I hate shoplifters!!!

[mongo]

Found two empty shirt hangers when I opened today $15.95 each and Chuck told me he found an empty thong hanger yesterday too $9.95. That's $42.00 worth of merchandise stolen yesterday. We only sell $150.00 in lingerie in an ave. week AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!

But I MUST be rich because I own a store right? They aren't hurting me, besides, they deserve to steal whatever they want - right? Assholes. We can't even pay ourselves enough to make end meet, we work 50-60 hours per week, and I can be arrested any day of the week just so that you can watch a porno.

Soooo, security tags/ink tags are going on all the clothes. Too bad it will leave a hole, especially in some of the more delicate lingerie. If you don't want to buy it because of the hole, it can sit on my racks from now until the end of time. Lingerie is only 10-15% of our business anyway.

If I ever catch one of these shoplifters, they will get a tounge lashing like never before. I will detain them until the cops come. If they put up any resistance, I WILL physically detain them with any amount of force that is necessary.

Thanks for letting me rant. I HATE SHOPLIFTERS!!! AARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

[flamingyouth]

1. I feel your pain

I'm a small business owner too, and I've been ripped off before. It's really frustrating, to put it mildly.

I read an article once that said that the majority of shoplifters can actually afford the items; they just get a thrill out of stealing.

[mongo]

7. Thanks.

[fluffernutter]

2. shoplifters DO suck, i'm sorry.

[Aiptasia]

3. We used to have them, too

Back when I worked for Barnes and Noble. No-go tags went into every book or magazine over $20 in the dust jackets or the spine. Our #1 most stolen item?

Children's Bibles

The second most stolen item?

The Pocket Kama Sutra

The Kama Sutra I can see kids stealing, but children's bibles? The only people stealing those are supposed Christians violating more of god's laws. Just because they think all of their sins are expunged because Jesus died on the cross doesn't mean they can willingly break the rest of god's laws whenever they feel like it.

At least, if I was the judeo/christian god, that'd be my litmus test for entering heaven. How many of my 10 commandments did you break? Sorry, it's a lake of fire for you baby bible stealers!

[mongo]

5. childrens bibles? Now that is low n/t

[Aiptasia]

13. Yup

Most of our shrinkage losses occured there. One problem is a lot of bibles aren't printed with a ISBN or a SKU code, so a certain amount of them get lost in the shuffle.

But children's bibles were the most often stolen items. We had a ring of people that would come in with briefcases and steal them by the case load.

I used to love it when people would ask me where the copier was. "I'm sorry, this is a bookstore, not a library. Buy it."

We had to bust an art teacher who wanted to video tape our oversized art books for her class rather than buy them. They're expensive and I can't really blame her for trying, just amusing to watch.

I also used to get kids calls at the cash wrap (registers, where the phone banks are) asking homework questions all the time. I'd get questions like "How far is it from Barcelona to Lisbon, Spain?" I'd respond, "Hold on, i'll check" and then put them on hold for a few minutes, ring up a few customers, then get back on the line and say "about 3,000 miles."

Just make up whatever comes to mind. Lazy assed yuppie larvae!

[Gryffindor_Bookworm]

10. I worked in Books a Million in high school.

Someone was permanently assigned to the Bibles/Christianity section because the vast majority of our shrink happened there.

[THUNDER HANDS]

4. I remember once I was working at an Office Max

and I was checking out this guy who had two huge 24-packs of toilet paper that took up basically the entire shopping cart. I asked the guy to put the packs on the counter.

He looked at me and said, "could you just reach down and scan it so I don't have to take it out?"

I said, no, please put it on the counter, sir.

He said "Okay, I'll put one up and you scan it twice."

I said, 'no sir, please put both up."

He refused. So I physically went around the counter and put both of his packs up on the counter. Lo and behold, underneath the packs of toilet paper were about $150 worth of merchandize that were hidden from my view.

Asshole. :mad:

That's still not as good as my first experience with a shoplifter. My first week on the job at OfficeMax I was working the register and I saw a guy come into the store. Grab a ladder, wheel the ladder over to an aisle. Climb up the ladder and grab a huge box which contained a 17" computer monitor.

The guy walked down the ladder, went right past me and out the door and out to his car. I was so taken aback by his boldness I wasn't sure if the guy worked here or not (it was only my first week afterall and I hardly knew anyone in the store). I called over the electronics guy and told him what happened.

Then he and the store manager chased out after the guy, cornered him in the parking lot and took back the monitor.

Two years later the assistant store manager of that same Office Max was arrested for stealing from the store. He would stay late on Sunday's and walk off with thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

This also happened at an Office Depot I worked at too, but that involved a whole ring of employees, about six or seven who scammed with returning merchandize and fake recepits.

Retail is ruthless and the people there can be real scum.

[mongo]

6. At least I don't have to worry about being scammed by my

employee. He's a good friend. I worry about the day I have to hire someone off the street. We're in a bad neighborhood, famous for drugs and prostitution. Who know what someone could have going on in the back of my store while I am not here....

[SmokingJacket]

8. I hate them too!!

I went to an expensive private college (on scholarship) in a tiny little town and the students used to go into the little mom and pop store there and steal stuff. SHEESH! That used to burn me up. They didn't need anything -- they did it for fun!

