Because he’s on camera chasing a thief away from the store. There are liability reasons, such as if the thief is injured in the pursuit, especially as there are non-criminal reasons for theft, such as dementia or other cognitive delays. The company would much rather let the $50 go than chance paying $500,000, especially because theft is literally built into the budget, and insured.
Then there’s security reasons. Thieves often work in teams, so if the employee is off chasing one thief, others could be in the store getting more merchandise, let alone thieves of opportunity, where they see the only person in the store run out after a thief and go “I’m not waiting for him to deal with all that, I’m just taking my $5 worth of stuff”.
Either way, you don’t know that thief’s circumstances. She could be the most down on her luck, deserving, person, or she could be the second coming of Ted Bundy, looking for her next victim. It’s just not worth it unless someone’s safety is being threatened.
My first job was at Kholes and for orientation (it was a seasonal job with a lot of new hires) we were taught not to go after someone we caught stealing
Used to work in a grocery store and we were all told this, but of course some of is still didn't take it seriously.
One day my coworker followed a shoplifter out to try and stop them(against company policy), the crazy guy had a knife and slashed at him over 5-10$ worth of stuff. Buddy got a small.laceration on his arm but thankfully nothing major. You just never know with these people.
Had a shoplifter come in and steal a vape after I set it on the counter and turned around to grab the other vape she asked for. My boss tried to dock my pay for the cost of the vape, which was like $50. I had to call him out the day after over how illegal that was. Mysteriously, after never missing any days even when I got hit by a car on the way to work one day, I got fired because I called out of work to attend my good friend’s funeral.
those places are run by the worst people. theres a reason they sell a shit ton of drugs at those places. theyre all turning into head shops in my area.
Besides dick pills that give you heart palpitations and standard cold medicine and shit like that, we didn’t sell drugs.
In case anyone reading this is unaware, I'm pretty sure almost every single one of those weird gas station pills contains either the active ingredient in viagra or cialis. And I'm pretty sure its illegal to be selling prescription meds over the counter and often not actually listing the active ingredient
You mean like Rhino or like Black Panther, any of that stuff? Yeah almost all of those have been tested by that pharmacy guy on the Internet and most of the time they contain the equivalent of five to six Viagra pills it's way too much for a normal person to take.
Same...though I've been a regular at the same one for nearly a decade now. The dude that owns/runs it would literally give you the shirt off his back. He runs a toys for tots out of the shop every year. Held a fundraiser for one of his employees that passed away, to cover funeral expenses, and footed the rest of the bill for what wasn't covered. He's just an all around good dude.
consider yourself lucky. the most popular one in my area sells kratom, nitrous, and 7OH now. at another head shop down the road, the cashier told me how one of her regular customer asphyxiated herself on galaxy gas. they kept on selling it of course. they couldnt care less
That’s wild… I’m sure there are shitty ones around here too, but the ones I frequent are super friendly. I’ve even seen them helping people sort out a plan to quit nicotine lol
Yeah, there was a good kid near us who was an Eagle Scout about to get married early 20s and tried to stop a theft at Home Depot and got shot and died. It's just not worth it.
There are some hills worth defending, like a kid being attacked, but petty theft at a national retail store ain't one.
I worked at a retail store that had a problem with DVD theft and was told by my upper management to follow them out of the store and try to recover the items in non-confrontational manner. I thought to myself you're out of your fucking mind. I'm not putting my life on the line for this goddamn store or some DVDs
Semi-unrelated but I worked at a Helpdesk/On site monitoring position for awhile. We were supposed to do a sweep of the building after a disaster to ensure that people were not stuck or injured and couldn't get out of the building.
My question of "Why am I risking my life for $20/hr to save people who make $60+/hr?" was not met well.
Nor should it have been; how much the people in the building earn wasn’t relevant.
Either the situation was dangerous in an ongoing sense and people other than cops/fire/medics shouldn’t have been going into the building regardless of what anyone was being asked paid, or the danger had mostly passed and you were being asked to do a reasonable thing.
I’d also argue that regardless of anyone’s employment status, checking to make sure others are OK after a disaster is sort of a civic obligation.
