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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

In NYC, these drug stores also treat all of their customers like criminals. Everything non-perishable that is worth more than $5 is locked in a cabinet that you need an employee's help to open. The hours had been restricted to mostly operating during daylight.

It used to be nice to go down to your local Duane Reade 24 hours a day and get anything you needed, often for only a small premium on the Amazon price. It's a different story now.

Amazon loses you availability of access, and while it's nice to get stuff by mail, you can't get stuff by mail right now. That availability is going away.

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I often can't even find someone with a key to open the cabinets. At my CVS there's usually just a security guard, who can't open the cabinets. If you need detergent, beer, shampoo, razors, or pretty much anything else you're out of luck.

Lack of availability isn't even my main concern though. In this environment, everyone needs to order everything online. So instead of one truck making a shipment to CVS (I'm oversimplifying), now you have additional delivery vans and ebikes making door to door shipments, each with extra packaging.

edit to clarify my stance in the context of the GP: I strongly dislike ordering things online when there is (or should be) a local alternative, and only use delivery services as a last resort

That's because laws aren't enforced.

Just a single anecdote. In SF shoplifting police reports tripled one month because a single target location tested a new system where internal shoplifting incidents were also sent to the police.

As someone who lives in NYC, there is VERY VERY little brazen theft. Vastly less than would be warranted to lock everything as they do.

It's surprising to me that employee shrink is never looked at as an issue. I personally think that is much more of an issue.

lol. the sky high addiction rates across the nation are definitely NOT what's causing burglaries to resell the stuff on the street. in fact, it's the pharmacists! it's the employees!

thank god that facts don't care about your personal opinions on the matter[1]

https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/criminals-pharmacies-bur...

This doesn't address what was said at all.

You've mentioned that according to your anecdotal evidence, there is very little brazen theft in pharmacies just because you happen to live in NYC. I showed you the DEA stating how theft has exploded. Addiction problems across the nation are only worsening as we're in an opioid epidemic. Yet according to your world, everything's fine and the actual issue are the employees. What am I misunderstanding from your posts?

The conversation above was talking about the locking up of everyday items due to retail theft. I said that from my experience that is not a real problem.

The article you shared highlights smash and grabs of controlled pharmaceuticals from small mom and pop pharmacies. That's not the type of theft I have any experience with. You're also the only person who invoked drugs.

The article only references one pix11 article, which itself only references a single bust... in Texas... of a ring operating in Arkansas... outside of New York.

> What am I misunderstanding from your posts?

The entire context of the thread above you.

"The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported there has been a 620% increase in pharmacy burglaries over the last two years across the state."

The state being, in the article, NY. They just happen to mention Arkansas in a related fashion.

As for pharmacies locking up small items as well, it's very obvious why it happens, it's becauase of a high occurence of theft. Is this rocket science? Do you think they do it because they can't get enough of the operational overhead of dealing with customers every time they need an item? I bring drugs into the mix because this is all interrelated. Robberries love pharmacies, or at least historically have until they started locking everything up. Drugs are a big factor, and by extension the small stuff gets taken too.

Yes, there's blocks in the East Village where people are clearly selling stuff on the sidewalk they only recently stole from the nearby pharmacy/bodega/grocery.

The recent double stabbing near 14th & 1st was a mentally ill guy in a drug deal dispute in which he was paying via stolen merchandise. People interviewed described him as a regular who would barter his stolen goods for whatever he needed (in the NYT before someone accuses me of reading the wrong sources).

> Yes, there's blocks in the East Village where people are clearly selling stuff on the sidewalk they only recently stole from the nearby pharmacy/bodega/grocery.

Who said that there wasn't? Prior to current history, people sold boosted goods out of the back of cars or in the back of the same bodegas.

> The recent double stabbing near 14th & 1st was a mentally ill guy in a drug deal dispute in which he was paying via stolen merchandise. People interviewed described him as a regular who would barter his stolen goods for whatever he needed (in the NYT before someone accuses me of reading the wrong sources).

This still is not a brazen robbery, so it doesn't address what I said at all. Addicts have been fighting and killing each other in this city for literally decades.

