Shoplifting on the rise
- Thread starter Rob Ray
- Start date
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Our local Tesco has just put up 'shoplifters will be reported to the police' signs. No mention of whether or not the police will give a shit.
mentalchik
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit."
The "just in time" model which virtually all supermarkets now operate negates any need for much storage space (there is generally a chiller and freeezer)....the wharehouse is just to receive deliveries and is why you see any excess stock stored on the shelves above in the store. This model of working is why there were shortages and restrictions when we had panic buying at the beginning of the lockdown, it takes time to catch up when sudden surges occur...
it's kinda old news to hear talk of using "scab" tills on here....it's happening whether people like it or not...my ex GM reckoned it won't be that long in the future till there won't be manned checkouts at all, and yes it's all about reducing costs = staff numbers....where i work, in the time i've been there the 'service' staff numbers are probably half what they were...unfortunately people loudly and aggressively insisting on using a checkout for a few items at times when there are only a few staff and the self scans are free is just one of a number of things that cause us stress and annoyance i'm afraid
mentalchik
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit."
Not if it's relatively small amounts or unless thay become unusually violent...our aim is usually just to try and get the stuff back
kenny g
Sheeple Awake!
I'm crap as a customer at self service tills. Always need assistance to get things to scan and end up getting in a mess when weighing things twice etc.
mentalchik
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit."
I'm so used to it it's second nature to me now
they can be a right pain in the arse though
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
What's happened with the tills at my local wilko is really weird. Pre covid they all used to be manned and now they're not. Instead they're card only but still have the exact same software system as the one till that's manned.
So one till is manned and there's usually a big queue for it where as the rest aren't and instead one incredibly bored looking employee sits and looks at you whilst giving you instructions from several feet away if you pause even for a brief moment. You have to physically pick up a scan gun and scan the goods yourself. I'm literally doing their job for them while they watch me do it. I could understand it from a cost saving point of view but I don't think they've made any staff cuts, maybe one or two but not many.
So one till is manned and there's usually a big queue for it where as the rest aren't and instead one incredibly bored looking employee sits and looks at you whilst giving you instructions from several feet away if you pause even for a brief moment. You have to physically pick up a scan gun and scan the goods yourself. I'm literally doing their job for them while they watch me do it. I could understand it from a cost saving point of view but I don't think they've made any staff cuts, maybe one or two but not many.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Making it really blatant that they're having you do the job they used to pay employees to do, I see.
As for staff cuts, I bet they're making savings by only having one person at the tills at a time. They might not have reduced staff numbers, but they almost certainly have reduced the number of shifts they're giving out.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Yeah I think you're right on the shifts part. That store has always seemed sparsely staffed at the best of times and it's remained so now they've switched to this method of till. They did it during covid and have kept it.
There's usually one person on the till and one person watching miserably with their arms folded. I don't blame them it's boring as fuck. There's a security guard too but he's not much cop.
muscovyduck
Good IT skills and food hygiene competent
Honestly I can afford the food but looking at how piss taking the supermarkets are I've been tempted to shop lift. Round here supermarket food is mostly more expensive that takeaway and restaurant food. So it's not about the actual cost of getting it to me it's about profit. Fuck them. And they're making me scan it myself too
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
View it as payment for the services you are providing to them by doing the scanning.
mojo pixy
○-<{[°_°]}>-○
In a country where every single thing of any worth or importance is Private Property, I'd consider shoplifting to be a kind of privatised welfare system. Like a food bank that I control the contents of. Instead of relying on the random generosity of strangers, it's a method of enforcing the generosity of extremely profitable organisations and their shareholders and insurance.
Keep going, keep safe.
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
It's either free lance socialism or consumerism taken it to its logical conclusion what's not to like?
planetgeli
There's no future in England's dreaming
21% you say? Come back to me in 6 months when this country has sleepwalked into the energy crisis.
furluxor
snake with a claw
Defo been seeing it around a lot more. On the one hand, I am happy that more people are learning vital skills but on the other hand I'm saddened that many suffer feelings of shame and guilt so they wouldn't need to suffer hunger.
I've got enough money nowadays for it not to be worth the effort yet I feel a sort of responsibility/moral imperative to pay lip service to shoplifting. So I'll weigh chestnut mushrooms as white mushrooms and five bananas as four. It's pitiful and makes no difference but deep inside I feel a little better.
