If Retailers Cared About Shoplifting, They'd Hire More People And Pay Them More Money
They've decided shoplifting costs them less than human cashiers.
Back in June, The New York Times’s Pamela Paul wrote an op-ed chastising people for dismissing other people’s “concerns” with the term “moral panic” — which we can assume probably had something to do with her ongoing contributions to moral panics over transgender people, “political correctness,” and other varied and sundry topics we are all very tired of New York Times columnists moral panicking about.
To be clear, a moral panic isn’t just when people are “concerned” about a thing, it is when concern about a thing is vast and widespread compared to how often it is occurring or how serious it actually is. A moral panic is when people are so obsessively concerned about a thing that they seize on every tiny little morsel that they think might get other people to jump on their concern train, regardless of whether or not that thing is true or if it makes any sense. A moral panic is when people spend a weird amount of time hypothesizing about their concern and then deciding that their hypotheses about it must be 100 percent true. That is why when we think of moral panics, we think of “rainbow parties” and Satanic panic, not child labor or wrongful convictions or other things it’s actually pretty hard to get people het up about.
This week, Pamela Paul shuffled in, a little late, to the shoplifting panic that the Right has been pushing for all summer.
In her column, “What We Lose To Shoplifting,” Paul explains that the real cost of shoplifting isn’t to retailers, but to society.
Before we jump in, I’m going to point something out that I will probably mention a lot going forward — if shoplifting is increasing, which it likely is not, it’s not because the American social fabric is falling apart, but because retailers have made a calculated decision. They have decided that whatever shrink they are experiencing costs them less than it would to hire enough people to work in their stores.
First, Paul laments the lack of privacy one gets while shopping at a drugstore, where employees are nowhere to be seen except for how they are also everywhere, following her around while she shops for dental floss.
But privacy is harder to preserve now that drugstores, to thwart shoplifters, increasingly lock their stock behind cabinet doors, with buttons to push in order to get an employee’s attention. A pimply boy has to hail an employee to free his benzoyl peroxide and a 14-year-old girl needs to be watched as she selects a tampon that suits her cycle. Even for adults, it’s hard not to be self-conscious about having a store employee trail you through the drugstore like a personal shopper as you ponder which dental floss to buy.
I have yet to see tampons locked up, and I shop at a drugstore that has a ton of things locked up. That being said, these stores have chosen to lock things up instead of having enough employees on the floor to prevent shoplifting.
The social and economic causes of shoplifting have become a source of debate, as has the extent of the problem. There are complicated questions around criminal enforcement, policing and punishment.
But leaving those issues aside, there is also an undeniable quality-of-life impact from the real or perceived increase in shoplifting. It is felt by shoppers, store employees, security personnel, store owners and our communities — and in ways more serious than awkward encounters over tampon purchases.
It matters if things are real or “perceived” — especially when the reason something is perceived a certain way is because columnists like Paul or the gang over at “Fox & Friends” is out here stoking fear about how scary and pervasive a problem it is. When I first started seeing things being locked up and seeing those little mini screens showing you that you are being “watched” in certain aisles, I didn’t think “Oh no! Society is deteriorating and more people are shoplifting now!” I thought “There aren’t enough people working here, probably because they aren’t paying people enough to work here.”
The most obvious effect is a sense of increased danger. Stores simply feel less safe. For a variety of reasons, police now seem less inclined to arrest shoplifters. In Chicago, for example, overall arrests for reported thefts dropped from a rate of about 10 percent in 2019 to less than 4 percent in 2022, according to Wirepoints, a right-leaning watchdog group.
This is a good thing.
The biggest deterrent to committing a crime isn’t fear of harsh punishment, it is the certainty of being caught. That is why you are going to see far more shoplifting in a poorly merchandised, messy, overstocked drugstore with not enough employees and a self-checkout than in an open, nicely merchandised boutique where you are always within the eyesight of at least one employee.
We don’t need people in jail or prison or having their whole life ruined and being unable to get a job or losing their current job because they stole a mascara from CVS. If someone gets caught or even feels like they came way too close to getting caught, that’s usually all they need to quit forever.
Paul then goes on to explain how very demoralizing shoplifting can be for workers who aren’t even allowed to risk their lives chasing down possible thieves while getting paid $7.25 an hour.
In a recent study, a team of marketing professors looked at how service employees perceive “customer deviant behaviors,” which include minor infractions like incivility and aggression, as well as more serious offenses like shoplifting and fraudulent returns. The researchers found that shoplifting was “by far” the most prevalent and detrimental form of deviant behavior. According to the study, in the presence of a suspected thief the burden of policing often falls to frontline employees, who, depending on company policy, may be expected to guard the store, stand by passively or even assist the thieves as if they were paying customers. These behaviors leave employees feeling frustrated, angry, helpless, targeted, unmotivated and uncomfortable. Allowing shoplifting to continue unimpeded, the authors found, undermines the sense of pride they might otherwise find in their work and the workplace.
