alt.hn

1/16/2025 at 5:33:15 AM

Walgreens says locking up products to prevent shoplifting hurts sales

 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walgreens-lock-product-up-sales/

by croes

1/16/2025 at 10:14:30 AM

There is a CVS near me that feels like a horrible dystopia that you don’t need an MBA to understand why it isn’t performing well.

Everything is locked up, even items below $5 and you need to find an employee to get a key.

There is only 1 employee in the store, when I was there she was also elderly and obese. She has to run around to every isle to unlock items for anyone to buy anything. She also has to run the register, leading to a huge line. This store has 30+ isles and is quite large.

All the lights are off with a sign saying this is for energy savings. This plus the store not being renovated for seemingly decades makes it feel unpleasant and sketchy.

They have a robot voice announcing periodically something along the lines of “the AI theft prevention system knows you are standing in the soap isle right now”.

Overall unpleasant to shop there and I stopped going even though it’s the only convience store in walking distance.

by ottoboney

1/16/2025 at 1:18:45 PM

The ultimate MBA problem is that they don't recognize that a lack of footstaff is the root cause of a lot of problems - problems that just never occurred because there was always foot staff dealing with these unrecognized problems.

They trimmed the stores to the bone and now nobody wants to go to the store - it is just too much effort to go to the store to buy anything when there is no staff.

MBA brain, margin management, shareholder return over customers and employees is truly the root cause of why America feels less abundant than a third world country these days.

by nine_zeros

1/16/2025 at 7:05:07 PM

People have been putting their business into spreadsheets and then tweaking one number for so long they've lost the plot completely.

It's like if you sold cheeseburgers and thought "what if we charged the same price, and didn't include cheese?" and then when that worked because some people don't eat cheese, went "what if we charged the same price, and didn't include bread?" and that worked because some people don't eat bread. Eventually there is no lettuce, onion, or tomato and you're serving plain patties in a paper tray, condiments extra. Customers have dwindled, and the idiots left in charge have never made or sold a cheeseburger or did anything other than move numbers around in an already successful business can't think of a better idea than look at COGs on ground beef and suggest they try selling ketchup on a napkin.

by placidpanda

1/16/2025 at 1:31:39 PM

The self-checkout kiosk asking for your loyalty number, and to round up your bill are what I find particularly dystopian.

by emchammer

1/16/2025 at 4:23:14 PM

Wait till the ai checkstand stand accuses you of being a thief and forces the attendant to do var on your transaction while you watch the video replay of yourself checking out. With the same red and green boxes you see in the drone combat videos.

Had that happen last week to me at Kroger and it was really unpleasant.

by nothercastle

1/16/2025 at 2:52:51 PM

I don't follow, why is that particularly dystopian?

by nozzlegear

1/16/2025 at 1:35:13 PM

Yep, even the self checkout is no longer worth it. I'd rather not go to the store than go through so many screens.

by nine_zeros

1/16/2025 at 3:56:36 PM

Many cities have an organized theft problem and are doing very little about it. Even when the police catch the perpetrators, they get little to no punishment. There doesn't seem to be much of an effort to go after the fencing networks either. Things seem to be getting worse in a lot of urban areas too, where I live I have noticed the decline over the last 5 years which has led stores to not only lock things up, but a lot of them hire security guards or off-duty cops to man the entrance/exit and they also have closed entrances to make everyone enter and leave through a single set of doors.

As well as the organized crime, I think there is a culture problem in some areas where it is "OK to steal from the man", well it is until the store in your area closes and now you live in a food/retail desert and have to take a bus to buy anything.

by _xerces_

1/17/2025 at 5:30:18 PM

People stealing is a side effect of something. I think the country is getting poorer and the chickens are coming home to roost. People have resorted to stealing because they feel poor. Shit, rich people feel poor now days. Imagine what poor people feel.

No excuses, but this a macro phenomenon that will always require nuance to understand.

Many poor people probably look at another poor person pocketing $100 here and $100 there on stolen items and realize there’s no point in being a good person. Life is hard, who is going to hand you anything. And so it follows, all of our souls now rot together.