> Vastly less than would be warranted to lock everything as they do

Do you really believe you can conclude this from your personal observations?

The company has all the data on theft. At the end of the day, they are motivated by profit. Don’t you think they ran the numbers and found that locking items to prevent crime, even if it’s an additional barrier to paying customers, was better for business?

edit: fixed a typo

> Do you really believe you can conclude this from your personal observations?

My experience is admittedly anecdata.

> The company has all the data on theft. At the end of the day, they are motivated by profit.

One of the modern fallacies that we've all fallen victim to at one point or another is that "more data" == "logical action".

> Don’t you think they ran the numbers and found that locking items to prevent crime, even if it’s an additional barrier to paying customers, was better for business?

It prevents an aspect of shrink that they can control through an affordable means, that does not mean that it is the vast majority of shrink.

Companies are short term irrational thinkers. Thank the market for that. If they can lock everything up and say "You can expect a reduction in shrink, please pay me and my shareholders", they will. That's easier than locking up employee thieves, which is even easier than actually trying to fight Amazon (who is eating their revenue/lunch).

No, I don't think they did. I think they'll find any excuse to close down a business that isn't 'we fucked up and made multiple terrible business decisions'.

For example: A local target here in Seattle was closed, citing retail theft. I stopped by there before closure; they had everything locked up and most of the shelves were empty. A grim sight, but the key point of the story was that said Target was also surrounded by other grocery store alternatives which did not lock items up and whose shelves were not empty. All within roughly a block or a block and a half of distance.

The empirical observation is that they closed the stores with less retail theft than the ones they kept open.

As someone with more data, your observation is incorrect and has led you to an erroneous conclusion. The other stores are on the brink of unprofitability also but are seen as having less desirable merchandise so they weren't the favored target.

> Do you really believe you can conclude this from your personal observations?

Yes, because none of the retailers have been willing to cough up data.

If the data supported that shoplifting is a problem and that locking things up helped, the companies would be trumpeting the data. There was a very recent article that nobody, not even the main retailers trade association, seems to know if locking things up is actually improving the situation or not.

The primary hypothesis seems to be that employee theft is the real issue and no retailer wants to admit it because it opens up a whole host of issues that are all solved with "pay money". (ie. Why aren't they paying their employees more? Why aren't they prosecuting these thefts? etc.)

> Yes, because none of the retailers have been willing to cough up data.

It's on their financial statements and it has been discussed in their earnings calls. The euphemism for theft is "slippage."

As to whether locking things up helps, most of the thefts I have seen recently involve someone politely asking for a good to be unlocked, then walking out the door with it in hand. The lock only stops one person from taking all of it at once.

"Slippage" is easy to track but includes everything--loss, employee theft, shoplifting, etc.

"Sales lost to locking up" is a lot harder to track, and nobody has been willing to be forthright about it.

Mostly, this is sleight of hand. None of these companies want to admit that online (even their own!) is eating their lunch.

Theft doesn’t need to be brazen for it to cost money.

I lived about half time in NYC recently and I personally witnessed no fewer than 10 events of theft over the last 6 months I was there. It usually isn't like the movies. It's usually just someone who grabs something off a shelf and then walks out.

You can only enforce the laws so much, once the tipping point is reached where there are too many people who can't or won't abide by the laws there's nothing to be done any more. At the end it's an economic problem, the rent is too high.

> In NYC, these drug stores also treat all of their customers like criminals.

What's the idea there? I hear that those stores overexaggerate the risk. Ok, but why spend the time, effort and money actually locking things down and making it hard for their paying customers to shop.

I can imagine if the threat is not real, they'll just issue press releases, write public letters to the governor, buy ads somewhere, etc, but not actually put plexiglass and locks everywhere, which makes it harder for them to do business in the end.

EDIT: also, cheers to the fellow assembly language HN user name holder :-)

The only rational conclusion is that the stories actually do not exaggerate the risk. Many downplay it.

That’s not the fault of the stores. If we had sane crime policies, that would not be necessary. But NYC is becoming worse and worse, complete lack of enforcement of social orders like “no stealing”. Or re-releasing violent criminals where they end up killing someone.