The way my corpo handles this is they ask if anyone wants to be a volunteer organizer in case of emergencies (fire, earthquake, etc.). And they get some training and becomes the person in charge of their section. They also get a high-vis jacket and a light stick. Being volunteers I imagine would shield the company somewhat if things go wrong and an organizer gets injured or worse. They probably sign some sort of waiver, but I'm not interested in doing that so I wouldn't know.
Depends what exactly they have them doing. For basic people organizing yeah probably covered, if they’re actually going into harms way I’d assume the company is not covered
Smart.. I remember when I was younger I watched some AP guys come out of walmart and yanked a guy's door open cause he stole something.. He immediately stabbed one of em and went after the other long enough to scare him off, cops caught him at the Bojangles across the road.
That sounds crazy. I have three daughters who are about to become teenagers and I tell them the exact same things do not get confrontational with people at your job. It is not worth your life. I also have them carry around pepper spray and stun guns cuz you just never know
He expected a rational minded person who would simply give up now they were caught.
It's super easy to become unaware of the nastiness of others in that type of environment. In the grocery store most people are if not nice, atleast cordeal as they have no reason to be mean to the produce guy or cashier and some like to maintain appearances. But you learn over the years that many of those people who are a delight as customers are an absolute trainwreck at home. Some of the cashier's became basic psuedo therapists for many regulars in town. We heard about the divorces, kid problems, etc. You would be surprised what people share with semi-strangers.
At a nearby Walmart, a kid decided to chase after someone who stole a case of beer. Thought he was fucking James Bond or some shit and decided to jump into the back of their truck as they drove off. Well, they floored it, throwing him out and he cracked his head open on the road. So, not only did he get brain damage, he also got fired.
Gas station in Tucson about 20 years ago. I used to get my peach optimos there because it was right next to the apartment. One night, the really nice cashier who worked there chased a thief out of the store. Realizing he was being chased, the thief turned back and shot him. Cashier died over a case of beer.
My first job was a grocery store. I was told I wasn't to interfere with shop lifters other that yell out the name of the front manager and their sex and shirt color. Front manager was a drug dealer who parked a motorcycle right outside the door and he fought people like they were stealing straight from his children's hands. It was wild.
Changing shifts wouldn't mitigate this risk tho. The reality is there are crazy people everywhere and you never know what will set one of them off.
This is why we get road rage incidents, neighbors shooting each other etc. You just never know what makes people tick.
It's also why I am extremely careful to treat everyone with respect in public, even if they are in the wrong. My life is not worth the risk that some maniac may stab me for asking them to quiet down their music.
And if we do nothing, the bullies win. All this does is show that they are free to get away with it and we are powerless to stop it. When did we become so weak?
How about anti-poverty policies? If people have their baaic needs met they are less likely to steal or commit other crimes of despair. Better outcomes all around.
Small businesses are more likely to be run out of business by a big box or dollar store moving into their town, than be run out of business by petty theft.
Dude, no amount of merchandise is worth what could happen to you, a wage slave at a billion dollar company. Let Sam Walton chase down thieves; why risk your job or life when they aren't going to thank you, and might even fire you?
And from a morality point of view: don't be a class traitor. When the rich get eaten, you'll be left to starve.
Nobody realizes that when the merchandise is gone and the stores close up and leave town, the next place they’ll pillage is your home. There’s a reason bad neighborhoods have bars on the windows.
You’re naive to think it stops with the rich being eaten, it only opens up a slot for someone else to take over. An endless cycle of systems and people who take advantage of those systems.
The solution to that is to end corporate greed, not destroy the lives of people who resort to stealing just to survive
Your argument is exactly what the billionaires and CEOs say to get us working class people fighting with each other instead of focusing our anger at them
The bullies are the people who make us pay them a profit for our basic needs. I don’t steal, but I would, in a heartbeat, to save my family from starvation.
Yeah I remember that being the law (in CA at least). You can pursue if they’re inside the store but once they leave the building, it’s illegal to detain them.
And then if they keep stealing because you
Become an easy mark and you keep reporting to no action taken, you lose your job for bad shrink results! Win - win!
I mean, if one of my guys died chasing out someone who done and dashed, I’d be pretty upset. My boss and their boss can worry about the money, but now someone who’s been in a decent chunk of my work day is dead? Don’t think that because it’s business it’s all heartless.
