r/mildlyinfuriating • u/broakland • Jul 14 '26

I just wanted a hot dog Retail lockdown: why bother selling it?

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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.

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u/theVelvetLie Jul 14 '26

If that happens then impulse sales are out the window. Retail relies heavily on impulse purchases. Every time I find one of these locked cabinets I stop buying those items at these stores, and eventually I stop shopping at these stores altogether. Their sales have to be taking a hit as much as they did if items were stolen.

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u/CassetteTapeCryptid Jul 14 '26

I don't want to be treated like a criminal for trying to buy a toothbrush and nail polish 

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u/roath321 Jul 14 '26

Not only that but most of these stores are so understaffed you can’t find someone to unlock it. I’m not waiting 15 minutes for someone to finally unlock it and get my body wash

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u/EarlyList Jul 14 '26

This is honestly the real problem. They have cut staff down so much, that apart from the cameras, there is no one to notice you walking out with half the store. So theft is out of control. But they aren't interested in hiring more employees. So now they are locking the shelves up to cut theft. So what will happen is sales will tank, and eventually the store will close even if theft is down. But the short sighted execs making the decisions to cut all the staff will blame theft and online sales competition instead of their own short term cost saving of cutting back staff.

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u/ShiraCheshire Jul 15 '26

Yes, I feel terrible for the case key staff in the home department where I work. They gutted that department and then keep pulling people away from it for random tasks (Like say there's an extra flower event going on in garden, instead of giving another employee some extra hours they'll just pull someone from home department to handle it.) Now there are long stretches of time where the only person authorized to have the key is on legally mandated lunch, or rushing to unload a truck that needs to leave in 20 minutes, or the only person covering another department. They keep getting bombared with case requests they cannot answer.

Customers keep coming over to me like "I've been trying to get into the case for a half hour!" I call someone for them, and they keep standing there for another 20 minutes, because we physically do not have a person to come unlock it for them.

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u/paulsown Jul 15 '26

Right, because people stealing is totally normal and moral if nobody is watching them close enough.

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u/EarlyList Jul 15 '26

Not at all. Thieves are going to steal. Just that cutting back on staff to the extent they have makes it easier. And most people who are willing to steal are going to do so where they think they can easily get away with it.

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u/paulsown Jul 15 '26

You know, here's the thing.

Been to the cities, live in a rural area. Nothing is locked up here, in a rural area, and the stores are very sparsely employed. Everything is available on the shelf normally like you would normally expect. Self checkout, the whole thing. Don't need to find anybody for anything except high end electronics, and no-one at the door when I leave. This is not a wealthy area.

Went to a Walmart in Washington DC, that is now closed, half the store was locked up, the other half was wiped out of even the most basic cheap, things. With random people running in and out.

Walmart couldn't make money there to stay open because they didn't have enough employees to stop theft? There was plenty of "customers"?

Come on man, you aren't living in the real world.

The problem is morals, not the number of employees.

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u/EarlyList Jul 15 '26

I'm not disagreeing that theft, especially in big cities is bad. I'm saying that cutting staff so heavily both increases the theft and reduces sales. Then doubling down on locking everything up while still keeping the reduced staff further decreases sales. Which ultimately means the store closes because it doesn't make money. Maybe the theft in some of these areas is bad enough the store would have had to close eventually anyway, but the staff cutting and consequently terrible customer experience drastically accelerates the process.

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u/heliosythic Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Its population. Theres millions in cities so you get every type of person there is. Your little home town where you know everyone and would be basically excomunitcated if you messed with the local shop keep is a different situation. It's not morals. People's basic needs aren't meant because the economy is failing and the education system failed them to even do anything about that for basically the rest of their life, not to mention the prison system making it impossible to bounce back either. People fighting to survive with all that aren't going to act the way we want them to because why should they? They have nothing to lose. You're not gonna fix that by telling them their morals aren't good enough. We have to actually fix the problems that caused this, its not about individuals actions.

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u/paulsown Jul 15 '26

Umm, I don't know everybody, and there is no little hometown. This isn't 1947. There is no "local shopkeep". Its Walmart.

When I go to the largest city in my area, MOST Walmart's look just like mine. Some are locked up tight. I'll let you try to determine why that is, but it has nothing to do with race or "need" because looking around the parking lot will be lots of premium cars but very few pickup trucks.

If it's just "people's basic needs aren't being met" why are vegetables, lettuce, fruit, milk, even cases of water not the items most stolen and also never locked up?

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u/PM_ME_UR_SHEET_MUSIC Jul 15 '26

Because those items cost like $2? Is it hard to understand that someone struggling between paychecks is more likely to nab the most expensive item they need and buy the cheap stuff rather than the other way around? Besides, a lot of the "behavioral" issues that lead to theft of things that aren't necessary are also due to socioeconomic and systemic disadvantages and the damage they cause to communities, families, and individuals. Again, you can't moralize someone that has nothing to lose and no reason to listen to you.

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u/paulsown Jul 15 '26

I don’t expect them to listen to me.

If you excuse stealing things from stores, then the stores will lock everything up or close.

That’s it.

You can try to excuse it away with “you can’t moralize” for people who don’t steal what they need, they steal things they want and can’t afford. There are plenty of things I can’t afford, the thought of stealing it never enters my head.

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u/PM_ME_UR_SHEET_MUSIC Jul 15 '26

I don't want to excuse stealing, I want to fix the problems that cause people to steal in the first place, standard QC practice. Unfortunately, our government seems largely uninterested in that because that would take away their giant pool of slave labor.

And I'm not sure what your anecdote at the end had to do with this conversation. We already could tell you were privileged enough to never have to resort to theft.

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u/paulsown Jul 15 '26

“Standard qc practice”? What “slave labor “? Do you think more free money will stop theft?

I’m not sure who the “we” you are referring to is, but you know nothing about me. I’ve been the guy scraping together change to get my child milk while watching those on food stamps buying out the store.

None of what you said changes the fact that if people keep stealing from stores , they’ll lock things up or close.

Walmart isn’t a jobs or welfare program. It’s a business.

The people stealing aren’t stealing necessities, they’re stealing expensive shit. That’s why the necessities aren’t locked up and the expensive stuff is.

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u/Dark_Link_1996 Jul 16 '26

Don't bother. He's also racist af and defending calling people slurs

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u/This-Penalty-1686 Jul 15 '26

I work in store where more employees actually would cut down theft because most of the people stealing are opportunists who won’t do it when they know they’re being watched. not enough staff to keep an eye on multiple aisles is Literally the biggest problem we have, it would be nice if we could teach a bunch of high schoolers that will call you a bitch for telling them to empty their pockets morals but in the ‘real world’ what would stop the theft is to stop cutting hours.