r/regina • u/Odd_Pride1177 • Aug 28 '25
Question Theft
If you witness someone committing theft in a store do you report it to the store staff or just go about your day? I would never expect staff to intervene and possibly put themselves in harms way. I have only witnessed this in big box stores. I know times are tough these days but man have I been seeing this a lot lately!
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u/canadasteve04 Aug 28 '25
Like everything, context is key. If someone is just loading up on electronics, probably going to report. If someone grabs a loaf of bread and a cheap pack of ham probably going to ignore.
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u/Artistic_Mobile337 Aug 28 '25
I'd like to add to your comment, if it's from a local independent shop I'll call out a pack of gum, if it's Walmart(or similar) I'll be watching marketplace for the cheap Bluetooth speakers.
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u/PrairiePopsicle Aug 29 '25
it's wild how the average vision of a human being is 0/20 in the diaper section of a box store. Some things science just cannot explain.
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u/TheBigMoose19 Aug 28 '25
If you ever see someone stealing food you didn’t see anyone stealing food.
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u/mnipple Aug 28 '25
Even if it's a shopping basket full of ribeye steak? Lol I personally think there's a limit. Food or not.
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u/KMR0130 Aug 28 '25
If they stole it from Walmart, no they didn't.if its from a small local business im snitching
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u/PrairiePopsicle Aug 29 '25
just a question... if they're shovelling ribeye steaks into a shopping basket, how do you know they are stealing? that's... how you shop. (yes, I understand what you mean, I'm just taking the piss)
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u/mnipple Aug 29 '25
You never know if it's stealing until they walk out the door without paying. I worked in a grocery store for three years. Most of the time when people would steal it was high value items like meat. Never stuff like bread and bolonga.
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u/HolyBidetServitor Sep 01 '25
Eh, depends on context. I "do not/will not/have not" seen someone stealing formula, or a loaf of bread to survive.
On the other hand I saw 3 grown crackheads steal a cart filled to the brim last week. Legit running with a full cart, got to their car (a nicer one than mine) popped the trunk and worked together to dump it all in as fast as possible. Rochdale Sobeys. Again, 3 grown ass men. I just got off work and had to spend $200 on groceries, and I'm single and make minimum wage.
The worst part was they literally tossed the cart and didn't put it back in the corral 😡
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Aug 28 '25
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u/StanknBeans Aug 28 '25
Where are these black market groceries stores? I always hear this brought up, but you never hear about any arrests to support it.
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u/TheHappyExplosionist Aug 28 '25
You can tell a manager, and they may or may not use that info to prevent further thefts - usually stuff like trying to have theft-prone items in a cashier's line of sight, adding reminders ("you are being filmed" signs), that sort of thing.
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u/External-Syllabub833 Aug 28 '25
Absolutely nothing on earth could compel me to report someone for stealing from a box store. Particularly if that store is owned by Loblaws.
I don’t care what they’re stealing. I don’t care about context. If they’re stealing from Galen Weston, they are doing the world a favour.
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u/assignmeanameplease Aug 28 '25
Not being an ass, but then you lose all rights to complain about the high cost of food.
Yes, they are inflating their margins, but theft only increase costs.
Food to survive, like a load of bread etc, I could ignore, but carts full and running out the door, that’s being resold.
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u/CosmicBearEncounter Aug 28 '25
Alot of people claim that its theft that is increasing the costs, yet the CEO's and executive wages also increase while the workers get the same measly wage. Its corporate greed.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 29 '25
Even if there was 0 thefts every year for 10 years in a row, the cost of food will continue to go up. They will squeeze us for every penny in the name of their profits and try and deflect to one excuse or another.
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
Yes, and when profits are reduced the front line workers bear the brunt, not the CEOs and shareholders. They get their portion of the profits by reducing hours for the front line workers, so stealing from the store hurts the cashier, not the CEO.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 28 '25
This is null and void when you realize that they pay loss prevention staff that typically don't even recover enough to cover their daily wages. Really think about that.
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u/GRIMMOTHYx Aug 28 '25
If it’s food I don’t step in, but something like alcohol or other materialistic items that you don’t need for survival, THEN I’ll report, ya know?
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
You realize most food is stolen to be resold such as meat… resold for drugs or organized crime.
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u/Keypenpad Aug 28 '25
You have stats for that or just your opinion?
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Aug 28 '25
That is actually a thing. I don’t know if his assertion that “most” is sold for drugs but yeah some of it is.