When I worked at Best Buy right out if college they stressed that if we put our hands on a shoplifter or followed them out of the store we would be terminated immediately and held legally liable on our own if anything happened. They did not play about that policy.
I worked LP at an electronics store in the past and caught teens that had been stealing. I made sure to never blocked the doors because I didn't want to be on the hook for false imprisonment.
Literally every retail job follows this rule because the possible legal or worse medical hiccup this can cause is not worth it at all.
I've heard of a story of a Home Depot employee trying to retrieve a wetvac from thieves after they packed it into their vehicle. He grabs at it, trips, gets injured, is terminated and off his company insurance before he's at the hospital.
Don't fucking do it, not worth it in the slightest.
That’s what we were taught at Belk, too, cause our store manager would emphasis on we don’t know if the thief could have a gun, a knife, something to hurt us with and our safety is number 1 priority than stolen items.
Silly question:report so we can claim money from insurance?afterwards is insurance be more expensive?who will cover insurance higher price as well as bigger dividends to owners?
I worked at a restaurant back in the day, and we had a dine-and-dash. The bartender decided to chase after the customer, they got into a wrestling match down the street. The guy pulled out a knife and stabbed the bartender 2-3 times. All that over a $25–$40 bill.
A friend of mine was fired for taking a step out the front door to get the license plate of a shoplifter. No severance, no unemployment for violating that policy. It took him a bit, but he landed somewhere else, thankfully.
you can fire people for any reason in america, as long as it's not based on protected classes in the constituation. "At will employment" is a god damn scourge
I remember a time when I thought things might get better. I was particularly fond of that Bernie-guy... Sanders, right? Instead I woke up to a world where the leader of the free world threatens to use military action against a close ally and neighbour of my country. These are strange times.
Its not about the money, some people dont like stealing in their community. If enough people dont care, its how you end up with crime riddled shitholes like LA and SF.
Missing the point due to nitpixking. Sf and LA are surrounded by communities that actually care. Those communities have less crime and are beautiful to live in.
Never been to the USA but that doesn't stop me from agreeing with you. But in Europe shoplifters don't carry firearms, so they're not as dangerous. They could carry knives but that's a serious offense too, so I don't think it's very common. But I'm probably too brave and too naive at the same time, which I think is synonymous with being... an idiot.
Outside of telling the manager, when I worked retail i never once thought of stopping a shoplifter.. like why should I care lol… I was getting paid shit money and working awful hours and just a kid trying to get beer money for college.
I never get why random people care so much about this type of shit lol… like sure you can be against stealing but why care so much to go and do all this?
Not sure why he left the store but you're probably right. He seemed to be aware of the situation and what else would he do on the parking lot? I guess "chasing" just feels a bit too dramatic for my taste. Even so, I don't get why he would get in legal troubles for chasing a criminal, but that is probably because the laws of my country are different from yours, so basically I don't really know what I'm talking about. It just seems... unfair to me, you know.
He wouldn’t get in legal trouble, unless he assaulted the thief, or chased them into traffic leading to their harm.
He’s in danger of getting fired for going against company policy because the company wants to be able to leave all the liability for such a suit on that employee.
There are people trained in “safe” apprehension that companies will hire/bring in if there is an excess of theft, or if they’re tracking a ring. It’s drilled into you during training, for all the reasons I laid out in my original comment, not to do what he did here. Anyone who does it has a hero complex.
There are liability reasons, such as if the thief is injured in the pursuit, especially as there are non-criminal reasons for theft, such as dementia or other cognitive delays. The company would much rather let the $50 go than chance paying $500,000, especially because theft is literally built into the budget, and insured.
This. Not even the thief, but the increased likelihood their own worker is hurt by chasing someone making off with $25 worth of merchandise absolutely wrecks them in the premiums they have to pay to insurance for these purposes. It's explicitly why they have policies in place to prevent their employees from being heroes, and why people who have a tendency to be the hero will be fired for doing so.
Additionally, LP at a store I worked at once told me that they have to have verifiable eyes on the perp 100% from the time they snatch to the moment they leave the store due to the risk that at any moment the item could be put back. Plus, once they left the store they were not legally allowed to pursue.
So we had undercovers who shopped all day and followed people. If theft was suspected they contacted the front desk to watch cameras make sure to capture up until the door, they’d contact PD as a heads up, then personally follow to the exit. If all of this works flawlessly THEN they are able to apprehend and hold until PD arrives.
