Stores: If anybody shoplifts, I’m gonna make everyone wait.
Stores, years later: Hey everyone is buying everything online these days.
The social contract is just that, a contract. The unwritten contract of most developed countries has long been:
*Work hard. Get an education. Don’t steal. Don’t commit acts of violence. Don’t try to foment unrest or rebellion. Walk the straight and narrow. In turn, you’ll have a peaceful and adequate life. You may not be rich, but you’ll have all your needs met during your working years, and you’ll be able to retire when old with a bit of dignity."
For generations, the social contract was that anyone who played along and did things “right” would have a decent life. That decent life might mean living in a modest apartment your whole life, but it was achievable by the vast majority. Traditionally, if you couldn’t achieve self-sufficiency, it’s because you either were excluded from the social contract (like certain minority groups), you were born with some debilitating disability, or because you did something very wrong (like commit a serious crime.)
But contracts are two-way streets. When one side breaks the contract, it breaks for both sides. In wealthy countries, this old social contract has been broken by the rich. Millions are finding they did everything they were supposed to, and they still can’t get a decent life. So with the contract broken, there’s far less reason to follow it.
Most people do not avoid committing crimes simply because they fear the law. Most folks have an ethical belief that stealing and violence is wrong. Most people wouldn’t do these things even if there were no police or prisons. But when you break the social contract, the portion of the population that finds committing crimes to be morally acceptable will inevitably rise.
Honestly, this is by far the best argument I’ve seen so far ITT, but I will say it does require substantiation. Like many people who did just as you said, I feel cheated because none of my efforts were rewarded according to my expectations, but I’m afraid a conviction requires more evidence than that.
Seriously, I am on your side. If you have information that will help to convict the boomers, I’m all ears.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that this is a court of law…
Oh come on, man, I want to convict the boomers as much as anyone, please just give me a valid reason that’ll hold up to their own standards.
Honestly, this is bizarre and you’re creeping me out.
Why? Your initial argument was that the social contract is broken. Well, who broke it?
Because it’s cringe as fuck.
What is, the social contract? Your argument? I don’t think I follow…
One thing about me is that if I see a customer pull out their hammer and break the glass deodorant safe, I pretend I didn’t.
Well I wasn’t planning on shotgunning a redbull but here we are.
Guess you’re gonna have to steal the apple flavor…
Both of these statements are correct. And if you blame the locked cases on shoplifting rather than blaming the shoplifting on the fact that greedy, soulless merchants will jack up their prices in response to sunrises, sunsets, or passing fancies, then fuck you along with capitalism.
Funny enough, the products locked behind glass at my store have actually been getting cheaper while everything else has been getting more expensive.
Turns out if it is inconvenient enough to buy certain products people will just not buy them there
Literally every store in the area does the same so it’s probably not that
Nah, this is probably suppose to make the poster look hypocritical, but I think the sentiment of basic life essentials still stands.
Imagine this person lives in an area where fracking, data centers, and beverage companies have stolen or destroyed access to water; then complaining about bottled water being locked up because of shoplifting.
Tooth decay can kill you eventually, but hydraulic despotism can kill you pretty quickly. The slowly boiled frog vs the one dropped immediately into the pan.
I’d like to see a single town or urban area that is directly affected by all three, otherwise I’m going to assume you’re overreacting.
Ask them to unlock it then leave it on a different shelf.
nah they gotta walk the item up to the cash for you
Went to buy $2 nail clippers from Walmart. Locked in one of these cages. Hit the button, wait a few min, no one comes. Oh, they keep the overstock on top of the cabinet. Reach up and grab what I want and check out.
Unbelievably stupid decision making
if it’s not an expensive item that I can’t get elsewhere, then I just don’t buy it from that store. I have gone into stores and walked right back out when I saw that a pair of gloves was behind a lockbox.
it’s like Canadian Tire not allowing backpacks - I will always ignore that rule. I’m not waiting in line to leave my bag at customer service and let some random minimum wage worker have access to my things. the experience there is so shitty anyways, and why is it impossible to leave the store without going through the cash queue
Do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of Canadian Tire? I thought they just sold tires. If I’m correct about that, why the backpack policy? Do they really think people are going to be able to surreptitiously shoplift tires?
yes, you do lol
it’s a home/tool/auto/garden/sports/outdoors store. a Walmart without food, regular daily wear clothes, or a tech dpmt.
they’ve started locking down all sorts of shit in the past few years, it’s absurd. like, I’m not going to wait for an employee to unlock the case so I can get a box wrench. I’m just gonna go to a different store.