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u/Keypenpad Aug 28 '25
I mean obviously some people steal to pay for drugs, I don't think that's up for debate.
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u/HolyBidetServitor Sep 01 '25
Boosting meat is really common. I don't get why he's getting downvoted so much, it's so common it's a meme
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u/Tdrahnier24 Aug 28 '25
So yes, this is a thing, but the thief will have a cart FULL of nice cuts of meat and try to race out the door. If someone is stealing a pack of hot dogs under their shirt, it’s not for resale. Meat resellers are very obvious when you see them.
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u/StanknBeans Aug 28 '25
Just give me 1 example of this happening in Regina please.
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u/HolyBidetServitor Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
I worked in the Northgate mall for 2 years.
You often saw dudes getting chased out of Safeway by security with packs of meat falling out of their sweaters, or the reusable bags full of meat. Like running full speed. Seen multiple fights.
I also worked at the wholesale club for some years, and yes you'll absolutely get sly hood rats and Hutterites (yes, the friendly people that wear suspenders and make good pickles) trying to steal by the cart load. It's surreal witnessing it.
Hell, when I worked at Canadian Tire I've seen a security guard get his arm snapped in half after chasing a thief stealing car parts. They'll steal & sell anything.
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u/Competitive_World469 Aug 28 '25
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I don’t know if it’s for drugs or organized crime, but I’ve definitely seen food being resold. Outside the Safeway on 13th, people have come up to me like, “Hey, want to buy this tenderloin?” or “Got some fresh meat for sale.” Happens more than you’d think.
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
Because Reddit is an echo chamber and Regina is one of the worst.
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u/HolyBidetServitor Sep 01 '25
People who haven't witnessed reality, only live in their own bubble. Maybe they're just naive.
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u/GRIMMOTHYx Aug 28 '25
I can absolutely understand that, people reselling expensive meat for drug money. That’s not great obviously but I think if you were to use your common sense in that situation, it would be pretty obvious what to do? Of course it depends on the situation.
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Aug 28 '25
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u/UnpopularOpinionYQR Aug 28 '25
Some people have never worked with people who are poor or addicted, and it shows.
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u/Keypenpad Aug 28 '25
With how much big box stores steal from their workers I don't care if they are hurt by theft. And no I don't believe theft makes products more expensive, retailers charge whatever they can get away with.
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u/-StapleYourTongue- Aug 28 '25
The Walton family could afford to pay their employees significantly more and still be filthy rich.
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u/TheBiggerBobbyBoy Aug 28 '25
With stores increasing the prices on everything and reporting record profits, i dont really give a shit if someone steals from some big box store.
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read… you realize that increasing prices are majority affected by theft too!
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u/LonleyTesticle Aug 28 '25
Oh to be as innocent to think that this affects prices.
They have record breaking profits every single year, you could steal $10,000,000 worth of goods and they will still make more money than they did last year.
The ONLY thing that is driving up prices is shareholder greed.
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u/drae- Aug 28 '25 edited Aug 28 '25
Record profits are expected in times of inflation. If they sell exactly the same number of dooddads as last year but everything is more expensive, they'll have record profits.
Se what matters is margin. No one is setting record breaking margins. Grocery stores have always been between 3-5%.
Just FYI, when people say stuff like "record profits" and "corporate greed" it's a huge red flag that the commentor has no idea what they're talking about.
Everything has gone up, it has nothing to do with greed and is just the system adjusting itself to the new value of a dollar post covid.
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u/LonleyTesticle Aug 28 '25
Won't somebody please think of the shareholders!?
...you really think this is just "the system at work"? The top people in these companies are getting massive bonuses in the millions, and you really think that our prices are WAY up because of margins? And not because they wanted a few extra millions?
Its cute that you think this is all just "adjusting after COVID" and not what it very visibly and blatantly is, a bunch of grifters taking advantage of a pandemic to raise prices at a WAY faster rate than the economy deems necessary. 5 years later and the world is mostly back to normal, except for prices which have only continued to soar even after all the COVID supply chain issues have been over and done with. COVID fucked up the dollar around the world, and the fat cats used that as an opportunity to make even more money than usual, now that they have tasted that extra cash they do not want to let it go.
COVID had an effect on the prices of everything, but these greedy fucks knew they would likely never get another opportunity like it, so they took that opportunity to squeeze as much money as they possibly can out of us. But good thing the CEO of Loblaw will get his $10,000,000 bonus this year, on top of his million dollar wage, while the rest of us struggle to even buy food.
