Shoplifting, explained by retail workers and thieves

Retailers would rather complain about shoplifting than invest in fighting it. vox.com/culture CULTURE   I, like a lot of people, have been reading all the headlines about retail theft lately and have been wondering what’s going on. The local news sometimes presents it like mobs of shoplifters are overrunning stores all day, every day. Meanwhile, some onlookers downplay it and speculate retailers are exaggerating the problem. So, I decided to ask the people who are dealing with the issue day-to-day: retail workers. I wound up chatting with a pair of retail thieves, too. [My latest story for Vox](delves into what I found out and, I think, comes up with a somewhat novel conclusion. Corporate America is right to complain about retail theft — they’re also a little complicit in the problem. They could listen to their employees more often, as well as make more investments to combat and deter shoplifting. It might look like something as simple as putting more workers on the floor. But asset protection doesn’t exactly have a great ROI, so retailers are hesitant to open up their wallets. Some level of shoplifting is always going to happen, and there is only so much anyone can do. But putting a bit more cash toward the problem could be a start. —[Emily Stewart]( senior correspondent Editor's note: For ongoing coverage and analysis of the developing conflict between Israel and Hamas, [read our Vox colleagues' work here](. America’s shoplifting problem, explained by retail workers and thieves [illustration of people shopping in aisles]( Paige Vickers / Vox Jonathan wants me to guess how often retail workers see someone steal. It’s a challenge he likes to make to friends, who always underestimate it. [“It’s multiple times a day, maybe as often as once an hour.]( And that’s the stuff you can see, like the really blatant ones,” he says. “A lot of people picture a scared kid with a candy bar under their jacket, and you get that, but the majority of it is seasoned shoplifters going out with carts full of beer and liquor and hygiene products and electronics and laundry detergent, etc.” He recently quit his job at a major retail pharmacy chain over the issue. (Jonathan is not his real name, and he spoke with me on the condition that he be granted anonymity and the company not publicly named. All of the workers I spoke to for this story were given pseudonyms and/or anonymity.) His frustration isn’t so much with the thieves, per se, but instead with how his former company has dealt with them. Corporate ignored employees’ requests to put booze in locked cases because the liquor aisle is an area of the store that attracts some especially “sketchy” characters. It also blew them off when they warned of camera blind spots that shoplifters were aware of. “The company didn’t really seem that interested in solving the problem, they seemed more interested in, I don’t know, complaining,” he says. The cops weren’t much help, either. They’d show up hours after being called and ask whether the perpetrators were still there (they obviously weren’t) and which way they’d gone (what does it matter if it was six hours ago?). [Retail theft is a problem, albeit one that can be difficult to unpack.]( Some people overstate the spike in shoplifting, others underplay it. Part of the matter is there just isn’t great data out there on what’s going on. Figuring out what to do about it all was above Jonathan’s pay grade. He’s got some ideas, like increasing staffing and, really, locking up the liquor, which would mean more work for employees but would also have increased safety. But these solutions would all cost money the company was apparently not willing to dole out. [I interviewed more than a dozen workers in retail and loss prevention — and two retail thieves]( — about what the country’s supposed shoplifting epidemic looks and feels like on the ground. In conversation after conversation, one thing became clear: While many corporations are frustrated by retail theft, they’re not doing enough to try to solve it. [Read the full story »](  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Let Britney Spears be weird She spent her life at the mercy of toxic media narratives. Her new memoir, The Woman in Me, clears the air. [Read the full story »]( The most important questions to ask when picking a health care plan Choosing health insurance in the US is notoriously difficult. Let this guide help. [Read the full story »](   Support our work We aim to explain what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters. Support our mission by making a gift today. 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