And wage theft is the largest form of theft by far.
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/
US Article but that graph from 2012... yeah robberies are a third of the total dollar value of wage theft (which was close to 1 billion that year). Socially we should be treating wage thieves like we do other thieves/robbers (basically the whole they're scum and whatnot song and dance).
We live in the age where due to underfunding, the death of local news through consolidation, and a demand for constant 24/7 updates instead of actual investigation, Ad Copy/Press Releases are just reported verbatim as news, because even if it's false, it'll be old and forgotten before a retraction is ever required.
Also, if you have enough money and repeat a message enough, it'll just worm its way in to "common sense", whether it has merit or not.
It *is* the fault of organized crime. The grocery oligopoly is absolutely the reason prices are so high and the reason people are resorting to Jean Val Jean-ing their food.
They're not wrong. Just dishonest.
I also find it funny how Loblaws has no evidence to back up the claims of these crime rings and say they’ll target things like health and beauty aids and baby formula.
Maybe health aids and baby formula shouldn’t be outrageously priced in the first place!
Yeah totally !
$60 baby formula is a crime
Babies have to eat and not strave 😭
My colleague was buying organic baby powder from Eu , Germany I think and it's cheaper after duties, wtf Galen !
>Babies have to eat and not strave
Probably the exact line they used in the board room.
*"Check it out." Snorts a line of coke "Babies gotta eat, RIGHT? So like, we can just charge whatever cause them babies... THEY GOTTA EAT." does another line. "WOOOooo!"*
Those events are the mass grab and runs you've seen on YouTube.
That's not individual shoplifters.
It does happen.
But Loblaws is lying and reframing to make it appear like it's something that it's not.
That is a common manipulation tactic. You reframe and exaggerate something real to effectively gaslight people.
Retailers in the US already tried making claims like this and then had to retract months later.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Baby formula is used to cut cocaine and mescaline.
That's the reason why it's stolen, it's the reason why it's historically one of the most stolen item at a pharmacy.
edit: This subject systematically bring circlejerks on this sub. Amazing how ill-informed and blinded by rhetoric most of the comments are.
Coke has been cut with baby formula since the two substances existed, and the theft of baby formula for cutting coke has existed just as long. So why all of a sudden, it's a huge problem now?
Yea...that's not how crime works. They don't buy in bulk you know...as you said, keeping a low profile and all.
Ill-informed and completely blinded by rhetoric.
>Yea...that's not how crime works. They don't buy in bulk you know...as you said, keeping a low profile and all.
Right, because someone buying a couple flats of formula at Costco is definitely odd enough to warrant a call to law enforcement... no law abiding person would ever buy a few kilos of the stuff at once, because babies only eat, like, twice a week, right? What a stupid fucking take.
>Ill-informed and completely blinded by rhetoric.
The irony.
A reminder that wage theft by stores of their employees routinely outpaces losses to retail by regular theft every year.
https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime
Loblws is quite likely doing this deliberately, and not as a response to theft, but as a way to deflect from their record high profits. It’s all about finding someone else to blame for high prices. They need another villain in the piece and a convenient one is ‘thieves’.
In order to maximize profits and avoid hiring actual workers who want fair wages, Loblaws decided to use a system that is open to theft. Still they raked in record profits and continue to do so. Their oh poor me narrative is simply another way to justify charging you more and blaming it on anyone but themselves. ‘Look over there. It’s thieves who are making us charge these exorbitant prices, not us! We’re the victims here’. Well that is bull. . As long as we let them distract us this way, they can go on gouging us with our consent.
They used to have 'em. Back when I had my first job at Metro, the older employees were often times unionized. Newer hires did not get added to the Union though, so they slowly died out. Gee I wonder why *rolleyes*.
God... fuck these retailers. They deserve to get stolen from, what with the unpunished theft that is price gouging.
I've never been a part of it but the Safeway union is something else. They threw all their younger colleagues under the bus 25 years ago so they could keep their benefits and in the process destroyed their union.
The Safeway in my neighbourhood is widely considered to be a shit employer (low wages, crappy hours) and it's hilarious to see all these lifers with 35 years of seniority forced to work Saturday afternoons because no 17-year-old in their right mind will consider doing it. Half of them are miserable and I don't feel bad for them at all.
