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Comment by digitaltrees | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be hinting at interesting things here but its hard to follow, the writing feels like a disjointed short hand with unstated context that requires experience to unpack. What are "those empty Walgreens shelves", not having been there I don't know what you mean. Further, SF was not unique in experiencing that. I experienced it in North Carolina and Utah. What do you mean "squalor that is not that real?", what is the "context from mid-atlantic cities" and how is that relevant or informative to SF in particular? What is obvious when you leave? Where did you go and what did you experience?

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It might require the added context of living here. San Francisco has one of the highest property crime rates in the United States [1], and Walgreens is a popular target of shoplifters, who regularly clear out entire shelves of merchandise. The company hasn't come out and said it, but some believe that rampant shoplifting is a reason why eight Walgreens locations in the city have been permanently closed [2].

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/SF-ra... [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Rampa...

I have a family member who works at walgreens. The theft is incredible. In the bay area and particularly SF this is not one or two candy bars a week theft.

In SF, if you stop a shoplifter and they are hurt, if they are in a protected class etc, it's game over for you as an employee and possibly the store. Even if you stop someone, even if police come and arrest, DA is never going to prosecute. If they do prosecute, its a misdemeanor. It's pretty wild the first time you see it.

The clerks know who is coming in to steal. The stats above are from 2016. 2020 is worse, and much / most of the property crime goes unreported. If walgreens reported every shoplifting incident the numbers would be nuts.

I bet prices just go up store-wide to cover, and even higher on items where the cost is more asymmetric (prescriptions)

No. They just close the stores.

For sure. But pharmacy is very competitive and at some point it's a losing game.

For example - Walgreen runs about about a 4% margin and profit runs about $4 billion (all very rough numbers).

The problem with theft is that its a total loss so it can really chop into margins - these are shelves that you build a supply chain and staff to stock and then get zero.

Someone walks in with a backpack and just fills it full (maybe 50 - 100 individual items). Meanwhile you have 20 customers buying a few items (1-5). So you sell 100 items at 104% of all in cost (4% positive margin) and 100 walk out the door (if only the knapsack guy steals) at 0% of cost. Your margin is negative immediately (-40%+).

Walgreens actually has budgets for theft store managers try to work with in (pretty high ones actually). But theft the way it happens in SF - you need to understand there are no consequence, the only folks to get in trouble would be employees trying to stop it.

It also drives away customers you do want (older people filing scrips will go to what are perceived as safer locations) and moves other sales to online / delivery etc.

They are robbed while TV crews are filming about robberies :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FmN4e1fNUo

SF talks a lot of crap about Amazon, but if amazon offers a safe / delivery to your garage / car / inside door pharmacy service it could be game over for a lot of players.

Just push customers to get mail delivery, no need for a store.

Or locker style pickup.

Proposition 47 essentially decriminalized shoplifting. Californians literally voted for this petty crime wave. As a Florida resident, all I can say is, y'all have fun with that

When I read about them moving to states like Texas in numbers, all I can think is that they will inevitably try to take these same policies with them when they find out wherever they moved too isn't quite liberal enough

I don't know, but my guess is the people that moved didn't like the policies of the state they left

Seems like a large portion of people in this thread at least are more concerned about lowering cost of living while still being in a large active city than about local polotics, even if those things do tie together

sounds about right.

take the bay area salary, work remote in texas/arizona/nevada because its cheaper and rationalize it by saying its the politics thats making me move.

i've had this conversation 5 times this week with friends and colleagues, and none of them have actually spent more than a week in texas/arizona/nevada.

anyone that wants to live in one of those states, try it for a couple months if you can before taking the dive.

I think you're totally right in some capacity, but there's also a lot of people who are excited to get away from the hyper-liberal climate of California.

I guess it just depends on California's vs Texans definition of hyper liberal. I don't know what level of liberalism it would take to get dislike from the average Texan but I know it has to be miles away from declaring that arresting shoplifters is racist.

Interesting. Is it possible that this is also due to the policy of many states and cities of sending their homeless and mentally ill citizens to California on on way tickets?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

The author is referring to the rise of crime and homelessness in San Francisco. The Walgreens comment is referring to how several Walgreens are shutting down in San Francisco, partially because they have been unable to stop shoplifting.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Another-San-Francisco...

Many San Francisco residents are very opposed to any language that smacks of anti-homelessness - arguably anti-homeless language is promoting systematic racism - which encourages a certain crypticness in commenting.

Thanks for elaborating, for others. Yes, the residents enable the squalor and I have no better solutions to offer them, but I am able perceive that the collective opinion of the residents is a byproduct of a largely apathetic transient population that masquerades as a progressive movement, while not needing to live with the results.

I can recognize that it is incapable of creating a more collaborative and sanitary urban environment, and that's just not worth paying for.

I agree, linguistically that comment borders on gibberish.

Please don't be rude in comments here, and please don't pile on.

digitaltrees' reply gives vmception a nice invitation to expand, which would benefit all of us. Swipes like the one in your comment unfortunately have the opposite effect on conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

@dang Transfer me your super powers.

The empty Walgreen's shelves can be seen at the Walgreen's on the corner of Eddy and Van Ness Streets.

People come in & take whatever they want because they know Walgreen's has a "no contact" policy (they won't stop you). They shoplift everything. And Walgreen's doesn't rush to re-stock.

There are a lot of homeless and drug addicts in that area, but I don't know firsthand if they're the shoplifters.

I spoke to a police sergeant at the Walgreen's at Broadway and Polk, and he said it's pretty bad, and that even he has a hard time getting the shoplifters to stop.

> The empty Walgreen's shelves can be seen at the Walgreen's on the corner of Eddy and Van Ness Streets.

It won't be a problem much longer – that location is going to be shut down permanently.

Shoplifting has been a problem here even before Covid. Shoplifters know the law (<$950 is a misdemeanor), they know the police likely won't make an arrest, and even if they did, they know our DA likely won't prosecute.

Seems like a really simple solution, revert drug stores and retail to the old behind the counter model that dominated in the 1800-1900s. You walk in, go to the counter and ask for for specific products rather than being self serve. As a few kiosks to order and a few pick up windows; that would be significantly cheaper than losing this much product from shop lifting or closing stores.

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