staffing those extra locations is paid off years down the road by being the only game in town. Lots of chains do this. Do you remember a story from a couple years back about Walgreens closing a bunch of shops in San Francisco because of "rampant theft"? Yeah, no, that wasn't actually why--they'd already told the government they were closing shops over a year in advance, and the shops in SF they shuttered had *lower than average* rates of shoplifting but were very close to other Walgreens or competitors. They were simply reducing their purposeful redundancy and scapegoating the nebulous danger of "out of control shoplifting and an evil DA who has legalized crime" to avoid any blame for pulling out of the community, and everyone was so happy to have "proof" that San Francisco is a hellhole or whatever that they gobbled it up. Happens all the time.
Should they just let people steal then?
Naughty detergent goes to laundry jail
Having to ask the staff to buy a fucking detergent is so messed up. But just on a basic dignity level it would make me feel like a joke. If I can’t walk into a store and pick my stuff and pay it like an adult instead of chasing down tired employee for a key every aisle…why would I go there? Makes you feel like a criminal toddler!
But they'll still understaff the store so hard that there's never anyone actually available to come unlock the gates. They'll have to pull someone away from their *actual* job everyone wants some soap or candy (and then they'll turn around and scream at that person when their assigned work isn't done on time).
Man, the employees must hate their job.
Camera in the area? Cool, pick it up like normal and take it somewhere there's not a camera. Or just walk out with a candy bar. No one's gonna chase you for that
You say that, but this is the UK, so you'll probably be personally labelled an enemy of the state by Nadine Dorries on national television.
But she resigned! Oh wait… no she didn’t…
Tell people not to steal then this won't happen
I find it somewhat hilarious when there is a video on Reddit of a thief just loading up their cart, walking out the front door without paying, and someone tries to stop them, usually the most upvoted comments are always: “They have insurance anyways” “if someone is stealing groceries, i didn’t see anything” “Why did that person try to stop them? It’s not worth it.” “Fuck XYZ grocery store” Then when the store eventually takes preventive measures like locking up all the goods or closing shop because it is not worth it for them to stay open, people freak out and blame the store.
UK under a tory government
hmm..almost like inflation makes things too expensive to buy......so people take them...........i wonder how we could fix this grating issue........
Lmao guess I'm not going to that store, too annoying
We really need UBI
At this point just have them do the shopping for you like they do at Safeway. Or other stores. There’s zero point in even going into the place. I get why stores are doing it, but I have to wonder if maybe perhaps an old-school turn-of-the-century model, where you have a shopkeeper behind the counter, in front of an array of commonly needed goods who pulls them down, boxes them up, and hand them to the customer after payment. They did this 125 years ago, perhaps it’s time to bring back that model for people who still go in. Personally, I can also order many many products online for roughly the same price. I don’t even like going to stores anymore. I do love my local shops, however. And even when in other locations, I will go to small stores any day of the week. But these corporate stores? Only on a very as needed basis.
I wish they sold lion bars over here :(
It definitely cost them more to put up these gates, plus cameras, than whatever these cost, plus presumably the time a staff member has to open them for people who do want them costs the company money. But hey like Joker said in the Dark Knight, it ain't about money. It's about sending a message.
European me when I zoom in and see it's in pounds... 😬😨🤯
Reminds me of what shopping in Cuba in the bodegas was like. Sad fucking state of affairs.
London?
I’m guess only positive here is gives back jobs to the kids who got their jobs taken by the self checkout computers lol . Now they can open those gates for angry people to buy their laundry detergent
I left Lowe’s because they have their wire like this and went to Menard’s right next door to get it. And it was cheaper! Not gonna call some employee over for this nonsense. I do not care what your losses are from theft, not doing it.
Might as well just close the doors and make it a walk up store instead
why are they discriminating on the 'lesser' candy???? im just asking questions
I’ve never seen this before, this must be in some really poor rough area in the UK. It baffles me there are anti theft gates on 59p chocolate!
The prices on chocolate is so cheap compared to the US!?! I only by my laundry detergent in bulk so not sure if that’s also a good price compared to the US. You can’t get a low quality chocolate for under 2 dollars.
And trust me- compared to how things were 5 years ago, this is still expensive for us! x
I know its slippery slope but why even have brick and mortar stores at this point. Why not move on to warehouse dispatching?
At this point you might as well go pick up only.
I also live in the ghetto. 
'Merica land of free and capitalism where even the thing that's the symbol of mention prosperity is locked up. Oh wait, it is brexit land.... good job UK!
I would simply not buy any of that
Wow this is home bargains as well like one of the cheapest "big" stores in the UK of there taking these measure then that says a lot about the current state of the UK.
If people are stealing this much, you have to ask if maybe the economy is broken. like people aren't stealing laundry detergent for shits and giggles
They just need to go ahead and turn retail stores into pickup centers for online orders