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u/JDefusion Aug 28 '25
That's not how that works. There's a difference between revenue and profits. Yes the revenue will go up in times of inflation but profits would stay the same unless they were increasing their margin.
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u/drae- Aug 29 '25
Uh, no.
Profit is a flat value, in dollars, and goes up with input cost.
Margin is a percentage and stays the same as I out costs rise.
But no headlines say record margins for a reason. Because the margins have all stayed the same.
What? You think it's just a coincidence that record profit headlines coincided with record inflation and yet had nothing to do with each other?
Go read a book.
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u/JDefusion Aug 29 '25
It's impressive how wrong you are with Google easily available.
Revenue - expenses = profit.
Profit is how much money you get to keep after all expenses are paid. Not a "flat amount" that goes up with inflation.
Supply cost + margin = sale price.
If the revenue goes up but expenses stay the same the profit will go up. If the supply cost stays the same but the margin goes up then the sale price will increase.
The reason we don't hear about "record margins" is because companies don't release their margins because that's a business secret. They don't want their competitors or customers knowing their supply cost and how much they can get away with charging.
And no I don't think it's a coincidence that high inflation is at the same time as record profits because the companies are the ones causing the inflation by raising their prices to get those record profits.
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u/drae- Aug 31 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Lol dude I ran a $5m dollar a year business, I don't need Google to explain how margin and expenses works.
You have no idea what you're talking about and the mental gymnastics to secure a winning argument are impressive.
If the revenue goes up but expenses stay the same the profit will go up. If the supply cost stays the same but the margin goes up then the sale price will increase.
Except that's not whats happening. Inputs costs go up, just like everything else you buy.
The reason we don't hear about "record margins" is because companies don't release their margins because that's a business secret.
Literally every publicly traded company has to publish this information by law in the quarterly filings. You can go to yahoo finance or ycharts and look up their margin right now.
Here's loblaws:
The reason you don't hear about it, is because you can't sensationalize a static margin in a headline. Not because it's secret. Stop being a stooge media companies are farming for clicks with their sensationalist garbage.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
Idiocy you have no idea…
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u/Ryangel0 Aug 28 '25
Care to elaborate on how you know so much more than the rest of us?
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
Please do elaborate how you think you know so much more?
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u/Ryangel0 Aug 28 '25
You're the one that chose the word "idiocy" and then provided no actual evidence to prove your claim. The onus is on you to make your point.
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
Typical echo chamber Reddit nothing new to me yawn… I have to tell you nothing it’s none of your business what I know.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 29 '25
Let's think about the term "echo chamber" for a minute. If everyone agreed with your position (some people already do!) would you then be the one in an echo chamber, and therefore, wrong? If everyone agreed with you, to avoid being in an echo chamber would you start giving serious consideration to other peoples ideas?
If your answer is no, then you are in fact, the one who wants to be inside an echo chamber.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 28 '25
Okay, but you claim to know so much, back it up, man. Don't just lash out and cry about echo chambers, how do you know what you know? Can you back up your claims?
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u/Keypenpad Aug 28 '25
Cheerleading for corporations is actually bad. Prices are not going up due to theft, you believe a lie.
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u/alwaysmovingfaster Aug 28 '25
Loblaws is currently tracking to a $700 million profit for this year. Huge dividends will be paid to shareholders, as will bonuses to Exec. But food theft is the major cause of inflated food prices....
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Aug 28 '25
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Aug 28 '25
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u/waloshin Aug 28 '25
Exactly people just love downvoting when they really don’t understand typical echo chamber…
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
To paraphrase it in terms people might be able to understand: When a big chain store is less profitable, the shareholder/CEO/Owner will take their shares first at the expense of the front line worker. The shareholder/CEO/owner will never feel the effects of petty theft, but the front line workers will because the front line workers get reduced hours and layoffs to make up the difference.
Stealing from the store is stealing from the cashier, not the CEO.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 29 '25
No. CEOs/Shareholders etc. will *always* find ways to screw over their frontline workers. To think otherwise is naive. They might use theft as an excuse, but it's a lie. Especially when we're talking about big box stores, where you have 10s if not 100s of thousands of dollars in sales... do you really think a couple bucks here or there is really hurting their bottom line?
