Hacker News Reader

Comment by bulletsvshumans | Hacker News Reader

This is listed as 'undetermined' on Snopes, for what it's worth. http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/tide.asp

I recall the Daily article mentioned making the rounds last spring.

It jumped out at me because I had previously noticed conspicuous anti-theft tags on jugs of Tide in a downtown CVS, for what that's worth.

But are the tags because of actual theft, or because someone read the article and ordered tags be fitted?

Washing detergent is pretty expensive in the UK, and I can understand how people might start stealing the ultra-concentrates to pay for drugs.

Finish dishwasher tabs. £10 for a 39 box in the Co-op. Thats where the real money is if you ask me :-)

I don't quite buy it.

Yeah, how do you walk off with 20 bottles of detergent anyway, let alone 100? Ignoring the questionable issue of clerk attentiveness, how do you physically hold that many bottles at once? And what are these drugdealers doing, driving around with tractor trailer trucks to hold all their "money"?

This article doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

1. Case the stores camera policy and times that loss management comes and leaves. 2. Watch for lazy employees. 3. Load up a shopping cart (20 bottles would fit, be pretty heavy. 4. Push cart out door.

I've seen some pretty brazen theft before. A gas station down the road from me lost a large display of cigarets when two people walked in picked it up and carried it off when the cashier was dealing with a flooding toilet (most likely caused by them before a short time before).

I could maybe see it with 20 with a cart, but 100 seems like quite a stretch.

Also if they are presumably loosing many thousands of dollars a week to the theft of something so bulky, how the hell haven't they figured out a way to prevent that sort of theft?

If it's happening, my money is on them being in on it somehow because it's really just ludicrous otherwise.

Many stores will not do anything to physically stop shoplifting; they may call the police but they won't stop you. (A Whole Foods employee was fired for attempting to stop a shoplifter, because employees are not allowed to touch customers.) So I imagine you'd just fill a cart with Tide and push it out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com