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.
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.
Yes, yes… if we just shit upon the poor and desperate just a little bit more, capitalism will finally work and we will all live in a Utopian meritocracy. Remember hygiene is a privilege, not a right!
This is why Walmart has lost almost all of my business to Amazon.
From one shitpile to the next.
All so that you can just steal the shit at self checkout anyway.
If what I want to buy is under $200 and locked up, I usually go to another store to buy the item. I am not waiting for an employee to show up and unlock $200 item.
It often only takes a few months of huge losses in sales for the shelves to all be unlocked at a store.
Last time I was at Walmart I asked an employee (who I knew. I’m a known quantity in my town. If I was shoplifting, the shop deserved it. Or I forgot like idk a watermelon at the self checkout my object permanece sucks) if they minded if I just popped the lock one of these days if i was in a hurry. They laughed and assumed i was joking, because I joke a lot. I just gave them that “no, I’m good with locks and don’t like waiting” shrug. You know the one. Then they quietly said no I like having a job. And I dropped it.
But man those locks suck and are always right under cameras.
*next store has the same locked cage because they too don’t want their $200 items stolen*
From the store’s pov shit being stolen is worse than it taking a bit longer to sell
That really depends on how much is stolen.
If margin is idk 30% then losing 3 sales to prevent 1 stolen item loses you money, assuming you account for the stolen item at what you paid for it rather than the selling price (which makes sense unless you expect it to sell out, i guess you can add a bit for storage+set up cost but that’ll be near nothing for a single item).
Hah, who would’ve thought the stores would want to protect their merchandise from shoplifting. It sucks for everyone now
That’s one way to look at it.
I see it as maximizing their profits instead. They’re posting record profits, they’re gaming the system somehow and gouging us on basic necessities. I won’t report shoplifting from billionaire conglomerates.
“Hurting people’s not a good thing! Sometimes it is… but not when it’s a bunch of people looking for something to eat!” - John spartan, demolition man.
I don’t know about your context, but in my country people say the same thing… but grocery store profit margins hover reliably around 3%. That’s not price gouging, and it doesn’t take much theft to seriously eat into it.
I mean maximizing their profits by trying to prevent shoplifting. More shoplifting, stores will do more to prevent it.
It sucks for everyone now
Honestly, this is better than having it suck for some, while most willfully ignore them.
Next it will be curb pickup or delivery only. Customers won’t be allowed in the stores at all.
And, as soon as they can, it will be robots in the stores filling orders.
This is why I like shopping at Aldi rather than Woolworths or Coles (besides the corporate Duopsony screwing over suppliers and Duopoly screwing over customers).
I have the choice of queuing for a checkout, and chatting to the other customers (if I am in a social mood), or going straight to the automated checkouts which don’t treat you as a criminal for not having a loyalty card.
I’ve had this thought for a while. I don’t know how big of an issue loss from theft actually is, but if you own a store and perceive it to be a major issue, why give the customer access to anything? You could make it distopian and shitty like you’re saying it could be, but honestly, if you do it right it doesn’t have to be. Reorganize the store so the customers can see what is available, but they get a code or ticket instead of the item. Then have the employees pick the items once the customer is ready to pay. We already have a counter serve model like this for a butcher or baker. Convenience stores do this for highly regulated items like cigarettes and liquor. Just do it for everything. If that was the premise from the start, I wouldn’t mind because it would be less hostile. The current half asses model of I pick most of my stuff, but then I have to call one of 2 pissed off overworked employees to unlock the other half individually is hostile to the customer and the employee.
Honestly, I could see this model work for households who rely on large, predictable, repeat orders (i.e. families with small children), but I don’t think it’ll ever replace normal grocery stores, because a lot of profit is generated by people just browsing the aisles and buying stuff they didn’t even know they wanted, and online stores are still fairly bad at replicating that experience.
I agree that online stores don’t do it as well as in person ones (being committed to being in a specific place where you buy stuff I think makes people engage more intentionally and consider items in front of them), but I wish more people talked about how shitty SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the ways online stores do this, so I wanna take this opportunity to share that idea
Instead of having to walk to the back corner of the store to get milk or Christmas decorations, you have to scroll past a million items that aren’t quite what you’re looking for but are closely related by keywords. And in this metaphor the store can be infinitely big.
I hate shopping online 🥹
It should be called SED (de-optimisation).
This would be where you type in exactly what you want (including SKUs or product codes) and it suggests a million different things that are either tangentially related or not related at all, in an effort to distract you from buying what you want.
This has already been happening; before the GenBS search apocalypse, it was quicker to use a search engine query for “store product” to take you direct to the listing.
For example “M10 bolts Bunnings” would show me exactly what I asked for, instead of using the useless Bunnings search feature.
For prepackaged and bulk it would work good, but I’m not buying fresh produce sight unseen.
100% my biggest pet peeve when ordering grocery delivery, and no robot will ever be able to solve that.
and no robot will ever be able to solve that.
Well, they theoretically could, but they never would, because the robots are owned by the company and the company wants to screw you over.
Well, they theoretically could
I don’t see how. No robot could ever imitate your preferences for produce selection 100% accurately. I don’t think even any human could (unless you provide them with an unlimited budget).
Stores will turn into warehouses.
They largely already are
Vending machines
Stores should be grateful when people steal condoms.
Why, then their crotch spawn don’t grow up to need baby formula from nestle. Then they become good little consumers, as intended
/S
🤣