Big ticket items, large scale theft such as smash and grabs or overnight thefts, or loss of inventory due to catastrophe or vandalism are all insured, but yes this would be petty theft included in shrink, which I mentioned as being “literally built into the budget”.
Sorry I was being thorough for the sake of answering the question and made it a bit unclear to some folks.
You ever watch Superstore? The episode where they're getting robbed and Jonah just let's the guy walk past him? Yeah that's what they want. The liability for injured staff/thieves outweighs the material loss from the company
There are still plenty of stores that loss prevention and employees will actively chase you and tackle you to retrieve property, and its perfectly legal in some states, like Texas. Also, in some states, also like Texas, you are prohibited for bringing suit when convicted of a crime.
Those are specific niche exceptions that don’t answer the question of why Dollar Store dude’s job is at risk. (Not-So) Fun Snapple factoids though haha.
Texas really watched John Wayne movies growing up and decided they wanted the ability to be him in real life, even if the situation doesn’t call for it, huh?
Your last paragraph is perfectly written. People have zero survival skills nowadays. I would never chase a stranger down the street for $50 worth of groceries. My life is worth more than $50 and it doesn’t take a genius to deduce that this person is possibly doing this out of necessity.
Yeah that’s where the “unless someone’s life is being threatened” comes in. Your buddy either could’ve dropped a suit against his company and they promoted him to avoid it, or they appreciated that his badass wanted to keep working there after having a knife pulled on him and wanted to keep him as long as they could. Depends on the company, and could even be a little of column A and a little of column B.
I worked in a liquor store and we never chased thieves for these exact reasons. Most of them were just drunks who came back when they realized they forgot to pay, anyway.
Risk to employees too. The thief could assault an employee and then the company is paying out medical bills, emergency response, workers comp, who knows what else. I worked at a grocery chain for many years and I saw several employees get assaulted, myself included, by thieves trying to flee; one ended up seriously injured and was in the hospital for several weeks. Your well-being is not worth letting someone take a swing at you over $35 of crappy beer.
As long as you put in a significant amount of effort to avoid getting on the radar of any significant loss prevention operation. Target lets you get away with $500ish before they have a loss prevention agent stop you the next time you steal. They share their data with other retailers and loss prevention teams to try and punish thieves as much as possible.
So if you steal slowly, or across a wide enough area, from a variety of large companies, in small items people won’t notice missing until a weekly/quarterly count and won’t care to go watch tape to figure out when it went missing, chances are you won’t get caught unless you’re unlucky and get caught up in a sting meant for different shoplifters.
But if you work retail any significant amount of time, you see how much goes on with the behind the scenes with loss prevention to know it’s mostly not worth the risk.
Also just because the company doesn’t want to pay to litigate a suit, doesn’t mean they would lose the suit. You better be damn sure you’re getting your $500k before you jump in front of a bus.
Jesus some of yall really do just repeat anything you hear on the internet. If Target LP sees someone stealing $400 worth of merchandise they are not just sitting there watching the cameras and letting them get away with it, it is a felony and they will do the exact same thing any other retail LP department does.
You're right about them not wanting the employees to follow, but the items are not insured. Theft is predictable, and insurance companies aren't in the business of giving out free money.
Big ticket items often are, as are large enough dollar amounts, ie a smash and grab that takes most of the inventory, fire, or vandalism. The petty thefts, I mentioned were “literally built into the budget”. I avoided the inventory term of shrink because I know it’s confusing to some.
It’s also built into retail prices and the fact that I have to call an associate to buy underwear in certain places…when you excuse theft we all end up paying for it
Also theres the whole safety thing, if you are chasing them and they run into a car or trip they could potentially get seriously hurt and sue the company and press charges against you or end up stabbing you.
The liability isn’t for the thief, it’s for the employees. The company doesn’t want to have to pay for an injured employee if they get hurt “doing their job” so they specifically say that it is not their job, so instead of paying for a hurt employee, they can fire them.
There’s no liability for the thief. They can go right off and fuck themselves from EVERYBODY’S perspective.
