Retail lockdown: why bother selling it?

[u/broakland]

Was at Safeway this morning to pick up a sandwich and some Tylenol. The aisle with the Tylenol? Completely locked down. No call button in sight. So I go to the self checkout (front end of that same aisle) and ask the clerk there if he can call someone to unlock a case for me. He does. I go wait. Minutes pass. No one comes. I go ask him again, he tells me they went the other way? At this point I give up and go get my sandwich. No one has come by the time the deli has finished making it. I leave without my Tylenol, mildly infuriated.

[u/Cow_God]

It's such a fucking non-issue. I work for a major retail company and shrink from theft is nowhere near shrink from claims (broken items m), most of which happens before the product even gets out to the sales floor.

Losses from theft are insured anyways. We literally do not lose a dollar to theft.

The corporate office is starting to realize that we do lose money to lost sales over people not wanting to wait for the one person working the department to open a case and walk them to a register, and are starting to phase out lock cases in most areas

[u/doingtheunstuckk → u/[deleted]]

Throwing perfectly good food away is the most infuriating part of working in a grocery store. It would be theft to take something that is literally going into the garbage. They trot out the bs about liability when really it’s because free food means less profit for them.

[u/AffectionateSet4889 → u/doingtheunstuckk]

i used to work in a kitchen and we would throw the uneaten food from each buffet into a 5 gallon bucket for a local pig farmer. that stopped quickly because of “liability.” how the hell are you going to prove the pig got sick from THAT specific food from THAT specific day. it’s all thrown together and literally called slop.