I went to a Walgreens to buy nail clippers since I was nearby and had a bad hangnail.
Had to push a red button to wait for an employee to unlock the cabinet. After 10 minutes, I ran to find a random employee who was stocking and they got me what I needed.
That was the first and last time I ever went to Walgreens.
Yeah, I end up still using their pharmacy because the pharmacist is just a great guy and he takes care of people. But the rest of the store can fuck right off.
If you have good insurance you might not notice this, but drug prices at Walgreens and CVS are significantly more expensive than many other pharmacies, like Walmart, Costco, or HEB. Compare prices on Goodrx.com and see
Truth.
More and more supermarkets are opening up pharmacies to compete. And in my town, private practices are now starting to also have a pharmacy.
I’m not supporting Walmart though.
I assume their entire business model is “Hope the boomers don’t notice we jacked the price up significantly.”
That’s like years ago, like 2016, I went to Walmart for the last time. They closed all the self checkout lanes, but I guess forgot to rehire cashiers. So I waited 30 minutes in line on a random weekday to buy one 50ft extension cord.
In the Soviet Union, the shopper experience wasn’t vastly different. You would stand in different lines to select, pay and collect items, so it was a good idea to bring a chair and a book with you.
I had a similar story. 2019 I went to the Walmart closest to where I live now and they had closed all the registers, and most of the self checks. I waited so long. I have a ton of stores close to me now so I was only going there on recommendation of a friend. “But they’re so cheap!”
Not if your time has value.
Aldi’s. No bullshit, good prices
Wal Marts in Denver have been doing this a lot lately.
And nearly all of the stores and restaurants that I visited while in Denver locked their restrooms and you had to either get a key or a code to enter them. I’m guessing it is related to so called anti theft measures.
I haven’t set foot in a Walmart since Dec 2014 and I don’t miss it at all. My ex used to order groceries from there but now I get Kroger delivery. Weirdly, we don’t even have a Kroger within 150miles but they’re cheaper and faster.
Yeah most of them are like this. That’s why it’s the one place where self checkout was actually an improvement. Because they never had anyone at the fucking registers before that anyway. I try to never go there but at least now I don’t have to wait an eternity if I have to go there.
Fun fact, next time you need something like that on the road just find a Dollar General. There’s one approximately every nine feet (they’re the retailer with the most locations in the US, bar none) and Dollar General don’t give a fuck, therefore nothing is locked up there. Some stuff is behind the checkout counter, but that’s all. Dollar General also doesn’t care about you stealing the nail clippers, nor paying any employees to be present, nor much of anything else as far as I can tell.
Dollar stores are randomly over priced and they manage to treat their employees worse than Walmart.
However, Walmart does treat their customers worse than any retail I can think of which is really weird.
While that is generally true, I will point out that nobody marks shit up to quite the insane degree as the chain drug stores like Walgreens and CVS. If the choice is between a Walgreens and a Dollar General, DG will be cheaper by a country (possibly literal) mile because their markup is is only 500% and not 1000%.
I dunno, let’s pick a random “need it now” commodity item out of a hat. This 4 pack box of light bulbs, $15 at Walgreens and $6.75 at DG despite being in the wrong aspect ratio. A house brand nail clipper to use OP’s example, $2.49 at Walgreens and locked in a case, $1 and just hanging on a peg at DG. Etc., etc.
DG’s main problem is that they chronically and deliberately understaff their stores. It’s literally part of their official management strategy. It also is one of the factors that makes them, perhaps surprisingly, one of the most robbed retail locations in the country.
Oh, most definitely.
I don’t know why anyone would use Walgreens/CVS as their go to for any of the overpriced items in their store. The are both to medication as gas is to the convience stores.
Everything is overpriced but they makes sales because of the convience of picking things up with a prescription.
I have gone to a local electronics store, Best Buy, several times in the last few years because I wanted something immediately only to be stopped at the last moment by a locked shelf and no one around to unlock it. What the fuck are you even supposed to do there? Scream and shout until someone arrives? Quietly stalk an employee until you find your moment to strike? I just fucking leave, I’ll wait for shipping.
Took me 25 minutes to buy a $4 brake light bulb at wal mart one night. After tracking down an employee to track down another employee to meet me by the glass door. I’ll never buy car bulbs there again. That portion of store is dead to me.
I went looking for a new cabin air filter since I had a gift card. The auto employee had literally no clue what I was talking about and just pointed at the wall of air filters with a shrug. Five seconds in an O’Reilly and I was on the way home
Same thing for me with a $10 headlight. Last time I needed one they weren’t locked up, so that was an unpleasant discovery. The employee was super busy with other customers, so I don’t blame him one bit.
I honestly wonder, is it illegal to simply unlock those things, if you have no intention of actually stealing from them? It’s not like they use particularly high security locks. You can probably buy some simple lock raking or cylinder lock tools.