Being poor has that effect on you.

by bloomingkales

1/16/2025 at 7:17:15 AM

Yes I don't even want to go to CVS any more because even toothpaste is locked up and then you have to wait 10 minutes or so to get someone to open the lock and then you have to quickly grab which toothpaste you pick without having time to compare the different brands.

I've been thinking this must be affecting their business begatively, I wouldn't buy their stock.

by galaxyLogic

1/16/2025 at 10:08:54 AM

America is so weird looking at it from the outside.

I have thankfully never run into locked up things like toothpaste in my life. That seems oddly oddly weird to me.

Why even have a shop if a $5 item cannot be bought easily? What do you guys do if you need to buy 3-4 different items in different aisles? Wait 40 minutes? Or do you drag a store associate around with you until you found and picked them all?

by ulfw

1/16/2025 at 12:26:24 PM

> America is so weird looking at it from the outside.

In Germany we have self checkout lanes, they're closed 90% of the time even when the queue is 50m long, and when they're open you have 1 employee for every 3 stations + one employee at the gate. Once you're done paying you have to carry your receipt to the gate and scan it otherwise it doesn't open

Every time I go through that I wonder what the fuck went wrong in this world, this is something you have to go through every day in the so called #1 economy of europe... none of it makes sense, you're a thief by default, you pay the same price even though you do the job.

And it's at least 2x slower because there is always a problem (alcohol/cigarettes needs a manual approval of an employee, if the weight doesn't match the machine locks up and need the approval of an employee, if the scanner is fucked you have to enter the 200 characters bar code manually in the machine, &c.)

by lm28469

1/16/2025 at 10:50:14 PM

Last year I switched to cash only(Canada), this week had to think for a moment to remember my PIN. The self checkout's are horrible, and de-huminising, and just now it occured to me to start calling them the "self abuse line". Going to cash has also prompted me to be more frugal, and buy bulk, single ingredients for cooking meals, as I think there is something in the monkey brain that is reluctant to hand anything over for nothing much in return.And hefting many packaged items(and putting them back) reveals that they are shiny boxes full of air,described as bieng mega something with enhanced nutrition(pro), but true costs are $60+/kg for some bland food substitute pellets, that have 72 different ingedients, written out in a micro font, that must require special printing equipment to produce. What is fun at the cashier checkout, is handing them the correct amount, and watching the robo-human employee flounder, some (get it) and smile after a second, but others are clearly freaked out by a spontainoius demonstration of minor mental arithmatic combined with physical money.

by metalman

1/16/2025 at 10:18:49 AM

> America is so weird looking at it from the outside

America is also diverse. My New York CVS locks up toothpaste while the Duane Reade up the street leaves almost everything in the open. Meanwhile, my small-town Wyoming target leaves expensive electronics in the open because it’s a town where folks feel comfortable leaving their keys in their car (and rarely lock their doors).

by JumpCrisscross

1/16/2025 at 1:15:41 PM

Your comment makes a lot of sense, though “diverse” is definitely a euphemism in this case.

by Vaslo

1/16/2025 at 3:05:48 PM

I'm struggling to understand what the euphemism would be

by s1artibartfast

1/16/2025 at 2:59:53 PM

America is huge. I've never been to a store that had things locked up as described here. If I need to buy toothpaste or whatever, I can just pop into my town's pharmacy; grocery store; one of the dollar stores; or one of the gas stations, and just grab it off the shelves, pay at the cashier or self-checkout, and be gone in a couple minutes.

by nozzlegear

1/16/2025 at 5:45:21 PM

This really only happens in states where the majority of residents share an ideology that criminals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions.

by stcroixx

1/16/2025 at 1:59:37 PM

That isn't "America", that's major cities like San Francisco and New York City.

It's nothing like that in even smaller cities, let alone the majority of the country being towns and what not

by thejazzman

1/16/2025 at 11:26:39 AM

In line with CrissCross's comment, it's important to remember the Internet is also huge. There are probably millions of American who visit Hacker News on at least some semi-regular basis. Even if you see 20 of them in one thread all saying they experienced the same thing, that doesn't make it typical. Who decides to comment isn't some kind of scientific sampling process. I've been an American for over 44 years and lived in 12 different states and have never seen toothpaste locked up in a store.

by nonameiguess

1/16/2025 at 6:01:57 PM

[dead]

by catlover76

1/16/2025 at 7:46:27 AM

I once waited 20 mins in the Walmart camping section for an associate to come and open the propane gas cylinders cabinet. I noticed other people in other aisles also waiting for locked up items.

