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> imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!

I was just at McLendon's yesterday outside Seattle, and while I was waiting to ask an employee a question, over the PA a came a message like, "need help up front. A couple just left the store with a bunch of stolen merchandise." So the dude bolted for the entrance.

It surprised me that the announcement wasn't coded in some way (eg, "code 9 at checkout").

It made me feel quite sad, as McLendon's is pretty awesome, and I'd hate for them to disappear.

Have shopped at McLendon’s many times. Preferred them before I moved, but now they are quite a bit further. That’s terrible that it’s happening to them too, I hope they make it.

I used to be a state security guard. I was required to go to a security convention once a year.

Everyone of these talks stressed that employee internal theft is bigger than customer theft on the whole.

So managment steals the most, followed by the rest of the employees.

This was in the 90's so things might have changed.

Different entities gave the talks.

I don't doubt that 800k number, but I wouldn't rule out the reoresenative of Milwaukee, or the closing managers, or security guards themselfs.

Everytme I was told about employees theft, they said it's retail security's big secret.

Personally, if they treated employees better, internal theft might come down!

When I go into HD, and am being filmed at least 10-15 times before leaving the store; their us a part of me that feels like not paying for that M8 bolt.

Relevant song ‘bout how Johnny Cash ended up driving a “…49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 Automobile.”

Recorded in 1976 as domestic steel & car manufacturing tanked in the United States taking Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburg and much of the Great Lakes with it.

https://youtu.be/18cW_yHo3PY

It sounds like that store has deeper problems. They aren't checking thier stock and so do not notice a theft when it happens. That has insurance implications. Also, it suggests inside jobs. If the staff are turning a blind eye to theft, not reporting missing stock, there is a reasonable chance that the staff are involved.

A Home Depot has somewhere around 40,000 different products per store.

The count is always wrong.

It's continually updated, but it's still always wrong. Because the amount of labor cost to ensure it's accurate at all times would be a silly use of scarce resources.

Sometimes it's as simple as a customer picking up an item, wandering around, and dropping it somewhere else. Sometimes it's theft. Sometimes it's an incorrect count in receiving.

All of this is an average day at a warehouse store. Walmart deals with the same thing.

> Because the amount of labor cost to ensure it's accurate at all times would be a silly use of scarce resources.

I'm no MBA, but if a single store is losing $800,000 of merchandise a year from a single aisle, you could have it guarded 24/7 by guys on $50 an hour and you'd still come out $300k ahead.

Far more likely IMHO is that when the rep said "over $800k of merchandise had disappeared from that aisle" that was actually the loss from all the yard equipment aisles in all stores nationwide.

Well those chainsaws were worth $300 ... that's $2400 in one model of chainsaw alone. I'd guess that's about average for prices of equipment in that aisle, with several hundred different items (mowers, weed eaters, blowers, etc.)

If they are having $2400 worth of a single model walk in a year, over 350 different items, they'd get to over $800k in the one store in a heartbeat. My money would be on this was in fact just the one store, if not just the one aisle.

Eight chainsaws? I dont think they are lying in the wrong aisle. Powertools and other high value items should be stock checked.

Odds are good that they are physically in the store somewhere, but nobody knows where, because they are on a pallet on a shelf sixteen feet up in the air.

How often? Daily?

So ~15 minutes / 60 x ~360 days x ~2000 stores (US) x ~$30/hr ($20+benefits) = $5.4 M in labor costs

... and that's just to check chainsaws.

Assume high value items are the majority of the thefts by value:

$800'000 in thefts from that aisle * 51% for a (slim) majority * 2000 stores = $816M in shrinkage.

If your store is seeing six figure losses due to theft you hire out some Loomis guys or rent-a-cops and park them at both entrances.

That 800k number does seem to get quoted alot in the comments here, I wonder if it's an actual figure or just some part of a training video that sticks with people

Knock the 30 dollars and benefits down to part time 15 an hour employees.

We're down to 2 million.. let's select the 10% worst stores.. we are down to $200,000.

They can check other inventory items and check out customers.

Cheaper than a one second ad during the superbowl

> Knock the 30 dollars and benefits down to part time 15 an hour employees.

So, you're encouraging a business to hire minimum wage labor and schedule so as to avoid paying benefits? And these people (you've just screwed) are the ones you're proposing be granted the responsibility to detect theft?