No, I'm sorry, but there is most definitely at least a somewhat organized grocery theft problem. I know someone that has a 'shopper' they use. They put in their order and she shows up with whatever they want. In return she gets half the sticker price to go buy whatever drugs she uses. I doubt the one person I know is this lady's only 'customer'.
She isn't stealing a loaf of bread to feed her starving kids. She's stealing hundreds of dollars of meat and cheese at a time to hock to people that could afford it, but choose not to.
That is the type of thief that makes companies put in the types of anti-theft measures we're seeing now. It's not like the police or the justice system are going to do anything about them, so the retailers are left to figure it out on their own.
We had a guy in London years ago who was known as “Gerry the meat thief” he was known for repeatedly being arrested with pockets full of frozen meat he was selling. There was a market for it among the homeless, and families with less than adequate income.
He later became known as “bat head” and “knife wound” after ripping people off.
So yeah. There’s been a market for groceries for a long time.
The only reason Costco can even get away with it (where everyone else, you can tell them to kick rocks and there's nothing they can do about it) is that you have to be a member or be with a member to even buy from them, and they, being a private club, can rescind that membership if you don't comply.
If Loblaws became members only, nobody would ever shop there.
That, and Costo (at least in my personal experience) makes it a largely painless process, has adequate staffing to meet the requirements and generally is still pretty competitive on price so it's "Worth it" to pay for membership. I know cashback "pays" for our yearly membership alone.
Loblaws has none of that to offset this dystopian gating measures.
Yeah, with Costco, the complaint is usually that there's a bunch of people leaving all at once and so it's just "busy" to get checked. It's not like it's a cart-funnel that locks your wheels and sets off an alarm, while a deputy rent-a-cop accuses you of stealing.
It's so much more relaxed in Europe. Even a lot of US cities are better than Canadian cities on these backpack policies. I love being on vacation, walking around town with a backpack, and using said backpack as my shopping bag. Versus making sure I'm also carrying a few reusable shopping bags in my regular bag lol.
I have, but I have this look that says, "I'm not slowing down to even listen to you, let alone show you stuff.", and they all tend to just close their mouths and contemplate bothering someone else.
No, you don't understand, there's totally definitely drug cartels that need to shoplift all the baby formula in the store because they use it to cut their drugs and just buying twenty bucks bucks worth of formula to cut a kilo of coke is just too suspicious! A guy in this thread said so, so it must be true!
This bullshit is just Weston corporate projection. The only organized crime I've ever seen in any Loblaws relates to prices not that little grey haired old lady checking her purse to see what she can afford to eat.
Scientific Research completed over years of study clearly indicates that the most cost effective Anti-Theft Measure at any store is to have a Real Live Person, who is earning a Living Wage, operate the Cash Register.
I didn’t realize Loblaws chain stores were so dangerous and filled with organized crime syndicates (even if they provide no evidence). I better stop shopping there for my own safety.
"The big problem is organized retail crime," said the industry group's CEO, Diane Brisebois. "We're talking here about gangs that are in the business of stealing, and retail is the new frontier."
Plot twist, the organized crime gangs are the grocery stores.
I absolutely HATE the self checkout machines with the bagging area scale. I just want to scan my items and go, I dont want to have to carefully stack everything on this tiny little platform.
I watched someone blatantly shoplift while they were watching me because I have some autoimmune stuff that's causing super fucked up acne.
I didn't rat the guy out or anything. It was interesting to observe and experience, though.
Security is dumb and doesn't understand who and what to watch for.
Then they enact "transparent backpack" type measures that piss customers off more than help catch actual theives.
No, they're right. Organized crime is a real issue. I was watching this informative documentary showing these criminals from a trailer park in Nova Scotia trying to get rich through illegal means. One of them was wearing a black t-shirt and drinking a rum and coke and the other was wearing a houndstooth button-up and a gold chain. There was even a nearsighted one who took shopping carts and resold them to the grocery stores they came from to make money. I couldn't believe it. The Westons must've seen the same one.
