I HATE SHOPLIFTERS.

[Boozy]

I am so livid right now.

Today I was spot-checking our store for upcoming inventory. Counting inventory takes an entire day and requires me to show up at the store at dawn. I despise it. And if we don't have a "clean" count this month, we're forced to do it all again next month. And if that one's not clean... well, you get it. And so on and so on.

At this point, there's no way we're going to come in under the acceptable variance range. We have a shoplifter (based on the two products we're missing, I'd say it's the same person) who has ripped us off of 30 bottles of wine over the last quarter. I swore that I'd watch that section like a hawk and it would never happen again.

I just finished compiling our list of discrepancies for my boss when I got slammed with customers. I was handling three people at once at one point. After the rush, I went to face all the shelves. And we were missing one bottle of the same damned product that the shoplifter goes for. I counted them down again just to be positive, and sure enough, we had lost another one.

The reason I'm so angry is because there is literally nothing I could have done to prevent it. I can't be everywhere at once, and I was the only person working at the time. I turn my back for a second and another bottle is gone.

Normally I'd say, that's the price the company pays for being too cheap to pay for staff overlap, except they are not the only ones paying the price. I'm the one who has to count inventory every single month. And they refuse to allow us to write off product even when we KNOW it's been stolen. It just gets counted against us.

I'm so frustrated and tired right now.

[MrSunshineState]

Well if there was literally nothing you could do about it, there is no sense being upset. Karma will come back to bite that person sooner than later. Shoplifters eventually get caught because they are normally repeat offenders.

[bainsidhe]

you have cameras, correct? Any way of narrowing down who the shoplifter might be? I'm thinking it's someone very normal-looking who you wouldn't suspect. Possibly even making a purchase.

[Boozy]

That's the worst part. We have no cameras. We have no anti-theft measures whatsoever.

Like I said, the company really asks for it. But I'm the one who has to count inventory every month.

[NateTheChops]

And of course what sucks is when the numbers get too low who has to pay the price? The ones on the bottom.

The Rank Aid I worked at suffered a loss of 500,000 dollars. According to corporate only 100,000 of that was attributed to shoplifters because they just don't believe that we could have that many shoplifters. It MUST have been internal.

So they did a storewide investigation complete with LP officers and chairs and tables set up in the basement like a Schtazi interrogation, only without the whips and chains because this wasn't about fun, it was about business.

[draggar]

Well if there was literally nothing you could do about it, there is no sense being upset. Karma will come back to bite that person sooner than later. Shoplifters eventually get caught because they are normally repeat offenders.

I fully agree. If there is nothing you can do about it - then why get upset. I always liked inventory days because that guaranteed that I was out much earlier than usual (and no, I'm not a morning person so I was grumpy at work but ecstatic when it came time to leave).

Shoplifters are creatures of habit. This person is set in a routine - they know when to come in, what to take and when / where to exit. Your best bet to deter him is to force him out of the routine. You can:

- Move the wine to a different location. Near the end of an aisle where the checkout can see it.

- Move it to a secured location (behind a service desk etc..).

Also, maybe do daily checks on that one particular item. Find out what day, and even if possible, a couple of times a day when (and if) you get the day of the week narrowed down.

I've dealt with similar situations before and it's not fun, especially when it's your department but with some work and some vigilance, you can catch up to them. You may not be able to get him for everything, but even if you get him for one bottle, that's on his record.

[bainsidhe]

Hmm, it's be nice if you could at least install "fake" cameras. You know, the ones that look oh so real, but really aren't. Make them incredibly visible. I dunno, but it might deter them a little?

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I think it's bullshit they won't let you writeoff product. Shrink is an issue in a retail store, ANY retail store. They should accept that reality and take measures to minimize instead of a carry on a delusional notion it may not even exist.

[Boozy]

Delusion is a good way of putting it. They either refuse to believe that theft occurs, or they believe that one sales clerk is able to completely prevent it.

I like the idea of a "dummy" camera. My company's too cheap to pay for a real one, but a fake might work well. I may look into it.

Unfortunately, moving the wine to a secure location would be a bit tricky, since it's a wine store...and that's all we have.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I like the idea of a "dummy" camera. My company's too cheap to pay for a real one, but a fake might work well. I may look into it.

Dummy cameras aren't very effective, or at least they aren't in my store.

We have 2 cameras mounted on different sections of the HBA aisle. Only one works, the other is a fake. It still doesn't stop the shoplifters from opening the pain relievers/razors/whatever and stuffing the product into the pockets.

[bainsidhe]

What about posting signs "Smile! You're on Camera!!" Oh wait, I forgot that SCs don't read.

[infinitemonkies]

The way the company looks at it all comes down to the bottom line: will it cost more to pay an extra employee/install security/have active LP measures than the amount lost due to theft? The answer, more often than not for most businesses, is yes. Yes it would cost more to stop people from stealing than it would to just let them steal and replace the stolen product.

I've seen that number thrown around a lot. 75% to 85% of loss in due to employee theft. I've heard it many times in many places. What I have NEVER heard, and I do ask, is what they base that number on. I've never gotten a straight answer to that question.

[draggar]

They base the "internal theft" numbers on estimates based on who they've caught doing it.

There is also unintentional employee loss - a customer deserves $4.55 in change and they give the customer $5.55 instead. Sometimes that's stacked onto employee theft also (even though most of the time that is a mistake).

[cinema guy]

Could you just fudge your count and accidentally include the bottles you know were stolen?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I've seen that number thrown around a lot. 75% to 85% of loss in due to employee theft. I've heard it many times in many places. What I have NEVER heard, and I do ask, is what they base that number on. I've never gotten a straight answer to that question.

Those numbers are bullshit. Employees are so much easier to watch and catch, and all employee theft gets documented. A much higher percentage of customer theft isn't caught, isn't noticed and isn't reported.

Anyhow, wanna know the latest way the clearance swamp corporate office is setting us up for theft? A couple weeks ago, we got in these big, green and gold and oak wood merchandise displays in. They're done in a Green Bay Packers theme, and one of them contains an entry box for the frequent Packers-related sweepstakes we run each fall. The rest of the space on the displayers is used to display various kinds of merchandise.

They've even got little goal posts coming out of the top of them. They're actually kinda snazzy.

So the other day I walked past these big displayers, which are put up right in front of the pharmacy, and found the electronics specialist putting video game consoles and video games on them.

Me: You're putting video games there?
EG: Yup. Corporate wants them up there.
Me: Did you at least put alarmed spider tags on the consoles?
EG: I put them on as many of them as I could.

Not as if putting spider tags on the consoles matters any. It's about 10 steps from these displayers to an exit. A person can just a game or console off that displayer and be out the door before anybody notices or can do anything about it. LP probably wouldn't be able to get out of their office in time if they noticed somebody snatching something off that displayer.

We do have special spider tags that lock an item to the shelf it's sitting on, but those won't work with these displayers. No holes in the shelves to slip the tag through and lock it.

Go figure. LP is all up in arms about injury hazards these days, but they're not making a peep when corporate has us merchandise things in such a way as to make theft tempting and uncatchable.