> let's select the 10% worst stores

Infeasible, as most theft by dollar is organized, which targets a somewhat random scattering of stores, intermittently. Highest shrink retail stores already have additional theft mitigation tech deployed.

> They can check other inventory items and check out customers

Not if they can't be in two places at once. 15 minutes is a fairly middle of the road estimate for: walking to the area, checking the on-shelf number, checking above the rack, and possibly checking the back. If anything, it's already under-estimating the time required.

Yes.. or hire students not phds to do the inventory

> a silly use of scarce resources.

When your losses are so bad, it's time to invest more in security.

Accounting together with video evidence can more timely detect thieves, and might be worth it.

Two points:

1. Unless store security catches the thief at the door, many police departments don’t have the resources to track them down. So finding out that you were burgled within a couple days isn’t much better than finding out at a quarterly or even annual inventory.

2. It’s not that big of a problem. From the article: “Organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales”. Putting that in a more accessible scale, that’s 72¢ per $1,000 of sales.

One point about 1. Even if Store Security DOES catch them at the door. What do you do when the person says "I dont care im taking this and going" and refuses to stop for the security person. The security person is not a cop, and is probably not the very expensive armed security that banks have. If the person calls their bluff not much can be done at that point. And thieves know this.

They then head to their car and leave. You try to take their license plate number. Oh wait it says "tag applied for".

Criminals regularly take the plates off when they do their work, if a cop pulls them over, they can say some story about how they needed to get it reattached, and no cop pulls over a car just because of a "tag applied for" sign because they know it will likely be just that 9 times out of 10, so if they did pull over that car its some other ticket-able offense, but no registration wont be likely part of that ticket.

Maybe you got a picture of their face? Except everyone wears masks now....

I see so many missing plates these days in SoCal. Also no plate on the front. I point them out to my wife sometimes when I am bored, we'll see dozens on a 10 minute trip. I'm told by a friend who is a DA (in California) that police here are not legally allowed to stop you today for plate violations. Instead, they are only allowed to issue fines for plate violations as part of another routine stop. I also have a neighbor has a temporary paper plate on one of his vehicles that expired over 14 months ago. If there's no incentive to care then people won't care, I guess.

When I lived in Los Angeles a long time ago I didn't drive much so I never got around to renewing my plates (from another state). For nearly two years, it was never a problem.

In some states (e.g. MA, NY I'm pretty sure) security cannot legally prevent anyone from leaving. The best they can do is stand in the way to slow someone down. Source: heard from an independent jeweler in New York City.

What is a "tag-applied for" sign? Some sort of temporary licence plate? In Ontario, temporary registration is a normal licence plate with a "T" registration sticker, instead of an annual sticker.

Its a piece of paper that literally says "tag applied for". If you buy a car from an individual/non dealer you get a certain amount of time (couple of weeks to 30 days depending on state) to get a new tag for it. Until that point you can drive it basically unregistered.

All the ambiguity involving that means you can basically just take off your license plate whenever you want and police dont look at as a particularly unusual or noteworthy thing to run across. Even if you dont put "tag applied for" at all most cops just assume thats the situation and wont pull you over for just that unless you are having some other violation going on.

I had a coworker who was robbed earlier this year and the person left in a car with a you guessed it "tag applied for" paper on the license plate section of their car.

Where I live (Massachusetts) it's a barely legible piece of paper you tape in your rear window.

It's all part of retail business. Whether it's employee theft, customer theft, broken items on shelves, or returns of faulty items, it's all a part of doing business and it factors into the sticker price.

This isn't just a Home Depot exception. All retail has shrink around this level. And has for essentially all of its existence.

Which is one reason online prices can be cheaper.

How many of them are over $500.00? Check those first.

No implication of insiders imho - rarely do reps see exactly what is stolen and can -- that line item. Many stores do a (costly) stock inventory check once a year, literally going from shelf to shelf and counting what's there, then that is crosschecked and corrects the store inventory database.

Why do people think giant multi-billion dollar stores have "insurance" for shoplifting of various items of merchandise?

How would such a policy even work, how would you price and underwrite it, and evaluate risk? How would claims be processed? Is there any evidence anywhere that this is actually a thing?

At these sizes, insurance is more about taxation than cost recovery. Even of they are effectively self-insured, Home Depo does indeed have an interest in documenting all losses.

Are we sure that Home Depot has already paid for the items sitting on the shelves? I've seen them do so many returns by marking things Return To Vendor. Margins these days seem to be based around branding/design/quality control rather than sunk production cost, and I'd imagine that retail stores have optimized things so that they aren't assuming the full wholesale-cost risk of theft/damage/clearance.