As a former retail employee, let me just say that I, at least, was a whole lot more “frustrated, angry, helpless, targeted, unmotivated and uncomfortable” because of people who allowed the phrase “the customer is always right” to drive them mad with power than shoplifters. Also, it’s really hard to have pride in your work and your workplace when you are working your ass off at an understaffed store that refuses to hire more people, and you still can’t pay your rent.
Policies that require employees to remain passive in the face of shoplifting can be frustrating. As one employee quoted in the study put it: “You want me to prevent loss, but at the end of the day, if I can’t physically stop someone that I know is stealing, essentially, I’m not loss prevention. I’m just, I’m here to just watch it.” Another employee said policies preventing action make shoplifting too easy: “It is not fair. They have restrained our powers. They have tied our hands. The criminals have all the rights, and we don’t.”
Yes, just being there to watch it actually does prevent most shoplifting. That is a fact. Most people will not steal stuff with an employee standing there looking at them. And it’s not about the criminals having rights and not you, it’s about lawsuits. Lawsuits from people falsely accused of shoplifting, lawsuits from your family should you get killed by a lunatic you busted stealing a refrigerator magnet.
City officials are increasingly aware that shoplifting discourages workers and worsens labor conditions. In May, Mayor Eric Adams announced a program to fight retail theft in New York City, reports of which have increased by 77 percent in recent years, up 45 percent between 2021 and 2022 alone. Among the proposals is an “employee support program” meant to train retail workers in “de-escalation tactics, anti-theft tools and security best practices” to help ensure their own safety.
You want workers to be encouraged? You want better labor conditions? PAY THEM MORE. Give them benefits. Give them set schedules so that they can plan their lives more than a week in advance. Hire as many people as you need to actually work there. Actually improve their labor conditions.
In May, Brian Cornell, the chief executive of Target, called theft “a worsening trend that emerged last year,” warning of a projected loss from retail theft of $500 million more than the previous year. “The problem affects all of us, limiting product availability, creating a less convenient shopping experience and putting our team and guests in harm’s way,” Cornell said. It can also lead to higher prices for everyone else.
I literally cannot recall the last time I saw a dressing room attendant in Target. You want to decrease shoplifting, there you go! Hire someone and pay them money to stand in a dressing room, count people’s items as they go in and and count them as they go out. It’s like magic!
The reason retailers traditionally invest in training store personnel is that they believe employees are critical to creating a positive shopping experience. A store that signals that it expects shoppers to steal the merchandise has the opposite effect.
Then they should pay people enough to work at these places.
Because retailers continue to struggle with underemployment and employee retention, stores are often more sparsely staffed than they once were, and all the more grim. On a recent shopping excursion in Manhattan, I saw something I’d never seen before: a handwritten sign in the window of a major clothing chain, apologizing for closing for an hour midday because of understaffing.
Then they should pay people enough to work at these places.
Where, exactly, does Pamela Paul think people who work at a “major clothing chain” supposed to live in Manhattan? Not anywhere in the city, I’d imagine. There is no place in those areas for people who work in those industries to live because the stores don’t pay enough and the rent is too damn high. So don’t complain about “understaffing,” complain about wages, complain about the lack of affordable housing. And then you won’t have to worry about freaking H&M being closed during your lunch break or whatever.
It’s almost as if people understand this and are freaking out about shoplifting because we’ve all seen Les Miserables and figure a pretty big portion of this shoplifting is done not for a thrill but out of necessity.
Also, aren’t Republicans always the ones saying that minimum wage jobs are meant to be for high schoolers? If that is the case, then perhaps that is the problem. High schoolers can’t work during the school day.
It’s hard not to notice a shift everywhere. Returning to New York City recently by train after an out-of-town trip, I emerged from Penn Station to pick up a few things in a nearby drugstore. When I walked in, the store was nearly empty, the shelves were mostly locked; no one responded when I pressed a button. It was a dispiriting welcome home and an unfortunate way to imagine first-time visitors encountering New York.
Store owners are not the only ones who bear the cost of retail theft. Shoplifting isn’t just their problem. We are all paying a price.
They’re not bearing the cost! They are, again, making a calculated decision about what is less expensive, and what is less expensive is dealing with a little shoplifting over hiring enough employees and paying them enough to live in the area where their store is located.
Blame them, blame landlords, blame capitalism — shoplifters are the least of anyone’s problems.
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