I remember during covid started when they’d just made changes to prevent people from leaving the store without meandering through the 100ft long checkout queue. also absurd. I didn’t buy anything because you don’t have what I need, let me the fuck out, I’m supposed to not be up close to people but I have to squeeze past in a four foot wide aisle??
As someone who used to have to make those cases. They don’t care about the clippers it’s the expensive makeup that’s in that same section and we only had a case that could do that entire area.
Some things are in the case by proximity more then anything else, thus it can be on the overstock because whatever
Yeah someone planogrammed cheap items into the anti theft case because there was extra room and they didn’t want it to look ugly. No thought was put into it beyond that.
And they’re always understaffed. I hate having to wait several minutes for someone to come unlock the contact solution I didn’t realize I needed until I was trying to go to bed
I don’t report shoplifting people either because they desperately need it while the CEO of the franchise earns millions. When shoplifting is a common thing forcing the store to put products behind locks, society has failed as too many of the population are struggling financially.
The CEO of the franchise doesn’t hurt at all from stolen products. If they see a product is being stolen often, they just increase the price so everyone else pays for it.
Why would they increase the price, that would only make more people steal it. Also, with the price wars between stores (which is huge here in The Netherlands), they can’t afford making things more expensive while their competitor keeps it at a low price. Usually they do more checks at the self checkout counters with certain products as certain combinations of products are common with stolen items. Also, contrary to what they claim, they also check certain people based on their looks. I know because I’m never checked, but when I dye my hair purple I’m checked 14 out of 15 times (yeah I counted). Also my darker skin colored friends are checked more often while the store keeps claiming it’s all random.
Yeah, the locking products up thing is not happening here at all (except for valuable electronics, jewellery etc obviously) but also most of everyone can comfortably afford the necessities around here
Same in my country. It only happens in countries with vast amounts of poverty.
If you’re a good person, and someone desperately needs something, why don’t you just offer to buy it for them? Why make them go through the indignity of having to risk shoplifting?
If they get away with it, the store will raise its prices to make up for the shortfall, and you’ll be paying for it anyhow.
So I, someone who also doesn’t make much money, should use the little money I have extra to pay for others, while these stores make billions profit per year? You know how much people are poor? You’re doing exactly what mega corporations do: blame the consumer. I do help out some friends of mine who are poor AF. But the issue is mega corps creating vast amounts of poverty out of greed.
Literally gave a guy $100 once (everything in my wallet) so that he wouldn’t need to keep begging in the parking lot. I was working minimum wage. Problem is, now I literally don’t have enough money to do that again. Now see, maybe if the next person also did this, that might help solve the problem. Perhaps it might evolve into a community of people paying it forward and helping the brother next to them in a slowly strengthened network of support.
In other words, a much more expensive, unsustainable and unreliable version of a strong government funded social safety net.
Give a man a hundred dollars, he’ll feed himself for a day. Teach a man how to make a hundred dollars… you know where I’m going with this.
Maaaate. You’re telling people they are naive, but you are the perfect example of what that word means.
How so?
You sound like a white guy, living in a reasonably rich country, who went to school then got a job, who never had a struggle in his life, who never saw other countries except for holiday destinations, who got his world info from populist politicians and sensation newspapers and Facebook like sources. How far off am I? You sound like you haven’t seen anything from the real world.
You really thought that was a smart argument to make, didn’t you?
So you’re one of those “just get a job” idiots…
This is naive. Sure, in a perfect world everyone helps people in desperate situations or they have support structures that can help them. This is not that world. Sure some shopplifting is for unnecessary stuff but most of it is from desperation because people struggle to afford necessities. It is a much better approach to blame the systems and structures that lead to people having no other options rather than blaming the poor people just trying to get by.
