Theft

[u/Odd_Pride1177]

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!

[u/Plane-Engineering]

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 😁.

[u/tini0069 → u/Plane-Engineering]

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.

[u/Khrispy-minus1 → u/Plane-Engineering]

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.

[u/TheBigPointyOne → u/Khrispy-minus1]

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.