Big thanks goes out to J$ of Budgets are Sexy for posting: True Life — I live in a hotel, my guest post on his blog today.
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I was watching a CBC documentary last night called The Secret World of Shoplifting, one of the financial shows and documentaries recommended by Financial Uproar.
There were a few good points I’d like to bring up.
Employees account for the majority of shoplifting
Which makes total sense to me, seeing as they’re already in the store early or late, and they have all the tools at their disposal to remove security tags and so on.
There are organized shoplifting rings all over North America
They only focused on North America, but I’m sure it exists worldwide as well.
These people hire pro shoplifters who will bring in thousands of dollars of stolen goods a day, which are then resold at a lower price, but at near 100% profit, seeing as the cost was close to $0.
(Still have to pay the shop lifter).
If something is too cheap, and too good to be true, be suspicious
It might be stolen. This part of the documentary shocked me.
For instance, if you normally buy over the counter allergy pills for $15.99, that’s the retail price, but these items still cost something to the retailer to purchase. Let’s say the base manufacturing cost is $8.
So when you see a pack of the exact same pills for a super deep, almost too-good-to-be-true discount for $8 or $7.50 in a “store”, they are most likely stolen, because no one in their right business mind would ever sell items below their cost.
I am not saying everything cheap you see is stolen, or is part of some big conspiracy (except fake brand name bags, that is :P), but it doesn’t hurt to be suspicious of too good of a deal.
I like to save a buck just like anyone else, but I’d feel a lot better paying the full retail price.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
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I've had clients that shoplifted regularly, most did it for the thrill, were well off and had no need of what they stole. I had one client though who shoplifted for to fund his drug habit, just brazen thefts, mostly expensive clothes, he had done time in jail, never had a job, but for him he found shoplifting easiest as he refused to commit a violent crime to support his habit. It was a real education listening to how he did it!
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When I worked in retail, we had an employee who financed her wedding by shop lifting. She wasn't arrested, only fired. We also had some crazy customers who shop lifted right in front of us – they were certainly NOT pros but corporate wouldn't let us do anything. Go figure.
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That\’s just.. arg. Without punishment, this just keeps going on and on!!!
Here in the Phoenix area we had a couple who made a business of walking into malls, going into stores, and just carrying stuff out the door, bold as daylight. Literally they would haul armfuls of clothing out to their car and drive away. When the cops finally tracked them down, they found the house filled with stuff these people had ripped off and organized preparatory to peddling it.
The Park'n'Swaps around here are notorious for the hot goods hawked there. If you have a bunch of tools stolen, you often can find them in a week or a month later, down at the Park'n'Swap. You hafta wonder, dontcha?
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I think I just saw someone else shoplift the other day. the cashier was a friend who shook her head at the thief slightly and let her leave the store with the alarm beeping
What could I say?
I read this post when you first posted it, and didn't know what to think. The fact that employees make up the majority of shoplifting makes perfect sense to me.
But shoplifting rings? I was not aware of this before. Is there anyone going after these professional shoplifting rings? Because I don't believe that the economic theory that we think governs North America actually just doesn't work if shoplifting is a major part of the equation.
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When I worked in retail I was shocked at how much shoplifting goes on. I worked in one of the nicer high street stores and gangs of people would walk in and take whole racks of clothing in the blink of an eye. If I wasn't so disgusted I would be pretty impressed at how effeciently they worked. In Scotland there is one big family who have a massive shop lifting ring. My sister and I worked in shops in different cities and we would be targeted by the exact same people every week. The most common way to shop lift seems to be to create a distraction, so they would send their rowdy kids in to make a massive mess while they were stealing. They also kept an eye on what staff were working and when. When I first started managing the store on my own people would constantly try and steal stuff. I was pretty tough though. I walked up to two massive guys I knew where shop lifters and very boldly asked them if they needed help with anything which made them leave extremely quickly. It is sad that because of shoplifting stores have to put their prices up and everyone suffers.
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I wish I would have seen that! It's sad how people think they're "entitled" to something they didn't earn! Ugh! Imagine if everyone were truly honest…
I'm just wondering what "stores" you are referring to when you talk about the allergy medicine? That part of your post confused me.