I've got enough money nowadays for it not to be worth the effort yet I feel a sort of responsibility/moral imperative to pay lip service to shoplifting. So I'll weigh chestnut mushrooms as white mushrooms and five bananas as four. It's pitiful and makes no difference but deep inside I feel a little better.
nogojones
spelling is overrated
This is the best way. Act dumb, fuck everything up, be really apologetic and half the time the staff just don't bother to check the posh cheese and and what ever you fucked up scanning. If by some chance you get rumbled, it was the assistant that sorted it out. You're just a dumb punter.
me too, story. For a while, I used to righteously shoplift various items from my local Waitrose, as there was a homeless hostel (where I once worked) just round the corner, so I would invariably help myself to nice biscuits and immediately donate to any lurking homeless person (sometimes, I even fulfilled specific requests) and always helped myself to coffee (when the machine was working). The hostel has now closed (after being onsite for well over 100 years)..but of late, I find I sometimes operate a little bonus system for my own use. Things which I will never, ever buy for myself - such as ice-cream or cheese...and usually when feeling especially beaten down. I am very much dreading having to do this out of necessity, rather than just a kind of furious whim.
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SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
And the police aren't going to be able to turn up for petty crimes even if they wanted to, which they don't. Similarly there soon won't be enough debt collectors or bailiffs to enforce consumer debts, evictions etc. Courts will be backed up even more than they already are. These backlogs will give plenty of time for people to put their heads together in their communities and say OK, if they come for one of us then we all turn out to make sure they don't get any of us. Only takes a handful of stories of people doing that to get everyone doing it, at which point the whole debt-farming model becomes unviable.
Yeah, that's how this is all going to go down
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I've shoplifted out of necessity before. Not a good feeling. Not because there's a victim, there isn't, but because it feels like you're putting yourself outside of society. Other people you pass in tesco become separate things occupying a separate reality. The only possible effect they can have on you is to reach into your reality and fuck it all up, not out of malice or spite but out of a warped idea of what's right and what's wrong. Right would be nobody having to put themselves outside of normal life just to stay alive. Right has already left the building.
story
Changing the facts
story
Changing the facts
Yes, I’ve been here too and recognise what you say. But it was when I was younger and was more maverick and belligerent than I am now. I remember fantasy-planning a bank robbery then too.
Recently (within the last 5 years) I was so poor that once I’d bought food I didn’t have the bus fare home. The sheer misery of knowing that every last penny was accounted for by the measly groceries I was carrying home really stripped me out. People walking alongside or passing me on the pavement seemed to be living inside a brash Hollywood movie for all the reality they had for me. I felt like a ghost. One night, I stopped on a bench near my house. It was winter and I couldn’t face going home. Two young lads came and asked me for a light, which I didn’t have. They wandered off, and then came back and offered me some loose change. They thought I was homeless, because I looked so beaten down. Turned out they were teenage refugees who had walked out of Sudan and made it over here. Living in a church affiliated hostel. They were lovely and kind and big hearted. It lifted me up, which was just as well because that wasn’t my nadir, and I was able to reach back and remember their kindness to me when things got worse.
ETA
On reflection, thinking about why I didn’t shoplift when I was so fucked recently, I think it was because I felt so utterly unlucky that I just assumed I’d get caught. Couldn't face the added bullshit of that on top of everything else. It takes a bit of bollocks to shoplift and I just didn’t have any bollocks left in me.
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mentalchik
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit."
Very few of our shoplifterrs are stealing food to eat....on the rare occasions that it has happened one of us usually buys it for them if they are caught.....
8ball
Merr xmas...
Loose carrots and smoked salmon look very similar tbf.
tim
EXPLODED TIM! (Help me!!!)
Unless you happen to be Anthony Warrell Thompson.
nogojones
spelling is overrated
I believe he was doing all his own work and not getting the staff to pass a cursory eye over his bags to cover his arse.
Some staff really don't want anything to do with the punters and wish they'd just fuck off. Others quite like a chit chat. Engage those and let them distract you. Dropping bags in the weighing area or not letting them rest properly, along with scanning very fast and acting as if the machines are out to get you will summon help. 70% of the time they really can't be arsed to check, plus they've got another 7 tills to cover. They're the ones who fucked up your scanning, not you.
some dispute over the cause. I'm going for poverty and substance abuse, with a sprinkling of minimal deterrent.
www.theguardian.com
‘One guy uses us like a larder’: the British shoplifting crisis – as seen from the tills
In Britain, shop thefts have more than doubled in the past six years, reaching 8m in 2022. We spent a day talking to shopkeepers in Manchester, where raids on the shelves are a regular occurrence
girasol
Addicted to handstands!
ah, yes I have noticed that. Also the Sainsbury's I go to has removed most of the manned tills, then increased the self-service area (almost double). They also had receipt operated gates at the exit of the self-serve tills but I"m guessing that enraged customers. It was only there for about 3 weeks. Maybe it'll come back but it wasn't there last week.
I'm now using the app to scan my shopping, because their warfare against manned tills is quite clever. The queues for those are so big plus the discounts via the app it's a no brainer. They do random spot checks of the shop, it feels like 1 in 4 shops the app triggers someone to come and scan random items.
When I used to shoplift occasionally (in my younger, poorer days) I was very discreet - it can't possibly good idea to let a member of staff see me do it?!
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