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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

Not just SF: "Target says it will close nine stores in major cities across four states because of theft and organized crime"

* https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/business/target-retail-theft-...

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Blaming shrink may be a way to not spook the market for issues with their business:

> Target’s business has struggled for more than a year with company-specific challenges, including a glut of unsold inventory, backlash to its Pride merchandise collection and a pullback in consumer spending on discretionary items such as apparel and home goods.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/26/target-says-it-will-close-ni...

> Pride merchandise collection

Calling it this seems a bit disingenuous.

"Pride" is a pretty broad word. Who's proud? What are they proud of, exactly?

The fact that "Pride" occurs in the middle of a sentence removes any potential ambiguity.

One would think that the issues you highlight would be less pronounced in large cities, and progressive locations. If target was closing stores in small cities you've never heard of then you may have been on to something.

It's become a convenient lie for stores to make up politically charged reasons for their store closures.

For example one of the stores being closed is in the UDistrict here in Seattle. It's one of the worst targets I've ever gone to, with the store consistently having nothing on the shelves, the layout being awful and generally poorly managed.

It's incredibly bad compared to the Safeway or HMart a block away and that's been a consistent experience since it opened up. None of the other stores in the area are struggling with these issues.

A friend of mine works in a retail shop in Kirkland, and the shoplifting is rampant. She is often depressed at the end of the day for seeing their work stolen right in front of their eyes and being unable to do anything.

Kirkland? Really you say, what neighborhood exactly?

I would guess Totem Lake, Kirkland isn't uniformly nice.

That's like, 8 years out of date and even then Totem Lake has never been a bad neighborhood, just a sleepy one. The implication by the poster I was responding to was that Kirkland was somehow similar to South Park or something where it has some sketchy parts.

Huh? Maybe. When I was in high school in Bothell 30 years ago, Totem Lake was where all the shootings were (bad things going down in totem lake became a meme before memes were a thing). They’ve gentrified a bit since then, looking at: https://www.areavibes.com/kirkland-wa/most-dangerous-neighbo...

It seems like downtown Kirkland and even Juanita (now part of Kirkland) are more dangerous now. I guess it really was just the mall.

Well, perhaps you are not looking close enough. Shoplifting is not a loud crime.

You are correct.

Ballard is also one of those stores. Whether the actual reason is shoplifting, I saw shoplifting happen often on my visits to that store. It was like...if I was seeing this 50% of the time I was checking out, it must happen every hour or so.

> It's incredibly bad compared to the Safeway or HMart a block away and that's been a consistent experience since it opened up. None of the other stores in the area are struggling with these issues.

Ballard Safeway has a shoplifting problem, but they lack many of the goods that unhoused neighbors can fence easily for drug money (and stuff that they could is locked up). Hmart is probably even a worse target because they don't offer things like detergent, aspirin, baby milk powder, etc...that would be fenceable at all. I would still love to have an HMart in Ballard, maybe they can take over Target's space that they are vacanting.

My local target (in Ballard Seattle WA) is one of those stores. It isn't surprising: I saw someone walk out without paying for a basket of goods almost half the times I went there, so it sounds like it is really common.

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