:puke:

[212demop]

9. in defense of shoplifters--

It's not always some rich kid trying to get away with something. I know it's a very strange thing to defend- it's a crime, and it hurts you, not just the perpetrator, but I do believe that for some it's a serious compulsion, a sickness- my mother had a very bad breakdown, and she'd never done an unethical thing in her life, she was (and now recovered, is) the poster-child for integrity, but she lost it. And when she did that was manifested by a closeted several month long spree of shop lifting. Getting caught and taken to jail and charged and going to court turns out, however, to have been the best thing ever. She was scared straight. But if we didn't have the finances to pay for therapy and meds I don't know if getting "scared straight" would have been enough or lasted.

But.... I appreciate how much it sucks on your end. I just hope you can see the other side too.

She was a child of the holocaust-- born in a labor camp in Siberia after her parents escaped Polish concentration camps, emigrated to Brazil, her mother died when she was nine, and she, as the eldest, raised her siblings in absolute poverty (her father was a musician, worked nights, and was emotionally uninvolved). So her childhood was all about denial and loss-- and secrets. Talk of the war was hushed. No wonder she felt an emptiness that needed to be filled-- she repressed it for decades, and retailers like you paid for it.

On her behalf, I apologize.

[Bat Boy]

11. You haven't lived until you've caught a guy...

...With a $2500.00 guitar down his pants.

Iv'e done that three times. And there are others I haven't caught.

[TheMightyFavog]

18. Is that a $2500 guitar in your pants?

Or are you just happy to see me?


Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Bat Boy]

20. He wasn't happy to see me.

So yeah. That was a $2500.00 guitar down his pants.

[Ardee]

12. Ok, OK

so I'll put the stuff back....sheeeesh

[acmavm]

14. Good thing you have a good friend working for you. You're lucky.

I tried working in retail for a short while. At a VERY high-end department store. The woman who was the store manager, the woman who was in charge of training all new employees and telling us over and over and over that if we ever got caught trying to swipe anything, we would without a doubt be prosecuted.

Funny thing though. Louis always had all these clothes and stuff sitting in her office. I don't know if they were returns or whatever, but whenever we had to go to her office, the stuff had to be moved off the chairs so that we could sit down and listen to whatever.

Louis was fired a few months back. For stealing. She was taking the stuff home that was in here office. They caught her loading up the old car after store hours. She had been with the store for years, worked her way up to store manager. And they got fired for stealing.

They didn't prosecute her though. She just got fired.

[NightTrain]

15. A buddy of mine used to own a CD shop.

Doug had all sorts of trouble with shoplifters. One time, a woman stuffed her coat with about a dozen CDs while I was there chatting with Doug at the register. He even saw the woman on camera (which, alas, did not have a VCR attached to it) but was afraid to do anything for fear of violating her "rights." So Doug let her walk out of the store with close to $200 worth of CDs stuffed in her coat. He only told me about it after she had left, or I might have done something to the bitch myself! :grr:

[mongo]

16. Concealing an item is shoplifting in Ohio

I know that there is a common misconception that someone has to leave the store to have done something wrong, but in Ohio the act of concealing an item in a bag or under your clothes is presumption of shoplifting.

I don't think I would ever let someone out of the store that I caught.

[Aiptasia]

17. What's worse is...

When they come back in and try to get a refund for stolen merchandaise, with no recipt. That put an end to B&N's "open return policy" real damn quick.

We had one lady run a scam on us and there was nothing we could do about it. She would buy trashy used romance novels at used book shops for pennies and return them to our B&N for the cover price. She never walked in with less than 50 paperbacks, and since we had that ridiculous return policy, there was very little we could do.

A few years of that and the policy changed... eventually.

[tjdee]

19. You can be arrested any day of the week?

That's harsh.

How did you get into your line of work, just curious?

Sorry about the shoplifters.

[jmowreader]

21. We built a whole loss prevention office

Or I should say, I built a loss prevention office. Our guy Joe used to take the shoplifters to the store manager's office, but one Saturday Joe arrested nine people and the store manager couldn't get in to use his phone because of all the shoplifters in there. So I got tapped to make a little house for Joe to drag shoplifters to.

The most brazen shoplifter I ever saw in my whole career in retail was the guy who decided to climb up the fence in the garden center with an 18-volt drill set in his teeth and throw the drill down to his buddy on the ground outside the gate. The fence is 16 feet high. The guy got all the way up to the top and froze. We had to use an orderpicker to get this guy down.

The second most brazen is the guy who drove up to a skid of mulch we had sitting beside the building, cut it open and started throwing bags of mulch into the back of his Expedition WHILE TEN ASSOCIATES WERE STANDING THERE LOOKING AT HIM! Joe asked me to block the exit path with a forklift, then get off and stand by him. I did so. The dude didn't even see us doing that; he just jumped in his truck and started driving--until he saw the forklift. Now, most people confronted with a five-ton machine in their direction of travel would stop their cars, but not him--he ACCELERATED! Accelerated, ran right into the forklift, almost turned it over, and demolished his radiator, battery, engine, and the entire front clip of the truck. Just scuffed up the forklift, but totaled his car.

I think shoplifting makes you go blind because our next candidate for sainthood was stealing a breaker box. Just stuck it under his arm and started walking out the door. When the Sensormatic bells started ringing, the guy started running as fast as he could--right into the delivery truck parked in front of the door.

We had one guy try to shoplift a whole case of paint that came in that ever popular color EMPTY PAINT CAN.

A woman attempted to shoplift a $150 tree. A $150 tree weighs about 400 pounds.

Occasionally we'll catch people attempting to steal doors.

[Digit]

22. My employer gave me a reward for catching some

It was one of my first jobs and I was working in a dept store. I found all the empty hangers in the dressing room and called store security. The found the culprits stealing MORE merchandise and my employer rewarded me with a percentage of the would be stolen booty.
I did not know that was policy. Nice, huh.