By your logic why aren’t you, presumably a good person, paying for every persons groceries who cant afford them. Is it because you are actually a bad person? No, its because that is neither feasible nor tenable. And the CEOs of large corporations actively work to maintain things as they are because they make incredible wealth.
As to increased prices, every corporate grocery store or big box store has insurance and works losses into their budgets. They can easily absorb it without increasing their costs. On the other hand do you know what the most common form of theft in the US is? Wage theft. So the same CEOs making bank also keep pay from employees who are already struggling.
In short, fuck the corps, shoplift if you need to, don’t be a snitch if you see someone else.
No, you are naive. Yes, grocery stores do calculate losses into their budget and thus are able to absorb a certain amount, but you know who pays for it? Everyone who doesn’t shoplift, by paying more than they’d need to so the store can afford the insurance policy. No store can absorb unlimited losses, they’ll simply close up shop if they can’t turn a profit, and then your neighborhood will turn into a food desert.
Cool strawman. Obviously unlimited losses would ruin anyone but that is impossible and most stores operate well within their expected loss margins, so markups are arbitrary or caused by inflation. Backing up a bit, you are again blaming the more vulnerable group in this. Be mad at the CEOs and politicians that keep people poor, not the poor people trying to survive. Crime drops in direct proportion to drops in poverty
Also, you keep repeating corporate propaganda. It is more common for these companies to use shoplifting as an excuse to close stores that they already intended to close rather than closing them because shoplifting was actually a problem.
Okay, so if unlimited losses are impossible, everyone should just steal, right?
That is the most bad faith interpretation of what i said. When i said it was impossible i meant that in reality the vast majority of people will not steal, not that everyone should steal all the time because there will never be consequences. And i am not saying that stealing is morally good in all cases. I am saying that large corporations, their executives and the politicians they fund keep people in poverty so they can become ultra wealthy from the record profits these companies make (weird they can make record profits while everyone is apparently stealing so much stuff from them), so yeah, if a poor person steals from one of these companies to get medicine they need or food they can’t afford, i think they should and that we should not condemn them for it. I would rather a company lose a buck than someone go hungry. And even if it was true that it was happening at a scale where they had to increase prices, i would gladly pay that if it meant my neighbor could eat without being arrested. These companies are not struggling and theft of this nature does not happen on a scale to warrant any of their current interventions including increasing prices.
I find it interesting that you refuse to engage with my actual core argument and instead have opted for picking at random sentences. Engage with this: the systems that cause and deepen poverty are the problem, not the poor people tryong to survive. These systems are perpetuated by large corporations and the ultra wealthy, they are the ones you should be angry with. You are closer to the person stealing to survive than you are any billionaire.
And i am not saying that stealing is morally good in all cases.
Okay, in which cases would you say that stealing is morally good?
Please be as precise as possible. This is very important.
This was back in 2023, but I once got the estimated losses from shoplifting from the four major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s) and compared them to the shareholder/investor payouts. In all four cases, the latter was greater and it wasn’t even close.
It was 2020, covid was in full force, all prices went up. Ahold said they were forced to do so, due to extra shipping fees etc and shortages due to covid. Many people were struggling financially. Their personnel also couldn’t get raises while they were more exposed to get covid, had to work more due to colleagues being ill. The store chain said the profits on products was minimal, that they were struggling not to sell products at a loss. That they had no choice but to raise prices, while also bleeding themselves.
Turns out that year they had more yearly profits than ever before. Check this chart.
I’m unable to steal. I’m too honest for that, my autistic brain just can’t. But I so much believe companies like Ahold deserve to be stolen from. Fuck them.
That things are locked literally has nothing to do with capitalism. It is because people are shoplifting to such an absurd amount that it is cheaper for the store to invest in locks then let it happen. And if u shoplift, that’ll just raise the prices cos the store has to somehow compensate this loss. Not sure how it is in the US, but in germany grocery stores operate on a slim margin, so significant amounts of shoplifting can be really detrimental.
No. LP can be done with people. It’s more effective (less shoplifting) and loses less sales. But, of course, hiring labor to do something that a door can do is something that bean counters hate more than anything. They’d rather stab their own eye out then have to hire labor. So everything becomes shittier cause every store needs to show 2% growth this year and every year into perpetuity, meaning a store that used to employee 4 people at a time needs to be able to function with only 3 people this year or it gets closed.