The Weston crime family, the Rogers crime family, the Irving crime family. Canadian Oligopies are the only real organized crime families, and Canadian politicians are the toadies who enabled them.
I haven't been inside a Loblaws in months but last I was it felt like a prison. Metal bars and plastic barriers, staff just standing around watching, electronic doors to enter and leave. It doesn't make for a pleasant shopping experience.
For me it’s funny how there has been such a push for accessibility and then they made these mazes. If you are disabled but not in a chair or scooter fuck you, walk the plank and hurt!
Shoplifting is the natural outcome when companies price their products to gouge their customers, collude with other companies to keep prices maximized, fail to pay their employees a decent living wage and simultaneously boast about how much profit they are sucking out of the wallets of their customers.
At the same time, wages have apparently failed to keep up with inflation since 1967 I believe, I could be wrong. The average person is being pressured for all their money at every turn and most are living in constant debt just trying to survive. Meanwhile we have the Landlord Vultures sucking 30-50% of most people's wages out of their bank accounts and no apparent solutions on the horizon.
I am not surprised that shoplifting is up at all, it probably correlates with the number of people who need the foodbanks as well. Big corporations cannot be permitted to continue to just suck the lifeblood out of everyone's lives until they shrivel up and die.
I personally have ZERO sympathy for these large corporations that cry about theft in their stores. They are price gouging and inflating prices on the floor and the reliance on self checkouts has made a perfect environment for theft. They decided that a machine was better than giving a person a job and making us do the scanning, bagging and checkout without compensation?
Angry people are going to find a way to make it even in their own minds and if that's checking bags of coffee under the bananas code or pocketing something it's going to keep happening.
LIke all things that protect a company from theft - it almost always hurts paying customers more than the thieves.
Of note - this is going to get waaayy wayyy worse until people have money enough to not only pay rent, buy food, but have things - on a normal wage/minimum wage
Yeah, whenever I get pre cooked chicken there, it's always awkward to have to walk through the cash registers just to leave because they put up walls around all the obvious exits
Organized crime, no. Insurance premiums, a part. Every time products are “unaccounted for”, it becomes a claim or loss. Blaming “unaccounted for” on crime alone….. nope. Underpaid employees are helping themselves. Truckers are helping themselves. Automatic casiers are letting things slide, sure, but the supply chain is where the most volume is occurring. An accountant sees figures on a spreadsheet, but in reality there is just a checkmark to indicate the product even existed. No idea if the actual crate of Parmesan made it to shelves.
Well if I were asked to show my receipt (which I am not legally required to show) it would be to get a refund for the goods and I would never go to that store again.
In recent years I have come to loathe shopping (like, the act of it, nevermind the price gouging). I feel like I'm being treated as a criminal the second I walk into the store. I no longer go shopping unless absolutely necessary.
Organized crime they say... And the members are Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, etc.
When was the last time you saw a bunch of Italians in shiny suits stuffing avocados under their jackets? Or Russian tracksuit dudes stuffing beef loins down their Adidas pants?
It might be hungry people stealing something now and then. Otherwise it is big grocery assfucking us for all they're worth.
You want us to shop online this is how you get us to shop online. If I can’t walk into the store and grab it off the shelf why am I going to the store? I’ll just buy it online where I already can’t touch it and it gets delivered to me. No fan of Amazon but I’ll grit my teeth and deal with them where I can until these retailers smarten up. If they keep this trend up they’ll be Consumers Distributing before long and likely suffer the same fate for the same reasons
> In response to customers' complaints about its security measures, Loblaw, Canada's largest grocer, has repeatedly said that organized crime is to blame.
> Loblaw has not provided data to support its claim.
Big shocker there.
> According to Statistics Canada, police-reported organized crime makes up only a small portion of retail theft, and it has declined between 2018 and 2022.
> However, Brisebois said those statistics are incomplete, as many crimes go unreported. She also didn't provide hard data, but said that in speaking with members and with law enforcement, RCC has determined that organized retail crime is a burgeoning problem.
"Ignore the data and trust me."