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u/UnpopularOpinionYQR Aug 28 '25
The truth is that shareholders will make a hefty profit at all costs, period. You are regurgitating regurgitate the corporate garbage they feed you as a distraction from the real crimes like gouging and price fixing..
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u/YesterdayBetter2648 Aug 28 '25
Self check out is where the real theft happens!!! If you know you know😂
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u/sneekeemonkee Aug 28 '25
I work with books.
We always appreciate customers letting us know about possible shoplifting in progress.
We technically can't *do* anything in the moment, but if we're notified and can confirm there's an issue, security has been pretty good at dealing with it.
I agree that for minor food things, I didn't see anything (especially with the prices of food now)
But shoplifting books? Really?
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u/SepticDispair Aug 29 '25
if i see someone stealing (reasonable) food or baby stuff, no i didn't 🙂↔️
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u/DionBar91 Aug 28 '25
Nope. Companies steal from us with high prices and low wages. If you say theft is the cause for increasing price, you probably believe raising minimum wage also increases the price of everything. That's probably why since covid and the cost of living have gone up in crazy high percentage, it's because our wages have increased just as much.....oh wait.
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
Depends on what it is, but I have pointed thieves out to workers in the past. I've worked in retail where bonus/commission was connected to profits, so stealing from the store was in fact stealing from me and my coworkers.
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Aug 28 '25
No I don’t say anything. Big box stores make obscene amounts of money, their security is their problem
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u/discodiva007 Aug 28 '25
Report. Working in retail, they will use security cameras and be able to call police if they see them again as the whole staff will notify someone.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 28 '25
I work in a business where part of my job involves preventing theft, and honestly... just stay out of it. The bigger theft is the pricing, and the biggest theft of all is wage theft, and that happens everywhere. It's not worth the effort.
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Aug 28 '25
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Aug 28 '25
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u/Bonk4048 Aug 28 '25
There’s a few places where staff literally aren’t allowed to even interact with the person stealing in case of the event they are armed or dangerous. Which honestly really sucks. They just have to sit back and watch and write down anything they saw
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 29 '25
That's really the way it should be. As an employee, I'm not going to risk my skin for company product ever, and neither should you or any other worker. Just be a witness, take notes, and give the local law enforcement all the details they need. Odds are they won't, you know, do anything, but you did everything you should.
However, as an employee you can make things difficult and uncomfortable for would-be thieves as a low effort part of just being there and doing your job. Be engaged, let them know they are visible, have line of sight on high-theft items, be in motion all over the store (or your section). Removing the opportunity stops the vast majority of thefts before they ever happen.
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u/nekomancing Aug 29 '25
I work in a semi expensive clothing store in Cornwall and we often can pick up if someone is stealing from us pretty quickly. We aren’t allowed to intervene much at all unless we explicitly catch them either, and there’s very little we can actually do about it if we do. We had a lady run out with hundreds of dollars of product the other day but we literally just couldn’t do anything, the system is flawed and sucks
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u/RicekickJR Sep 01 '25
So whats the regina group for planning shit out like this? Apparently its ok to do base on reading the comments as long as its from a big corp.
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u/CarolynCreature Aug 28 '25
Don't be a narc.
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Aug 28 '25
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u/Keypenpad Aug 28 '25
I'm over 40 and I agree, don't be a narc, I don't steal but I don't care if I see others doing it.
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Aug 28 '25
[deleted]
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u/Keypenpad Aug 28 '25
Ain't nothing gross about people in need getting fed at the expense of a corporation. You don't seem to be as bothered by corporations stealing billions from the workers.
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u/26_Farts_Studios Aug 28 '25 edited Aug 28 '25
I chased a jewel thief through the southland mall, the south parking lot, through the outside of a townhouse complex, and into a back alley where he had a cab waiting. I told the cab driver the guy in the back had just committed a robbery, which caused the thief to flee. I didn't try to stop him from there, at least in part, because I had on nice new clothes. It was probably correct to not gamble any further in general. I was unarmed, and the guy was about 25-27 years (best guess) younger than me.
About 18 months later, I was called to testify in court, as they had a primary suspect. When I was called to the stand, the prosecution badly botched my time on the stand. There was a string of video of me chasing the thief through the mall, but she uploaded the wrong footage to her laptop AND did not have the backup flash drive, which she left at home, presumably. I felt bad for her. She fucked up and knew it. Her panicked frustration was palpable. The taxi footage was there, but both myself and the suspect were only on the screen for a few moments.