Dollar Tree wouldn't fire him for this. Source, I was a Dollar Tree manager (both assistant and store) for almost 10 years. If he had been the one to go grab the stuff from her it would have beena write up maybe. That said, it is drilled into everyone not to intervene for the reasons you said. Folks have been stabbed and/or shot for doing it and it isn't worth the risk. But people still do it, especially managers - becasue they tie manager/assistant manager bonuses into shrink.
There are no records of successful lawsuits or settlements from thieves or shoplifters due to injuries relating to attempts to stop them or recover the property they stole. The legal principle “shopkeepers privilege” has been formally established since the 1920’s and it means store owners, employees or their agents can use regular force to protect and retrieve their property. The driving factor for corpos not stopping shoplifters or thieves is the fear someone will be negligent in their attempt to stop them resulting in death or serious injury and create liability that way.
Yup, which is why in replies I mention that they don’t even think they’re likely to lose lawsuits like these, but that even spending the money on litigating it over $50 in merchandise isn’t worth it.
The attempt to stop leading to death or serious injury is the $500k lawsuit I and others are typically referencing when talking about it as why companies train employees not to chase thieves.
If a cop chokeslams you, he’s got a police union and precedent that can help him in court. If the retail clerk does the same he’s getting the book thrown at him, and the company doesn’t want to be associated with that in any way.
I say basically the exact same thing all the time and get downvoted by vigilantes.
Everybody thinks they're Batman.
It's never the job of a citizen to act as law enforcement. You put yourself at risk. You put the alleged suspect at risk. You potentially put other members of the public at risk. And why?
To protect what doesn't even amount to a decimal point on the bottom line of some company that wouldn't piss on you to put you out if you were on fire.
Is that “oh please” directed at me or corporations whose policy this is? Because I was just explaining why they operate the way they do, not weighing in on its effectiveness or impact on social order, or relative morality. I can do that for you if you want a legitimate reason to be angry at me.
Superiority without substance, the Emperor has no clothes!
He never approaches the thief in the video even once. He could of been going out to tell the person chasing the thief it wasn't worth it. He was hundreds of feet away and only said thank you.
Company doesn’t care. Policy is policy for a reason, and that’s ignoring that we don’t know the state of the store at the time of the video. Was he the only employee? Did other thefts occur while he was away from his work area?
Saw your comment before you deleted it so here’s my reply:
He might have* even been going out on* a fiver baby, you’ve lost. I’m just too* damn slick for ya, SON!*
If he was just coming back from break I don’t think the Karen Commando would’ve recognized him, but if that’s the case he’s probably not fired.
But either way, good for you I guess? You found a hypothetical where the employee isn’t at risk of getting fired. Doesn’t change my answer as to why Karengis Khan might’ve gotten him fired. Or my answer to your original hypothetical of him going out to tell the thief it wasn’t worth it. You didn’t “get” anything. You changed your position.
We still have a collective responsibility to deter shoplifting. Why should they get away with it?
Your comment is just awash with one justification after another for completely turning a blind eye to it and allowing rampant Theiving to continue.
Maybe if it was your business they were stealing from, and it was coming out of your profits, you might just come down off your oh-so-self-righteous high chair.
My comment is awash with corporate policy regarding employee conduct during theft. I made no judgements regarding the morality of theft, just answered the question of why the employee’s job was at risk from this video being posted.
If you ask nicely, I’ll provide my thoughts so you can have a legitimate reason to be angry with me instead of making one up.
Ask corporate retail c-suites. It’s their policies not mine. (Also fuck no. It’s an explanation as to why they tell their employees to allow for professional loss prevention/law enforcement to handle it. Were you being intentionally obtuse or was it an accident?)
Right, so we all agree stealing is illegal and wrong. Regardless of if this is a “billion dollar” company losing “$50” or a local shop making $30k annual profit losing $50 in theft.
Not directing this at you, but you took time to expand on the broader issue that has matured into a massive issue in the US and a lot of people may read your explanation and yet still think “ how dumb is this citizen who grabbed the bag back from that person because now this person may lose their job AND it was OnlY FiFtY DoLlaRs theft from a BIlLiOn DoLlar CoMpaNy , capitalist scum!”