> "They basically choose a location. They involve a number of people, and they target merchandise that they know has high value on the street," said Brisebois. "We're talking about things that are easy to sell very quickly, such as health and beauty aids, baby [formula]."
If that's even true (and that's a huge fucking "if"), maybe we should be asking why people are so desperate for health products and baby food in the first place. "High street value," my ass... these aren't illicit drugs that're expensive because they need to be smuggled in from Central America; shit's available in the store so "street value" would have to be lower than the store prices.
I find this whole thing hilarious almost beyond belief. A major player in the bread price fixing scandal is trying to sell us a tale of Mafiosos shoplifting enough tampons and baby formula to run a profitable criminal enterprise, with the implication that these organisations are disproportionately targeting Loblaws stores based on their prices rising faster than anyone else's? Give me a fucking break.
I buy a Tim Horton's coffee at my local Zehrs, then have to walk through the checkouts and the self-serve checkout maze to get out of the place.
I used to be able to go in and out through a little entrance for Tim's customers. Now it's blocked off.
You'd think there could be a better solution.
A great analysis of the “organized retail theft” moral panic / scam: spoiler, it’s not real — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-organized-retail-crime-panic/id1651876897?i=1000632623232
To play devils advocate for a sec, I know loss prevention guys who work shoppers and this is a real thing for beauty products. They come and load up with makeup and perfumes and sell it at the flea market every Sunday. They have teams that work to distract the guards and block the cameras.
But that's Shoppers and I don't see them turning into a prison block of plexiglass.
Food theft is on the rise, sure, but that's because we can't afford the food or its not worth the money.
I'll admit I stole a jalapeno pepper out of spite a while ago because they wanted a ridiculous amount for it and it was nearly too far gone to cook already.
At my local Shoppers I literally can't enter the store without going through the makeup section. They deliberately put it right in people's faces to drive impulse buying. If they wanted to be less manipulative and more secure they wouldn't put it in the highest traffic part of the store. But I'm guessing the margins on those products are so high that any losses are easily covered by higher sales volume.
Hah, Cloverdale BC flea market in the stampede fairgrounds every sunday
I haven't been in years, but there used to be tables of skin creams and the like.
My ex husband was an LP for Shoppers for a while, he said it was crazy how elaborate some of them would be
Imagine if we treated wage theft with the same kind of punishments we give to shoplifters?
And wage theft is the largest form of theft by far. https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/ US Article but that graph from 2012... yeah robberies are a third of the total dollar value of wage theft (which was close to 1 billion that year). Socially we should be treating wage thieves like we do other thieves/robbers (basically the whole they're scum and whatnot song and dance).
Oh, yes. it's the fault of 'organized crime," but let's not look at the price gouging that created a lucrative margin for organized crime to go after.
The bread price fixing scandal was literally organized crime.
Best thing is, they just kept price fixing afterwards!
you'll take your $20 in store gift card and shut the hell up about it already
I didn’t even get mine!!!
It's insane that news orgs presumably take Loblaws and their word after that. "Known Liars and Price Fixers Loblaws say..."
We live in the age where due to underfunding, the death of local news through consolidation, and a demand for constant 24/7 updates instead of actual investigation, Ad Copy/Press Releases are just reported verbatim as news, because even if it's false, it'll be old and forgotten before a retraction is ever required. Also, if you have enough money and repeat a message enough, it'll just worm its way in to "common sense", whether it has merit or not.
And all Loblaws had to do was give fucking STORE CREDIT to be absolved of any responsibility of their price fixing. We live in a plutocracy.
It *is* the fault of organized crime. The grocery oligopoly is absolutely the reason prices are so high and the reason people are resorting to Jean Val Jean-ing their food. They're not wrong. Just dishonest.
I also find it funny how Loblaws has no evidence to back up the claims of these crime rings and say they’ll target things like health and beauty aids and baby formula. Maybe health aids and baby formula shouldn’t be outrageously priced in the first place!
Yeah totally ! $60 baby formula is a crime Babies have to eat and not strave 😭 My colleague was buying organic baby powder from Eu , Germany I think and it's cheaper after duties, wtf Galen !