I left and went to Target where I was able to grab all the camping supplies I wanted from the shelves and checkout. I avoid Walmart since that day, as almost everything is locked up.

by sleepytimetea

1/16/2025 at 11:16:12 AM

Interesting, the closest target to me has stuff locked up like that. It's in a rough part of town, so I suppose it's just location based for all chains. It seemed like things that would be beneficial to the homeless had priority in the locked cases.

by gkhartman

1/16/2025 at 12:55:19 PM

A lot of us thought we lived in a nice part of town and are discovering we live in the rough part of town.

by supportengineer

1/16/2025 at 4:24:28 PM

The rough part sprawled and the stores got more hostile while raising prices

by nothercastle

1/17/2025 at 10:50:16 PM

A Power from the High Beyond moved the Zone boundaries, leaving us trapped in the Slow Zone

by supportengineer

1/16/2025 at 9:29:36 PM

I think its worth noting that inconvenience aside, the high rate of theft and stock loss is correlated to item price increases overall -- even above inflation. Watched a man walk out of Safeway with two 12-packs under his arms makes me understand why eggs are $8 a dozen.

by kmerroll

1/16/2025 at 10:12:13 PM

Even if shoppifting tripled it would be minuscule in the overall scheme of things. Groceries pay 2 dollars per dozen eggs to farmers and have to toss out them out every few days, wastage-wise it’s basically a blip

by Maxamillion96

1/16/2025 at 11:51:32 PM

Ah, so considering the miniscule loss in the overall scheme of things, Walgreens locking up products in the stores is just to be annoying?

by kmerroll

1/17/2025 at 5:23:04 PM

more that execs are looking for an excuse to tell their board of directors why sales are falling that doesnt include online ordering. the movement to E-Commerce is a double hit to stores because not only do they directly lose sales but when something is ordered from their stores (on e.g -doordash) they have to put people on packaging those goods- which they see no income from and makes the brick-and-mortar store less staffed.

by Maxamillion96

1/16/2025 at 8:59:43 AM

That’s why I buy name brands online and get it delivered. I’m not going to drive to the store, find the thing, hope it’s in stock, wait to check out, negotiate with the buggy self checkout robot, pay a premium, and then drive home. It’s a nightmare.

by janalsncm

1/16/2025 at 9:01:56 AM

But then again, buying name brands on places like Amazon always feels like a gamble with the amount of fake products they are shipping these days.

by dewey

1/16/2025 at 11:25:54 AM

Are they sure it’s also not because they closed hundreds of stores all over the place leaving massive gaps with no retail coverage and stranding tens of thousands of pharmacy customers in a stupid act of cost cutting?

My county used to have ~8-10 Walgreens. Now we only have one, and it’s a fifty mile drive. We lost all our Rite Aids too, lost to the weird sale/merger/whatever bizarre shit they pulled off.

by kotaKat

1/16/2025 at 12:10:35 PM

This happened in my city. One day my Rite Aid randomly became a Walgreens. Then a few weeks ago I got an email saying my Walgreens is "Temporarily Closed". It's not reopened and I had to xfer all of my prescriptions to a store much further away.

by grubbs

1/16/2025 at 12:50:04 PM

Recently in San Francisco I visited a Walgreens with a list of around 15 items to get. It took over an hour to find and retrieve them all because each time I had to call the attendant, watch her hobble over (she seemed to have difficulties walking) and then unlock each section.

This is necessary because there are large, open air fencing operations in the San Francisco area that the feds allow to operate with impunity. [1]

Any time you have to do this, just remember: the feds are knowingly and willfully allowing the criminals that make locks necessary to operate.

Money laundering, receipt of stolen property, conspiracy, RICO, theft, burglary? The FBI San Francisco office doesn't give a damn.

Follow the money: without fences, there are no theft rings. The criminals stealing 50 bottles of shampoo aren't about to sell them themselves, they hand them into fences for 20 cents on the dollar.

[1] https://sfist.com/2023/09/23/a-known-fencing-operation-for-s...

by 0xy