Ah no relation to capitalism got it, why are people shoplifting necessities?
People shoplift because their employers pay to little. But that’s not a problem of the grocery store, they can’t solve that.
nothing to do with capitalism
People shoplift because their employers pay to little
Did you get hit with the stupid stick or something?
Agreed, that’s not a personal problem of the grocery store but of capitalism.
I’ve only ever seen this at Walmart, and to a lesser extent, Target. I don’t shop at either
It’s literally every store around where I live. The local Krogers built a little mini store inside the store where all the personal care items are kept. They’re not behind glass, but there is a single exit that’s always staffed with a cashier and you have to pay right there before you leave. The local Safeway did the same for liquor.
they’re putting more receipt checkers on doors at Kroger recently. 3 out of 4 I’ve been to in the last couple of weeks had them
When it comes to shoplifting supermarkets, I’m of the opinion that that is a symptom of the state failing to, or worse, choosing not to, take care of those who, for whatever reason, can’t take care of themselves and those they are responsible for.
You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t have a clue.
And if you did you’d find yourself doing the same thing too.
~ R. Halford et al, 1980Local stores have very little locked up here. My area has industry, which provides wages. Wages produce taxes. Taxes are used for police. Through surveilance police arrest shoplifters.
Complacency of theft only backslides society. I will agree that a waning industry, or that our hyper-fixation on growth effects society negatively, but that’s another discussion.
If someone offers a free item, someone will take it whether they need that item or not, whether they can afford that item or not. Nature takes the path of least resistance. It’s easier to take than to work.
As such, there is no incentive to work if the item is free. If there is no incentive to work nothing gets made. Yet people will need things so you’re forced to make items people need. Which makes items not really free after all to the dismay of many an anti-capitalist.
Regardless there will always be some percentage of the population that will feel above the rest, mainly due to mental deficiency or addiction, independent of the economic system. For punishment of theft I would prefer to see forced induction into the municipal workforce for 5 years, flat sentence with a minimum wage earned in municipal bonds, held in a community barracks with a tapered reintegration into society. A sort of forced communism for those who can’t cope.
I’m ready for the downvotes.
First-world mentality right here. If it wasn’t for people like you we could be more like Venezuela and Nicaragua
…
You’re saying people will steal because they can? Do you?
Are we talking about the poor, or the billionares finding every possible loophole on taxes and regulation?
Small/Societal theft is not exactly hard to get away with. It’s a lot easier than most professions, but then a lot of engineers and scientists don’t get into the business for the money. People do difficult things for the hell of it, as long as they arent punished for it, and sometimes even if they are. Nature takes the path of least resistance? Fucking really?
The reason surveillance is increasing, is because the NEED to steal, is increasing. And hence spending more to prevent it is making more sense.
Food isn’t optional. If you decrease wages, theft goes up. No matter how hard you police it.
Your area doesn’t need to lock things up because the amount of theft is too small to be worth spending on to prevent. That is as it should be.
If the police in your area is wasting their time on catching grocery thieves, you’re already spending your taxes wrong.
It always gets under my skin that my local grocery store has two camera screens to deter shoplifting. The first is in the liquor aisle, which is fair enough, fine, whatever.
The second one, however, is in the baby supplies aisle. Absolutely go fuck yourself Kroger. This and the self-checkout that accuses you of stealing and calls an attendant if you rearrange your bagged groceries to fit on the stupid scale makes me wish there were better options where I live.
While I can’t speak for that store I used to put up and manage security for a blue store. The formula was put under higher watch mainly to make the drug dealers and the scam artists.
Had a case happen at my store a yongish guy came in and “swept” the entire stock he could reach into the cart and rush out an e door. Talking to pd he was linked to using the formula for the mix in of some drugs.
I’m a Food Lion man. The reason being is that aside from the checkout line, I’m rather certain no Food Lion has had its interior updated in 25 years. It’s a normal, bog-standard grocery store, that is so frill-less and basic that the only Shin Ramen is spicy and it isn’t because black and gold are out of stock. It’s all they thought to get.
Ok but green is so good…
Food Lion man
A terrifying chimera
Piggly Wiggly Man appears
Who called the cops‽