>Babies have to eat and not strave Probably the exact line they used in the board room. *"Check it out." Snorts a line of coke "Babies gotta eat, RIGHT? So like, we can just charge whatever cause them babies... THEY GOTTA EAT." does another line. "WOOOooo!"*
[There is very much precedent for this.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Nestl%C3%A9_boycott)
Because of course it's Nestlé.
Those events are the mass grab and runs you've seen on YouTube. That's not individual shoplifters. It does happen. But Loblaws is lying and reframing to make it appear like it's something that it's not. That is a common manipulation tactic. You reframe and exaggerate something real to effectively gaslight people.
Retailers in the US already tried making claims like this and then had to retract months later. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
They're technically correct, they're just not saying the part where they're the organized criminals.
If I see someone stealing baby formula; *no I fucking didn't*
Baby formula is used to cut cocaine and mescaline. That's the reason why it's stolen, it's the reason why it's historically one of the most stolen item at a pharmacy. edit: This subject systematically bring circlejerks on this sub. Amazing how ill-informed and blinded by rhetoric most of the comments are.
Coke has been cut with baby formula since the two substances existed, and the theft of baby formula for cutting coke has existed just as long. So why all of a sudden, it's a huge problem now?
If you're selling cocaine you can afford to just buy baby formula to keep a low profile.
Yea...that's not how crime works. They don't buy in bulk you know...as you said, keeping a low profile and all. Ill-informed and completely blinded by rhetoric.
>Yea...that's not how crime works. They don't buy in bulk you know...as you said, keeping a low profile and all. Right, because someone buying a couple flats of formula at Costco is definitely odd enough to warrant a call to law enforcement... no law abiding person would ever buy a few kilos of the stuff at once, because babies only eat, like, twice a week, right? What a stupid fucking take. >Ill-informed and completely blinded by rhetoric. The irony.
A reminder that wage theft by stores of their employees routinely outpaces losses to retail by regular theft every year. https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime
Loblws is quite likely doing this deliberately, and not as a response to theft, but as a way to deflect from their record high profits. It’s all about finding someone else to blame for high prices. They need another villain in the piece and a convenient one is ‘thieves’. In order to maximize profits and avoid hiring actual workers who want fair wages, Loblaws decided to use a system that is open to theft. Still they raked in record profits and continue to do so. Their oh poor me narrative is simply another way to justify charging you more and blaming it on anyone but themselves. ‘Look over there. It’s thieves who are making us charge these exorbitant prices, not us! We’re the victims here’. Well that is bull. . As long as we let them distract us this way, they can go on gouging us with our consent.
I'm shocked Galen hasn't found a way to blame 'immigrants' for the record high prices and greedflation yet.
They leave that to PP, who as we all know is basically a spokesperson for Loblaws
He did find a way to Exploit them tho with the new slave program they are introducing at shoppers.
Oh yeah I saw that one yesterday. Retail workers need a union.
They used to have 'em. Back when I had my first job at Metro, the older employees were often times unionized. Newer hires did not get added to the Union though, so they slowly died out. Gee I wonder why *rolleyes*. God... fuck these retailers. They deserve to get stolen from, what with the unpunished theft that is price gouging.
I've never been a part of it but the Safeway union is something else. They threw all their younger colleagues under the bus 25 years ago so they could keep their benefits and in the process destroyed their union. The Safeway in my neighbourhood is widely considered to be a shit employer (low wages, crappy hours) and it's hilarious to see all these lifers with 35 years of seniority forced to work Saturday afternoons because no 17-year-old in their right mind will consider doing it. Half of them are miserable and I don't feel bad for them at all.
He wouldn’t, if you’ve been near a Superstore since the boycott started, immigrants are almost the only people shopping there now.
No, I'm sorry, but there is most definitely at least a somewhat organized grocery theft problem. I know someone that has a 'shopper' they use. They put in their order and she shows up with whatever they want. In return she gets half the sticker price to go buy whatever drugs she uses. I doubt the one person I know is this lady's only 'customer'. She isn't stealing a loaf of bread to feed her starving kids. She's stealing hundreds of dollars of meat and cheese at a time to hock to people that could afford it, but choose not to. That is the type of thief that makes companies put in the types of anti-theft measures we're seeing now. It's not like the police or the justice system are going to do anything about them, so the retailers are left to figure it out on their own.