It’s basically now ok to walk into any store in nyc, and just take stuff worth less than $1k, and walk out. Nothing will happen, and police can’t do much since it’s been decided stealing is not a crime here. The people doing this then will sell that same stolen stuff on a street corner a block away for half price.

Blaming "crime" is incorrect and suggests a lack of understanding of the dynamics at play.

1) Pharmacies don't want workers going after shoplifters. It's a liability if the worker gets hurt, and even if the shoplifter gets "caught", now the witness needs to show up at the trial for it to mean anything criminally. In other words, the company has to pay the worker NOT to be in the store. The LEA has to pay the cop that responds to be in court. They don't want this. The company's goal is to get the police involved only insofar as is necessary to get an insurance payout.

2) No one wants to go to jail for stealing shampoo. They're doing it because the options for decent work are limited. A shoplifter grabbing $200 of merchandise and selling it for $100 is making 3/4 a day's worth of the cashier's pay in like an hour (partly because corporate workers for that company are overpaid and making that in 1-20 minutes).

The solution has always been and remains to stop f*cking around with income inequality and opportunity hoarding, as a society.

Yep. The fact that they're not so convenient anymore is just one more nail in their coffin.

In my case, I used to go to a Rite-Aid for my meds, even though it was less convenient, because (1) they recognized me when I walked up, (2) if there was a problem, a human would take care of it, and (3) there was never much of a wait.

The store was always near empty, which was the mark of doom. They closed it and sent me over to a Walgreen's, which sucked big time. So now I get stuff by mail. The customer service is not any worse, really.

you write this as if there's some evil force doing this, which is a nice story. realistically it's because safety is actually, a large concern. pharmacies get robbed often

I love how you blame the stores rather than the criminals and the government that turns a blind eye towards theft.

If we had a culture that scandalized theft, and a justice system that penalized such behavior with real teeth, then goods wouldn't have to be locked up and "customers" treated with suspicion.

I will never stop being amazed by the ability of "smart" people to be so illogical

to me this stuff is one more sign of transitioning to a low trust society, and all the downsides that come with it

A high trust society would be re-established if basic stuff like theft was prosecuted and children didn’t have to walk over drooling zombie drug addicts on their way to school

NYC is one of the safest cities in the country.

And if you don't care about shoplifting, then expect all of the stores to lock up their goods, or close outright

Thanks to Giuliani and Bloomberg, but the progressives are busily undoing everything they did. Wait 5 years.

That's what a biased set of statistics says. In reality, NYC residents rarely bother to report crime (they know the police will do nothing), so it doesn't show up in the statistics. In those "dangerous" small towns, every single crime gets reported.

A large part of it is the transition from small local businesses to faceless corporate chains.

I care if my local, family-run pharmacy gets robbed. If someone steals from some corporate behemoth, one that treats me like a criminal regardless of whether I steal from them or not, well, what do I care?

That's the exact problem. You only seem to care about property rights if the direct owner is your neighbor. I simply find stealing to be wrong. The societal restrictions and penalties on theft are ancient. If can't all agree that stealing is wrong, what hope does society have

Selective enforcement of law based on moral preferences leads to bad places.

What if its a local owner but you met the guy and think he is a jerk?

What if he votes differently than you like?

Do you think the various groups committing robbery care who owns the store, and if so, care in the same way as you? Would they stop if the pharmacy became locally owned? Would they give up shoplifting if there were no big box stores nearby?

>Selective enforcement of law based on moral preferences leads to bad places.

Maybe go after wage theft and employment discrimination?

It's strange to me that people think that the source of "low trust" is the people with rather less power in society, versus the people with more. Most people begin life more than willing to trust. It's when someone who is supposed to be looking out for them betrays that trust that they become embittered.

Go after those too, yes! That's the idea.

It's strange that your immediate reaction to "I don't think some retail stores pay their employees enough" is to then decide "Everyone should be able to steal from those stores without penalty"

Seeking to explain why people steal from these stores is not the same as saying that everyone should be able to.

