Walmart begins locking steaks as shoplifting crimes soar amid inflation | Hacker News Reader

Walmart begins locking steaks as shoplifting crimes soar amid inflation

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27 pointsVicterius15 comments

A local grocery store put a one-way gate at the entrance recently. It makes a really annoying beep when people approach it from the wrong direction that's audible across the whole store. I asked a cashier about it and she said a group had come in a few times, grabbed a bunch of meat and then ran out the door.

What I thought was interesting was that they ran past the alcohol section to get to the steaks. I would have thought alcohol was both more fungible and more durable. There must be some finely-tuned specialized meat fencing operation or something.

This happened some time ago with undergarments. When I lived within driving distance to a Walmart I would have to find someone with the key to the underwear and socks. Even then I could not just put those in my basket. They would walk them up to a counter and leave them for me to claim when I checked out forcing me to use the 20 items or less line. It somewhat made sense given the underwear and socks were always missing one or more from the package but appeared to indicate a bigger societal problem in my opinion.

> but appeared to indicate a bigger societal problem in my opinion.

Indeed, in the same way baby formula is under lock and key.

They have security tags in some areas of my country. Walmart is such an interesting space. Utilizing government assistance to keep wages low, then implementing anti-theft programs when the fruits of their low-wage efforts come home to roost.

Cheaper to lock up steaks than pay workers appropriately, I suppose.

>Cheaper to lock up steaks than pay workers appropriately, I suppose.

The workers aren't the ones this deters from stealing. The people stealing steaks from Walmart aren't doing so out of hunger, they are reselling them (current value is 60 cents on the dollar in Detroit, not sure about elsewhere). Also, Tide detergent is very popular for some reason.

Don't think of the correlation as between WalMart's low pay and the current wave of shoplifting as being direct, think of as karma.

For decades WalMart has pioneered low prices and below-sustenance wages. For much of America WalMart is the face of devastated small towns and the complete loss of local economies.

It's probably not employees of WalMart stealing steaks and single pairs of underwear. It's probably everyone else who no longer has a local job opportunity, has lower wages because their family business folded to WalMart, or has trouble feeding their kids because the closest job now only pays $12/hr because _all they have to compete with locally is WalMart_.

You cannot artificially depress the wages and economy of an area and then complain that everyone around you is doing poor people things (stealing to stay alive or pay rent). No sympathy for WalMart from me.

“doing poor people things (stealing to stay alive or pay rent). No sympathy for WalMart from me.”

No sympathy for you from me. There will always be people on both sides of the spectrum. There’s people who work hard to pay rent without resorting to criminality. In fact this is more common than your characterization that if you’re poor you steal, or as you call it “poor people things”. What an insult to those people.

I suppose you condone the gross shoplifting and then the slippery slope to committing felonies.

I don't mean to imply it's Walmart workers stealing steaks, just that wage-suppression (which Walmart does engage in) causes widespread problems in communities which leads to situations where stealing steaks either to eat or sell becomes a viable thing.

If they (and others) started paying people properly, they likely wouldn't need to locking up steaks. Unfortunately it's cheaper for them to lock up steaks than do the right thing.

This is a pretty ignorant comment. They people who work at Walmart are not there people stealing from Walmart. Retail workers are not desperate theifs bro

I didn't say they were. I was implying that wage suppression by Walmart and others means people can no longer afford food and some resort to stealing it. Not Walmart workers specifically, the 'working poor' in general.

Locking steaks and other supplies, people stealing things off shelves so much, stores closing. I think see this evolving into only store employees can be shoppers. Everyone is gives order at door and waiting for it all to be retrieved. Oh, online orders are just fine too. Do you know any stores or trading posts like this already?

Dark stores have raised a lot of money during the pandemic.

All grocery stores were like this a hundred years ago. You didn't walk around the store shopping but instead you would give your order at the counter and a shop assistant would fetch the stuff for you. Though I think this was more about customer service than a shoplifting deterrent. Much the same as my father hates self checkout because he sees scanning and bagging items as an employee's job, not his.

The innovation of self-service shopping was novel enough that Clarence Saunders, founder of the Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain, was granted a patent on the business model in 1918: https://patents.google.com/patent/US1242872A

So I guess we're come full circle back to the old ways of retailing.

A week ago some sneaky person swiped the milk from my cart as I was on the way out of a Walmart. Hoping it will not become a trend. Needing to be vigilant while going out for simple shopping errands isn't fun.

It’s not inflation. Inflation would mean corporate profits stay still as prices increase. Instead you have big business everywhere having larger profits than ever by raising prices and blaming inflation.

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