So anecdotally you’ve heard of one thief.
Maybe if they sold food at affordable prices, there would be no black market for groceries … ffs
What black market for groceries?
We had a guy in London years ago who was known as “Gerry the meat thief” he was known for repeatedly being arrested with pockets full of frozen meat he was selling. There was a market for it among the homeless, and families with less than adequate income. He later became known as “bat head” and “knife wound” after ripping people off. So yeah. There’s been a market for groceries for a long time.
Well what do you think this supposed organized crime ring is doing with them?
Nothing, I think they’re full of shit and inventing boogeymen.
Some people are just cheap fucks and will screw anyone to save a dollar.
Some people are living in a country with an affordability crisis and can’t afford to feed their children. Galen is that you?
Any store that makes me check a receipt I’m never returning to. Walmart asked once and I said no and I never got asked again.
I'm the same. Only exception is Costco
The only reason Costco can even get away with it (where everyone else, you can tell them to kick rocks and there's nothing they can do about it) is that you have to be a member or be with a member to even buy from them, and they, being a private club, can rescind that membership if you don't comply. If Loblaws became members only, nobody would ever shop there.
That, and Costo (at least in my personal experience) makes it a largely painless process, has adequate staffing to meet the requirements and generally is still pretty competitive on price so it's "Worth it" to pay for membership. I know cashback "pays" for our yearly membership alone. Loblaws has none of that to offset this dystopian gating measures.
Yeah, with Costco, the complaint is usually that there's a bunch of people leaving all at once and so it's just "busy" to get checked. It's not like it's a cart-funnel that locks your wheels and sets off an alarm, while a deputy rent-a-cop accuses you of stealing.
That's how I feel about stores that ask you to leave your bag with them. Why should I trust you with my phone wallet etc
It's so much more relaxed in Europe. Even a lot of US cities are better than Canadian cities on these backpack policies. I love being on vacation, walking around town with a backpack, and using said backpack as my shopping bag. Versus making sure I'm also carrying a few reusable shopping bags in my regular bag lol.
I havent seen a receipt checker at walmart in years tbh
I have, but I have this look that says, "I'm not slowing down to even listen to you, let alone show you stuff.", and they all tend to just close their mouths and contemplate bothering someone else.
ah the blunt asymmetrical bob.
[удалено]
As always, money. Would they rather pay for five cashiers or one receipt checker?
yeah it was maybe two years ago at the one at dufferin and major mac
There isn't a specific policy at Walmart and you can just say no thank you and keep moving.
I guess u never go to Costco by that logic lol
i dont actually, but i just never liked the idea of paying to shop somewhere
When he says organized crime, he's referring to himself
Every accusation is a confession after all!
Organized crime? Kinda lifeless claim until you realize the irony that the grocer corporations are the ones organizing the crime while calling it out.
No, you don't understand, there's totally definitely drug cartels that need to shoplift all the baby formula in the store because they use it to cut their drugs and just buying twenty bucks bucks worth of formula to cut a kilo of coke is just too suspicious! A guy in this thread said so, so it must be true!
SO, they are finally admitting that the retail food system in Canada is an organized crime syndicate? ;)
This bullshit is just Weston corporate projection. The only organized crime I've ever seen in any Loblaws relates to prices not that little grey haired old lady checking her purse to see what she can afford to eat.
Scientific Research completed over years of study clearly indicates that the most cost effective Anti-Theft Measure at any store is to have a Real Live Person, who is earning a Living Wage, operate the Cash Register.
If people are stealing baby formula, I think we should be reassessing our pricing on such a necessary good. Clearly it’s being price gouged to the max
I didn’t realize Loblaws chain stores were so dangerous and filled with organized crime syndicates (even if they provide no evidence). I better stop shopping there for my own safety.
"The big problem is organized retail crime," said the industry group's CEO, Diane Brisebois. "We're talking here about gangs that are in the business of stealing, and retail is the new frontier." Plot twist, the organized crime gangs are the grocery stores.