Depends on how long the item has been sitting on that shelf. They usually factor their invoices to attract suppliers, so they pay their factoring bank a few weeks after the item has been received.

> When I showed up the chainsaw was nowhere to be found, and after looking high and low and triple checking their inventories, the rep said he figured they must have walked.

I've always chalked this up to poor inventory management practices. I've gone to Home Depot for first aid kits, counter tops, smoke alarms, pipe fittings, etc and had the same experience. They show X in stock but none can be found.

We had similar issues when I worked at Office Max in high school, it was usually someone putting overhead stock in the wrong location because they just couldn't be bothered.

I've talked about this with some liquor store owners in SF and also a couple that has a "cute things for your home" store. For small stores it's easier to deal with this because they, let's say, try to proactively stop theft. Big chain stores just usually have some kind of dumb policy to not do anything even though they are legally allowed even in cities like San Francisco that are notoriously anti-big-bussiness in the street. The word spreads around.

For example the spike in theft on Wallgrees in SF did start when they changed their policy about a year ago. Before they changed it I saw the store manager in the Wallgreens on 23rd and Mission literally kick the shit out of people that were trying to walk out with merchandise without paying.

A seriously large amount of the goods on Offerup are stolen. It's insane.

I do wonder how much of the modern app or second hand selling community is based on grift and stolen goods. On my local OfferUp in Philadelphia it looks like 30-40% scams(Giving away for free for my birthday text at XXX) 30-40% obviously stolen goods(iCloud locked devices). The small remaining posts are clothes and other items, finding a legitimate item for sale can be a real struggle.

> That one had installed a makeshift rig of steel bars in front of their stock, and a rep had to physically follow me to the register and watch me pay for it.

Had a similar experience recently in a Home Depot when buying a power drill. The rep took the drill and handed it to the cashier and I didn't physically touch it until it was paid for.

The Aurora store is such a blast too, the area is something to witness right around sunset.

How does one rob a chainsaw without anyone noticing?

Pick it up and walk out. Depending on the store they might not even try to confront you. Depending on the city misdemeanor shoplifting might not be prosecuted at all.

> It’s bad enough for the big box stores, imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!

I'd guess that small businesses aren't as targeted by organized thieves as "big box" stores are:

1) They're smaller in size which means the likelihood of getting spotted by a staff member during a theft is higher

2) The amount (and diversity) of available goods to steal is lower

3) "Big box" stores don't have people carrying guns, their staff has a "don't intervene, we're insured anyway" policy drilled into them, and this is known. A small shopkeeper however? A thief can't reasonably know if the shop owner has a firearm under their desk or will get confrontational if stopped.

> After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.

The really interesting thing is: why does the police not "follow the money" and take out those advertising likely-stolen tools for sale in the open?

Regarding your last question, the city has for a while now decided not to prosecute shoplifting cases. Here is an article from 2018 about the phenomenon. It has gotten worse since then and the open street bazaars of stolen goods have grown much larger. I’ve decided to move to greener pastures a few months ago, but during a company event when I traveled back the CVS next to the hotel was brazenly shoplifted from the two times I stepped inside to buy essentials.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tonight-at-5-pm-on-kiro-7-o...

1) many thieves doesn't care. The most brazen ones simply fill up a large sportsbag or similar, then just leave. They don't care if someone spots them, they win on signalling pure aggression and implicit threat of "if you try to stop me I will hurt you". We have that problem at our local food store - three guys come in, one holds the bag, one stuffs it with all the expensive meat, the third stares aggressively on any bystander. Then they just walk out of there.

2) doesn't matter as long as what they have is valuable and can be sold on easily. The thieves are not opening a store on their own.

> The really interesting thing is: why does the police not "follow the money" and take out those advertising likely-stolen tools for sale in the open?

Too costly to prosecute. How can you prove that this specific chainsaw has been stolen? "Yes, I am selling my chainsaw. No, I won't talk to you, officer, unless I am under arrest and I have my lawyer present."

Then you arrest them and what? You need something to show the jury.

Why don't hardware retail shops use the same method that banks and IT retail shops use - tracking device serial numbers? When I go to the parts shop next door and buy an SSD, I get an invoice with the serial number written on it. This small inconvenience for the checkout staff should well be worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen equipment...