Actually, my immediate reaction was to, "Selective enforcement of law based on moral preferences leads to bad places," where the implication was that petty theft is the most pressing matter wrt the deleterious social effects of lacking law enforcement. That reaction was, essentially, "That would be a mismanagement of resources." Which it is. Instances of wage theft dwarfs petty theft (and most other types of theft, combined). Employment discrimination - whether racial/ethnic, sexual, or nepotistic in nature - is a massive contributor to both the desperate financial situations and low trust environments that are a major part of why people are willing to steal. My goal is to actually solve the problem, not engage in Two Minutes Hate.

I'm not the one enforcing laws, I'm a rando. Why aren't the cops doing their jobs?

Nationally, clearance rates are abysmally low. Everyone knows calling the cops for personal theft is useless. Why aren't they doing their job?

And don't point to those cops in California claiming that it was a lax DA, as that doesn't explain the abysmal clearance rates in the rest of the nation, including in states with DAs who enthusiastically do their job, to a fault. The DA in California does not explain why the cops in my state are utterly incompetent.

Cops don't want to do their jobs

Omitting the long lead up story, I was forwarded the eBay listing for my iPhone that had been stolen. It even had the IMEI on the listing.

Looked at the guy's profile (and I had his name and address, as he'd sold my phone to someone who was annoyed that it was locked) and it was blindingly obvious that it was all stolen goods:

50+ cell phones, "no charger", "no accessories", some even flagged as locked.

Another 50+ Macbooks - also "no chargers", "no accessories".

Called my local PD (non-emergency) as I'd filed a police report. Told them what I'd found.

PD: Well, he probably didn't steal them himself...

Me: I'm fairly sure that selling stolen goods is still a crime?

PD: ...

Me: ...

My tax dollars, hard at work.

I'm not advocating for selective enforcement of the law, was just describing my personal feelings. I brought it up mainly because I do think it informs this question.

> Do you think the various groups committing robbery care who owns the store, and if so, care in the same way as you?

In the same way as me -- no, probably not. But does the owner of the store matter to groups committing robbery? I wouldn't be so confident that it does not. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'd guess that loss to robbery among chain stores is higher than among mom-and-pop businesses.

I didn't say why it happens. I just wanted to avoid the controversy that you (collectively, the responders) gave me anyway.

Personally, I agree with you that this is a response to theft and the brazen disregard of law enforcement. I now live in a smaller city that takes theft very seriously and almost nothing is locked up.

Once Amazon gets into cool/cold chain, it’s game over for grocery stores too.

Well, they already bought Whole Foods. Which probably showed them the complexity of a grocery store; it's not just about supporting refrigerated shipments.

...you mean Whole Foods?

Whole Paycheque Foods?

I do buy more and more shelf-stable “grocery” type items off Amazon every year.

> Whole Paycheque Foods?

Tell me you don't shop at Whole Foods without telling me you don't shop at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods is actually cheaper than many (most?) grocery stores for staple items. Sure, the grass fed organic beef is expensive, but stuff like rice, pasta, ketchup, snacks, hell even a lot of produce, is way cheaper than other grocery stores. At least in an urban environment like NYC.

Have gone to a Toronto area Whole Paycheque Foods. It lived up to its (informal) name.

Here in the Northeast, Whole foods is more expensive than Hannaford, Shaws, CostCo, Sams, and Marketbasket. Their in-house brands can't compete with even Hannaford's bottom tier in-house brand. Their prices are absurdly high. They lean into fads and grifts like "organic" and "superfoods" and all that dietism bullshit to profit.

Trader Joes is cheaper.

This is surprising to me. Surely the place is a loss leader, or their position is not as starkly poor as you make it sound. I'd wager the latter.

Trader Joes will always be cheaper given how they work.

Maybe it's an NYC thing. We don't have any of the chains you mentioned. Local grocery stores like Morton Williams, Gristedes, and C-Town are all pretty expensive.

Trader Joes and Whole Foods are comparable on price for staples, at least the last I checked, which is admittedly a few years ago. Things like store brands of olive oil, canned beans, frozen foods are cheaper at TJs, yes, but usually by less than a dollar.

My local Whole Foods closed. The other groceries seem to be doing great.

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