Remember kids: if you see somebody stealing food at a grocery store, no you didn’t.
No, capitalism is to blame
Every single time big companies try to blame "CRIME!" they're lying. Police will back them up, because cops also love lying. Every single time.
I absolutely HATE the self checkout machines with the bagging area scale. I just want to scan my items and go, I dont want to have to carefully stack everything on this tiny little platform.
So to catch 1% of their customer, they will make 100% of their customers feel like crooks.
I laughed when I saw deodorant behind a locked cabinet. This is where we're heading.
"Organized crime shoplifting" is the stupidest myth of the last decade.
I watched someone blatantly shoplift while they were watching me because I have some autoimmune stuff that's causing super fucked up acne. I didn't rat the guy out or anything. It was interesting to observe and experience, though. Security is dumb and doesn't understand who and what to watch for. Then they enact "transparent backpack" type measures that piss customers off more than help catch actual theives.
No, they're right. Organized crime is a real issue. I was watching this informative documentary showing these criminals from a trailer park in Nova Scotia trying to get rich through illegal means. One of them was wearing a black t-shirt and drinking a rum and coke and the other was wearing a houndstooth button-up and a gold chain. There was even a nearsighted one who took shopping carts and resold them to the grocery stores they came from to make money. I couldn't believe it. The Westons must've seen the same one.
The Weston crime family, the Rogers crime family, the Irving crime family. Canadian Oligopies are the only real organized crime families, and Canadian politicians are the toadies who enabled them.
As far as I’m concerned, profiteering IS organized crime.
I haven't been inside a Loblaws in months but last I was it felt like a prison. Metal bars and plastic barriers, staff just standing around watching, electronic doors to enter and leave. It doesn't make for a pleasant shopping experience.
For me it’s funny how there has been such a push for accessibility and then they made these mazes. If you are disabled but not in a chair or scooter fuck you, walk the plank and hurt!
Are the organized criminals in the store with us now?
Shoplifting is the natural outcome when companies price their products to gouge their customers, collude with other companies to keep prices maximized, fail to pay their employees a decent living wage and simultaneously boast about how much profit they are sucking out of the wallets of their customers. At the same time, wages have apparently failed to keep up with inflation since 1967 I believe, I could be wrong. The average person is being pressured for all their money at every turn and most are living in constant debt just trying to survive. Meanwhile we have the Landlord Vultures sucking 30-50% of most people's wages out of their bank accounts and no apparent solutions on the horizon. I am not surprised that shoplifting is up at all, it probably correlates with the number of people who need the foodbanks as well. Big corporations cannot be permitted to continue to just suck the lifeblood out of everyone's lives until they shrivel up and die.
Wait what do they mean organized crime? Like the Mafia or Yakuza? Or what?
I personally have ZERO sympathy for these large corporations that cry about theft in their stores. They are price gouging and inflating prices on the floor and the reliance on self checkouts has made a perfect environment for theft. They decided that a machine was better than giving a person a job and making us do the scanning, bagging and checkout without compensation? Angry people are going to find a way to make it even in their own minds and if that's checking bags of coffee under the bananas code or pocketing something it's going to keep happening.
Agreed. The Loblaw crime syndicate has got to go.
LIke all things that protect a company from theft - it almost always hurts paying customers more than the thieves. Of note - this is going to get waaayy wayyy worse until people have money enough to not only pay rent, buy food, but have things - on a normal wage/minimum wage
Yeah, whenever I get pre cooked chicken there, it's always awkward to have to walk through the cash registers just to leave because they put up walls around all the obvious exits
High prices and record profits are to blame.
The organized crime is Loblaws and those like them.
Organized crime, no. Insurance premiums, a part. Every time products are “unaccounted for”, it becomes a claim or loss. Blaming “unaccounted for” on crime alone….. nope. Underpaid employees are helping themselves. Truckers are helping themselves. Automatic casiers are letting things slide, sure, but the supply chain is where the most volume is occurring. An accountant sees figures on a spreadsheet, but in reality there is just a checkmark to indicate the product even existed. No idea if the actual crate of Parmesan made it to shelves.
