It’s not even that, it’s their ultra short staffing that drives people away. I’m not going to go hunt for an employee and wait another twn minutes for someone with a key to open it up.
Home Depot does that and I get tired of waiting and order it from somewhere else.
Exactly! I’ve zero issues with this type of loss prevention. I have 10,000 issues having to find the call button, pressing it and then waiting upwards of TWENTY MINUTES for the Key Master to show up.
I once did that at Meijer for a switch pro controller, waited 30 minutes only for the person, who was supposed to have the key, just come over and rip the cardboard to get it off the locked hook. We only stayed because we had a Meijer gift card. Insane how long this kind of thing takes.
I don’t understand why they don’t just use a pickup ticket system. Costco does it for some smaller high end electronic products now. Hell, Toys R US did it decades ago with all of their video games and consoles. You just take the paper ticket to the cashier to pay and then the receipt to a pickup window where ALL of those products are kept.
Instead they choose the objectively worst option, extra hardware spread randomly around the store for each product, and spreading already shaky customer service even more thin with large waiting times for a manager with the keys to arrive.
Anyone else remember Service Merchandise? The whole store was just one display model of each thing. You got a ticket and waited for the item to come up a conveyor. I thought it was a great approach
The difference between Home Depot and Menard’s in terms of finding an employee is amazing. I can find an employee in Menard’s within a couple of minutes wherever I am in the store. Good luck ever finding a Home Depot employee, and if you do, good luck getting anything useful from them.
I worked at a store similar to Home Depot in college and let me tell you, they don’t prepare you at all for the kind of questions people have. If they cared at all about investing in the customer experience (which they don’t) they’d hire some retired handymen or something. I seriously did everything I could to limit my voyages from the checkout counter to the employee area because there was a 90% chance I’d disappoint someone on the way.
What, giving you a pamphlet and showing you a video wasn’t enough to make you a hardware expert? (Menial jobs for massive corporations suck so much.)
Yeah it’s awful. I feel bad for those people when I go in there now. Sure they could take it upon themselves to learn everything but let’s be honest, for the amount they get paid it’s only worth doing the bare minimum to not get fired.
Something as simple as nailclippers stunned me. $3 item, locked behind glass.
“Welp, they don’t want my money I guess…” moving on.
Should ban you from the store for having an anti owner opinion.
The problem isn’t locking up a high theft item, they have to do something.
The problem is not having the staff to unlock the item when you need it.
I was in a cvs yesterday. The deodorant was behind glass. There was a “lift here” sticker for each shelf. When i opened my shelf for my choice it chimed loud enough to be heard across the store. I guess that’s better than needing to chase down an employee
If $3 nail clippers are “high theft”, there are larger issues.
That may or may not be but the store still has to do something.
The problem is locking up the item.
I’m not gonna fuckin steal it, don’t treat me like I will.
Yeah no kidding you won’t. That is not the point.
If the store has a theft problem then they have to do something. It’s either that or close the store. It ain’t about you.
Except, as they’ve learned, they didn’t actually have a theft problem. That was a lie to disguise low sales numbers. It’s no better or worse than it’s always been.
The real issue is and remains, the relentless pursuit of number must always go up.
This astounding revelation brought to you by the guy that got paid $13,282,800.00 in 2024.
All brought to by corporate wage theftᵀᴹ!
This is what happens when 100% of shoppers are treated like the 1-4% who steal.
Not to mention that employees are responsible for some of the theft too
Theft is a huge problem in some locations. Some people have no problem filling up a cart with whatever they need and walking out the door. Employees don’t get paid enough to get involved. Cops only show up afterwards. Even if they catch the culprit, there arent any repercussions.
With the increase in prices for everything from food to housing, and the greed of large corps being completely ignored by governments, I honestly don’t gaf about shoplifting food or clothing. If I see it happening I walk away.
Are you sure you saw anything? I certainly didn’t. Especially at large corporate retail stores.
True. I may have just been remembering back to when I was a kid living on the streets and stealing food to survive.
When you run bare minimum staffing so there’s nobody on the floor to help a customer and the customer has to hunt around for and wait for an employee to unlock something, yeah. Many are just going to pass on the item.
It’s not a shoplifting problem. It’s a nobody to help the customer problem.
At this point I just use pickup and delivery for almost everything. I have no patience for wandering stores anyway.
Yep. This is exactly why Amazon is as large as they are. Shoot we order our groceries delivered more than half the time now. Saves us time and buying extra crap we don’t need anyway.
Yep, I bought some caged jeans a couple years ago and was not digging the hassle of finding somebody with a key. Basically doubled the try on time.
Sweatpants forever!
Sweatpants forever, indeed!
Stores should lock everything behind cabinets to prevent shop lifting. Police should never investigate any shoplifting if a store does not lock up merchandise. Stores should have enough staff to hand you things from behind a counter.
Walmart has download police to municipalities, it costs tax payers billions a year. Socialism for the rich. We need fewer police.
Historically stores have looked like this https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ARHMCUO6N7MRYV8S everything locked up, a clerk serving people. Police grew, as stores decided to not lock up stuff. They didn’t lock up stuff because they could cut back on staff and rely on public police.
If any store decides I need to ask an employee to read the nutritional facts on the back of a can of soup I will never shop there.
The solution isn’t locks it’s fixing the underlying problem.
Notably, those stores fell out of fashion pretty quickly when someone decided to just throw stuff out on shelves and have people get it themselves.
I’m not asking a clerk to get me shit. I can either find it quickly and get it myself or I’m getting it elsewhere.
I don’t blame companies for closing stores in communities where theft is rampant. If your neighborhood harbors thieves and the police won’t do anything about it, you don’t deserve to have nice things. Live there and are pissed about the situation? Move. Deny said community your upstanding citizenship and let it devolve into a shithole. Leave these poor thieves to themselves and move to a neighborhood that won’t tolerate them.
Hey look everyone, a really callous and uninformed opinion! Why don’t we all just move somewhere better!
If you don’t pay your employees enough to care about your business then people are going to take advantage every time. These are all big chain stores that have had a race to the bottom for wages. They replaced many of the workers with self checkouts. Last time I was in a chain pharmacy there were only 1 or 2 employees max and they were all busy doing stuff. Even if they did notice someone stealing, is making minimum wage enough for you to risk a fight with someone?
Instead they have invested in locks for the shelves because it’s way cheaper than hiring people to run your business for you.
This is how stores have historically looked https://c7.alamy.com/comp/2M98MR3/general-store-early-1900s-corner-store-old-fashioned-grocery-store-2M98MR3.jpg Things behind counters and clerks helping people.
Stores decided to have fewer employees, and used publicly paid police for security. Socialism for the rich. Now we have police that take 30% of almost all city budgets/public budgets.
Stores should hire more clerks. Public police should not bother investigating anything left out of a counter.The first sentence I agree with. The rest was seriously deranged.
