I have never seen someone shoplift food and I never will.
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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When I described seeing an apparently unhoused woman conceal food and didn't speak up, a co-worker described it as an ethics issue. I hadn't developed my thinking enough to see it that way and was surprised. I will never out someone for stealing necessities. Good on you.
The supermarkets are just catering to their actual customers: the stock market.
Price controls don’t address the root cause either. We need massive anti trust action to break up the agrifood and food distribution monopolies.
do you have supermarket monopolies in the US though? it seems like you have heaps of choices
like there’s some big companies for sure, but they’re not really monopolies are they?
heck in australia we have a duopoly: cole’s and woolworths… we also have aldi and some independents, but they don’t really move the needle… point being we’re much closer to monopoly and still call it a duopoly
i think the term is important, because the solutions are different
do you have supermarket monopolies in the US though?
I’m not in the US. And the post is about Canada. But the problems are global.
You are right, it’s not a monopoly in the strict sense. In most countries, including mine, there are a few serious choke points in the supply chain. Basically, there’s two or three supermarket chains, a handful of specialized logistics companies (turns out here they’re one that handles all packaged cheese distribution for all supermarkets) and then a very small number of producers per item (most detergents and soaps you’ve ever heard of are from one of two companies world wide).
If you dig deeper, it doesn’t really get any better. Yes, there are a lot of farmers, but consolidation is happening as we speak. Also, all fertilizer, herbicide and most of the seeds come from the usual suspects. So, yes, there are many companies involved, but there isn’t a whole lot of actual competition.
This decision sucks.
As a general rule, I don't like to ask for help when I'm out shopping. More of a "get your shit and get out" shopper. No fancy cheese for me, I guess.
There's a ton of people this affects too. Like, what about refugees who aren't confident speaking English? People with anxiety disorders? The non-verbal and other disabled people?
And never mind the people who can't ask for help, what about the trend to keep stores understaffed on a skeleton crew? How can you ask an employee to unlock the frickin' cheese if there's no employees to find?
I really hate this trend of treating customers like criminals. I just want to eat - so selfish of me, but I'm afraid I've gotten used to it.
I am shocked that some people are not protesting by filling carts with meat and just leaving them in an aisle and walking away, also ice cream.
Ice cream is better imo because you're less likely to kill somebody
So you are assuming that the greedy store would just put the warm meat back on the shelf.... That says a lot.
I would worry about it yeah. Also nobody buys a pint of haagen daas with the money they need to survive, and it will be obvious to them that it's been melted and refrozen.
The packages have gotten much smaller
Blatantly so in some cases. Nature Valley granola bars reduced their size by like a third but still kept using overstock of old wrappers so you'd get a box full of wrappers partially filled with tiny bricks of granola.
Nature Valley granola bars reduced their size
I buy the "crunchy" variety and haven't noticed this. And we go through like a dozen boxes a month, and I'd definitely notice!
Which variety have you seen this happening to?
The Sweet and Salty kind. They've consumed their wrapper overstock so the wrappers fit the new sizes properly now though.
Never tried those, but if that's what they've done, I guess the Crunchy are next. They've been having promos for them for some time, and that usually leads to some rage-inducing change.
Oh I wondered. I didn't have any for a few years and bought a box. Thought they looked smaller.
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.” - anonymous quote
These problems are never originated by the poor, they are created by the wealthy. It's an age old practice of the wealthy to create inequality and then blame the poor for not being lucky enough to be rich. Many writers and thinkers have understood this problem for centuries but too many powerful people take advantage of the ignorance of the population.
Who is the smart ethical individual?
Someone who steals food because they have no other way of getting any?
Or the billionaire who doesn't need any more wealth to live a long fruitful existence but still decides to consciously increase the cost of the food he sells in order to make himself even more wealthy?
"If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin but he who causes the darkness" - Victor Hugo.
I'm also curious about the logic of what items get locked up.
I went in a few shops recently, and all the toothbrushes were locked up. I know personal-care items tend to be the first things in the cages. Yet plenty of other items with higher value and margins are out in the open.
Is there some virtue-agenda in play? Don't make it too easy to steal your way into healthy or presentable?
Stores all have internal inventory systems. There's a record kept of every product that's ever gone missing off shelves without someone paying for it. The companies know exactly what and how much people are stealing.
Source, 4 years working in retail.
I would guess the response surface is a function of wholesale cost, profit margin, and previous year's losses (or current theft).
So something that is frequently stolen and has a high wholesale cost and/or low margin will be locked up first. Toothbrushes are easy to conceal and likely have a low margin so lock them up.
Something else might sell for more, but has a higher margin or lower loss rate. You might lose one, but selling another 5 makes up for the loss.
It has to cost less to install an expensive cage and pay for the labor to open it up everytime a customer wants something from it than losing the item to theft.
Maybe if they weren't taking advantage of people and recording record profits then people wouldn't have to steal.