Walgreens CEO describes drawback of anti-shoplifting strategy: ‘When you lock things up…you don’t sell as many of them’
Walgreens' CEO talked about the flip side of investing in increased security on a recent earnings call.
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've had this problem at Microcenter and Best Buy too. All the salespeople have a key but there are only two and they're both tied up helping some grandma who doesn't know what she wants. After waiting over 20 minutes, I'm like I just need to get this one thing out of the cabinet.
I know you can order ahead and pick up but I like to sometimes pay fully or partially in cash so I get less grief about expensive purchases from my spouse. According to my credit card charge, when I bought my 4070ti the day they came out, it was only $380.
The CVS nearest me announces "cashier needed at [item]" over the intercom on loop until they show up when you hit the call button. In related news, I've now discovered the most awkward way possible to buy condoms.
Vinz Clortho?
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.
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
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
In general, society spends an awful lot of extra effort just because a few percent might abuse it. Sometimes, it's completely hypothetical abuse.
Healthcare? Someone might overuse it, and therefore everyone has to pay out the nose.
Unions? They let some people slack off at work.
Child tax credits? Some parents might use it to buy drugs (this was an actual argument from Joe Manchin, and it's completely made up).
Reduce the military? What if China invades the US?
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.
Went to Walmart on a whim and saw everything locked up in pharmacy aisles (even deodorant) and I decided to pass. I hate shopping there.
Whenever a store locks up something I need that I could buy in 2023 off the shelf, I pull out my phone and order it from another store.
Order it from another store with curbside pickup, don't have to even get out of the car on the way back home.
I miss the covid version of this where it didn't cost extra. Some places still don't charge for it but they are immensely inconvenient for me to get to
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.
Not just that, but I'll avoid shopping at your store.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