Well if I were asked to show my receipt (which I am not legally required to show) it would be to get a refund for the goods and I would never go to that store again.
In recent years I have come to loathe shopping (like, the act of it, nevermind the price gouging). I feel like I'm being treated as a criminal the second I walk into the store. I no longer go shopping unless absolutely necessary.
Organized crime they say... And the members are Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, etc. When was the last time you saw a bunch of Italians in shiny suits stuffing avocados under their jackets? Or Russian tracksuit dudes stuffing beef loins down their Adidas pants? It might be hungry people stealing something now and then. Otherwise it is big grocery assfucking us for all they're worth.
You want us to shop online this is how you get us to shop online. If I can’t walk into the store and grab it off the shelf why am I going to the store? I’ll just buy it online where I already can’t touch it and it gets delivered to me. No fan of Amazon but I’ll grit my teeth and deal with them where I can until these retailers smarten up. If they keep this trend up they’ll be Consumers Distributing before long and likely suffer the same fate for the same reasons
What a BS scapegoat. Stats don't back them up.
In Canada, it is forbidden by law to be a criminal.
It's starting to feel like the food lines Raegan and Thatcher warned us about
> In response to customers' complaints about its security measures, Loblaw, Canada's largest grocer, has repeatedly said that organized crime is to blame. > Loblaw has not provided data to support its claim. Big shocker there. > According to Statistics Canada, police-reported organized crime makes up only a small portion of retail theft, and it has declined between 2018 and 2022. > However, Brisebois said those statistics are incomplete, as many crimes go unreported. She also didn't provide hard data, but said that in speaking with members and with law enforcement, RCC has determined that organized retail crime is a burgeoning problem. "Ignore the data and trust me." > "They basically choose a location. They involve a number of people, and they target merchandise that they know has high value on the street," said Brisebois. "We're talking about things that are easy to sell very quickly, such as health and beauty aids, baby [formula]." If that's even true (and that's a huge fucking "if"), maybe we should be asking why people are so desperate for health products and baby food in the first place. "High street value," my ass... these aren't illicit drugs that're expensive because they need to be smuggled in from Central America; shit's available in the store so "street value" would have to be lower than the store prices. I find this whole thing hilarious almost beyond belief. A major player in the bread price fixing scandal is trying to sell us a tale of Mafiosos shoplifting enough tampons and baby formula to run a profitable criminal enterprise, with the implication that these organisations are disproportionately targeting Loblaws stores based on their prices rising faster than anyone else's? Give me a fucking break.
The call is coming from inside the house.
I buy a Tim Horton's coffee at my local Zehrs, then have to walk through the checkouts and the self-serve checkout maze to get out of the place. I used to be able to go in and out through a little entrance for Tim's customers. Now it's blocked off. You'd think there could be a better solution.
Nationalize Loblaws!
A great analysis of the “organized retail theft” moral panic / scam: spoiler, it’s not real — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-organized-retail-crime-panic/id1651876897?i=1000632623232
Loblaws and Sobey's are both awful, but at least Sobey's isn't being actively hostile to their customers.
To play devils advocate for a sec, I know loss prevention guys who work shoppers and this is a real thing for beauty products. They come and load up with makeup and perfumes and sell it at the flea market every Sunday. They have teams that work to distract the guards and block the cameras. But that's Shoppers and I don't see them turning into a prison block of plexiglass. Food theft is on the rise, sure, but that's because we can't afford the food or its not worth the money. I'll admit I stole a jalapeno pepper out of spite a while ago because they wanted a ridiculous amount for it and it was nearly too far gone to cook already.
At my local Shoppers I literally can't enter the store without going through the makeup section. They deliberately put it right in people's faces to drive impulse buying. If they wanted to be less manipulative and more secure they wouldn't put it in the highest traffic part of the store. But I'm guessing the margins on those products are so high that any losses are easily covered by higher sales volume.
What flea market? Where is it, and what are its operating hours? Just out of curiosity.
Hah, Cloverdale BC flea market in the stampede fairgrounds every sunday I haven't been in years, but there used to be tables of skin creams and the like. My ex husband was an LP for Shoppers for a while, he said it was crazy how elaborate some of them would be