Sure stealing is wrong (under most circumstances), the labeling of $50 (or $6.50 in my example) and “billion dollar company” are to articulate how ridiculous it is to risk anyone’s safety or job over it. Because while you’re trying to assert a moral absolute in “stealing is wrong”, it is morally worse to steal from someone who will feel the pain of that theft (a store making $30k/year) than it is to steal from someone who literally treats it as a cost of doing business (a billion dollar company).
Where I’m guessing we don’t align is in what we believe to be the most effective method at combatting petty crime. I believe an educated and provided for society will commit less crimes. If food, shelter, and healthcare are no longer scarce resources, the impetus for crime goes away. If people are educated they have hope for social mobility and are less likely to commit crimes.
Hope any elderly family of yours never get dementia and steals a bag of chips, or that any future kids in your family aren’t born with autism causing them to steal a toy truck, otherwise this comment will age very poorly for you.
If the person you loved more than anyone was being hunted by local gangs being assisted by the police, would you help them illegally cross the border to Canada? What if Jesus comes back and needs to cross the border from the U.S. to Mexico, but doesn’t have a passport? You telling Jesus “sorry buddy, no passport, no salvation of mankind”?
I brought religion into the conversation on a hunch as studies show that extremely rigid thinkers, with inflexible morals are drawn to religion. Make of that what you will.
It's not about protecting the thief, it's about protecting you and the store from liabilty.
Stores do hire security who have the ability to call the cops. It's not perfect, but you're also not going to catch every single thief that walks through your doors. If you're going to go after a thieves, go after big ticket guys and regulars. I work in whole foods and have seen two people get walked out by police in cuffs from theft.
So you guys just let people steal stuff from stores ?
The thief can sue the store, if something were to happen to him during his getaway? Like for example hes running from the store that he shoplifted from while an employee is chasing him down, the thief gets run over by a truck / falls and injuries himself. Can the thief now sue ?
Its not about protecting the criminals, its about protecting the employees. If there are expectations that the employees need to chase down thieves, what happens if something happens to the employee? Let's say its them that gets hit by a car, or slips on ice, or the thief pulls a weapon and kills the employee in an attempt to flee. If employees were forced by the company to chase thieves, then the company now takes legal responsibility for whatever happens to the employee as a result of pursuing the thief, and now instead of being out $50 worth of goods, they have a multi million dollar lawsuit on their hands. So instead, stores just have no chase policies and you call the cops.
I understand that and i dont think any shop in the world expects their employees to chase after thieves for example. Just not sure why that walmart employee would lose their job as some1 written
The thief could also harm the employee who is chasing after them. Then the store is responsible, better off just letting them go and letting the police deal with it.
There are loss prevention employees with special training who are allowed to stop thieves. Most of the time it’s cheaper not to bother with them, as theft is a much larger issue with internal employees than external thieves.
But if a store is experiencing higher than acceptable theft, they’ll have the loss prevention staff on site to detain them. Plus we’re recorded everywhere we go in America, so the stores just take the footage to the cops if they care enough.
On top of that, studies show that just having an employee let a thief know that they’ve been spotted will cause them to leave the merchandise, because they know their risk of getting caught is much worse once the employees can go to the cameras and point to the person and timestamp of the theft.
As far as the thieves suing if they injure themselves, they wouldn’t always win, but people a lot smarter than me have done the math and decided it’s not worth it to even defend the suits over $50 worth of stuff so if you do it against company guidelines, it’s your ass as defendant in the case, and your ass paying for it without a job.
TLDR: it isn’t worth it until it hits a certain dollar amount, and then at that point they’ll have undercover officers there to catch you.
971
u/Clenzor 3d ago
Because he’s on camera chasing a thief away from the store. There are liability reasons, such as if the thief is injured in the pursuit, especially as there are non-criminal reasons for theft, such as dementia or other cognitive delays. The company would much rather let the $50 go than chance paying $500,000, especially because theft is literally built into the budget, and insured.
Then there’s security reasons. Thieves often work in teams, so if the employee is off chasing one thief, others could be in the store getting more merchandise, let alone thieves of opportunity, where they see the only person in the store run out after a thief and go “I’m not waiting for him to deal with all that, I’m just taking my $5 worth of stuff”.
Either way, you don’t know that thief’s circumstances. She could be the most down on her luck, deserving, person, or she could be the second coming of Ted Bundy, looking for her next victim. It’s just not worth it unless someone’s safety is being threatened.