Anyway, I knew a lot of people that shoplifted in high school, and these were the girls that came from the wealthiest families. It never made sense to me! I wish I had seen the documentary. Hopefully it will be on again.
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These are not actual \”stores\”, they\’re pop-up stores that put the merchandise on sale, and sweep it off and pack up to leave if they get caught.
I believe the reasoning behind not being able to confront a customer while they are still in the store is because, technically, they have not shoplifted until they have literally "lifted" the item FROM the shop. So, if you stop them previous to the actual act, then the action is boarding on harassment. It's a loophole that tends to keep employees safe. When I worked at a retail store, an employee started stealing items from a particular department, so management set them up and placed a hidden video camera there so they could catch them.
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In a large dept store, I used to work in, there were gangs working through the different locations. They'd literally just roll a BBQ out the door and noone said nothing.
When it came to clothes and perfume, the women would pile the clothes into their own baggy clothes and bags, and not stop until their cars were full. I only know this part because some of the gang were caught redhanded in the carpark as my team were able to ID them. Turns out they would sell everything on Ebay, and the profits would be sent back to their families overseas.
We even had school kids who used to carry magnets on their house-keys now so they can magnetise tags out of DVDs and steal those.
Some want nothing. Some take everything.
… that is.. wow.
Thanks for the mention. Glad to see you're watching documentaries instead of doing something productive. 😉
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I\’m a bum, you know that.
I worked at Steak N Shake, and a guy stole a 2 gallon jar of maraschino cherries. He just brought it out to his car as he was taking out the trash.
Who needs that many cherries?
Exactly. That makes no sense at all.
P.S. sorry for the double post, but I noticed your "related posts" are duplicated… for this post at any rate.
Yeah I have to play with the settings. 🙂
LOL, and here I was thinking that you had taken up some extreme budgeting method 😛 My dad's unfortunately a sucker for buying a lot of cheap things. The worst of it is that he's well aware that it's stolen, but he'd rather pay half price… and forego any warranty. 🙁
Erm… where's the website input button (in the comments form)? :-
It should be there.. do you not see it? It should automatically appear unless you are signed in (then it takes the info from your Intense Debate Profile)
When I worked in retail, we were getting lifted by both sides – employees and customers. The store we were working at wasn't in the best location, but having never been robbed at previous stores, I was shocked by how frequently this one got hit. The employee would take both product and money, and the customers would take particular products (we knew which ones would go missing).
The trouble with either kind of shoplifting is that you have to be able to prove it. Even if you see them do it, sometimes that's not enough because it's technically hearsay if you make a report. It has to be caught on video or multiple people (three or more) have to witness the event. To add to this, if it's a customer who's stealing from you, you can't lock the door on them to keep them in or chase them down to retrieve the product (even if you're not intending to get them arrested). One is to prevent lawsuits, the other is to avoid insurance claims on behalf of the employee doing the chasing.
You literally can't do anything about shoplifting if you're an employee, even if you catch the thief. At our store, we broke the rules a couple of times by confronting the customers before they left, but if we'd been caught doing that, we could have been fired. SO FRUSTRATING!
…That is crazy that you confront customers and would get in trouble because they shoplifted. It's like someone robbing your house, and if you confront them or tie them up to take them to the police, they can sue you for harassment.
I worked at a restaurant where the employees would rip off large items (yes, I'm talking appliances) from the place. What I put together was the owner treated the employees so bad it was their way to get back at him. Eventually a disgruntled employee set the place on fire! Treat your employees with respect is what I learned.
BTW- great guest post over at Budgets are Sexy.
WOW appliances!!!!!
Thanks! (Re: Guest Post)
I missed that show, but had no idea about the three points you made. I'm really surprised about the organized shoplifting rings! Sounds like the shopping mafia 🙂
-Tim
It almost is. I think mafias are behind it, but who knows. It brings in a lot of money.
I used to have a job in loss management, the ways people steal thing were at times comical, but there are some that were very intelligent. If the used that ingenuity for good rather than evil, they could really go places.
What did they steal?
Have you been eyeing up my Louis Vuitton again. LoL
LOL 🙂 Well.. fake bags are really not worth it if you think about the secret world behind it: child labour, funding drug organizations, etc