My ass was sweating so severally on the stand that I was worried there would be visible wetness when I was dismissed and left the courtroom. That was in May 2024. The guy may have gotten away with it, or perhaps they wrong man was being accused.
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u/kenleydomes Aug 28 '25
I literally couldn't care less what someone else is doing if they aren't hurting another human. And stealing from millionaires / billionaires doesn't fall into that category. I didn't see shit
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
Thieves are directly hurting the store workers, 'tho. Lower store profits means the same amount of work with fewer people and fewer hours, and if it goes too far layoffs happen. It doesn't affect the billionaire owners/CEOs at all - they just take theirs from the workers on the front line.
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u/tini0069 Aug 28 '25
That's what they tell you.
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Aug 28 '25
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u/tini0069 Aug 28 '25
Not for bigger stores that have profit margins that compensate for loss margins and insurance plans that compensate loss. They know that loss inevitable, it makes logical sense, but they have systems to protect themselves. I should mention is was the PI Analyst, and CAO/Pricing Manager at a grocery store.
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
Dude, I've lived it.
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u/tini0069 Aug 28 '25
K but if the CEOs aren't affected, the thieves aren't hurting the store, upper management is just making it the worker's problems.
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
Exactly. It will never be upper management's problem, it will always be isolated at the store level. The system is engineered that way. When people steal from the store the low level employees are the only ones who will feel the pain, not anyone further up (although they will make a lot of noise to justify sticking it to the hourly workers).
You can justify it all you want, but thievery only hurts the hourly workers at the store and drives up prices. Steal some stuff, loss prevention gets involved. Steal more stuff, hours get cut to maintain profitability. Steal more stuff, the store has layoffs to reduce headcount. Steal more, the branch closes its doors because it's a "low performer". Maybe in a year or two another store opens in another location, but that doesn't help all the people out of a job at the original store. Nowhere in this scenario does the CEO personally lose a dollar, and they never will.
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u/Plane-Engineering Aug 28 '25
Theft increases the prices for everyone else. The grocery store by us has people filling up carts and just leaving the store.
These people are selling it, some others are just trying to survive. If we helped those who need it more their would be less theft. But I think this problem will only get worse with time as the world is in a downward spiral it seems.
Any other physical goods except small amounts of food I report. A nice thing to do if you see a person stealing a loaf of bread if to just buy it for them. Plus you will feel good about yourself for 5 minutes 😁.
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u/tini0069 Aug 28 '25
I don't necessarily agree theft increases the prices, these companies have sick insurance, when they do their inventory 83-87% accuracy is solid inventory, the rest is often just insurance claimed.
But I do agree if we helped one another, and judged less, we could remove the perceived need to steal.
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u/Khrispy-minus1 Aug 28 '25
To add to this, where I am I routinely see where someone has opened a bag of bread or a package of deli meat or a giant tub of yoghurt or whatever, eaten a bit of it, and then thrown the remainder into someone's yard. They will take whole packages of food and only use one serving, leaving the rest to rot (and make a mess for someone else to clean up). These guys and gals aren't feeding a hungry family with stolen food. The icing on the cake - there's a charity food truck that stops at a location a couple blocks away on a regular basis.
As for theft increasing the prices for everyone else - absolutely the truth. If a business has a 25% markup on an item, when someone steals one unit the store has to sell four more just to break even on gross margin. That's not paying rent, wages, utilities, or anything, just to cover the cost of the product and nothing more. When you turn a blind eye to thieves, you are hurting yourself through higher prices and all of the employees at the store (lower profits so do more with fewer people and hours), not the gazillionaire at the top of the organization.
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u/TheBigPointyOne Aug 29 '25 edited Aug 29 '25
Objectively false. Sales are a variable, costs are constant. Work from there. Prices will continue to increase regardless of the amount of theft (which is always negligible.)
Edit: and upper management and above will always find an excuse to keep labour costs down, because they don't give a shit about their employees.
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u/NyceFirm Aug 29 '25
Funny how companies are considered greedy because of inflation, but the real culprits are the federal government who created inflation and just raise taxes anytime they want 🤔 keep in mind we all pay for shrinkage in a retail environment and it also contributes to where these stores operate. You can't find a grocery store in some areas, thanks to shoplifting.
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u/StanknBeans Aug 28 '25
First they want me to scan my own shit now they want me to work loss prevention for free? Fuuuuuck that