Is it actually violating a law to unlock one of those cases if you don’t have any intention of actually stealing something?
lol that’s way too much effort to give your hard earned money to a shitty company
I avoid Best Buy like the plague, I can’t even remember the last time I went there, maybe 5 years ago? I went to buy a monitor and had to pass like 3 fucking security checks and a receipt checker.
The whole experience was so off putting, I just never went back.
The last thing I tried to buy at Best Buy they simply didn’t have in stock, despite their in store computer system and their web site insisting they had dozens of the damn things. Never mind getting someone to unlock the case; I couldn’t have bought it for any price no matter how badly I wanted it. I gave up. I haven’t been back since.
Microcenter is pretty much the only brick-and-mortar electronics/computers store left that’s worth a damn, which is convenient because they’re also pretty much the only one left, period. Too bad they have barely any locations compared to Best Buy.
A few years back bought something at Best buy and they asked if I needed a receipt or was I ok with just getting it emailed. I said I didn’t need a receipt. Then I was stopped at the door because I didn’t have a receipt, and they had to get the cash register person to vouch for me.
To their credit, for a gift card so I bought something there this past weekend and it was pretty much frictionless. Walked by the guy at the door with the product and no receipt or anything and didn’t signal at me.
Walmart near me on the other hand has an interesting strategy. If I am carrying stuff in a bag, no problem. But if I skipped the bag, they ask to see my receipt. So guess you just need a plastic Walmart bag to shoplift…
You actually don’t need to show them the receipt if you’ve already purchased the goods. It’s your property now and they can get fucked. I do it all the time.
I bought some Beats Solo Buds right after Christmas. I had a trip upcoming and couldn’t wait for shipping so I looked at Best Buy and they said my local store had them. After waiting 20min for them to not find the right model or colour I went across the street to Target and bought them there, which still took at too long.
I order everything usually and my trial back in brick and mortar revealed it’s only gotten worse now.
Technically it would be trespassing, since you’re entering an area you’re not authorized to enter, but no damages, assuming you don’t like break the lock or something.
You’re not likely to get sued for nominal damages (one dollar) for a technical trespass. They might ask you to leave. If you have a key and nobody is around, go for it. The keys are generic.
You can actually just buy whatever keys you need online. When I worked in retail it was a major issue. Groups of thieves would come in and hand off the key to multiple people so each could go grab stuff from different areas.
Is it actually violating a law to unlock one of those cases if you don’t have any intention of actually stealing something?
It probably is.
My state has a definition in its shoplifting statute that includes tampering with packaging, removing tags, or defeating security devices even if the product does not leave the store. I’m sure others do as well. Technically they could probably bust you even if the very next thing you did was take the thing to the checkout and pay for it. Not worth it, in my opinion. Just buy from someone who doesn’t pull that shit and let that good old fashioned Free Market Economy these chucklefucks love so much take care of it.
Despite all the effort spent prosecuting it, there’s virtually no concrete evidence that retail theft — organized or otherwise — is on the rise. Data on retail theft provided to law enforcement and lawmakers comes exclusively from corporate retailers, or organizations funded by them, and is not independently vetted. Last year, the National Retail Federation was forced to retract its claim that organized retail theft cost its members “nearly half” of the $94.5 billion in lost inventory in 2021. One researcher put the actual figure closer to 5%.
Just making shit up so they have something to point to when the investors wonder why number didn’t go up enough.
Exactly - you see the little lock thing on the display and you’re like, aww shit I have to go find an employee, nevermind.
edit: Urban Anarchy idea - get some of those locks and randomly stick them on display cases!
My Walmart has a little button to summon an employee. The last time (as in, both the most recent time and the final time) I went there at night to try getting diaper rash cream for my baby I pressed the button, and waited.
And waited.
Pressed the button again.
And waited.
Sunk cost fallacy. I’ve already waited so long, what if as soon as I walk away to find an employee somebody shows up?
After 10 minutes I went to find an employee stocking the shelves and told them what I needed. Their answer was “yeah, we saw you buzzed but we don’t know who has the key. If we find out we’ll have them open it for you.”
So I left .
I hate Walmart so much.
You guys know this article is about Walgreens, right?
It’s about sales losses due to keeping items behind locks at Walgreens. The person you replied to gave an anecdote of the identical problem at another retailer, in order to emphasize that this is a clear problem for both retailers and customers. It hardly seems irrelevant to the conversation?
You know how in discussions people mention related things? This is one of those times, Sheldon.
Yeah but “These photos of Walmart customers will make you look twice!”
“I don’t want to bother them, they’re busy”
And underpaid
And understaffed
And they’re people. Ever since automatic checkout, I can get out there without talking to a single soul.
Every single time I see it, I add it to my Amazon cart. It’s not great.
article is paywalled. I found a similar article with no paywall: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/walgreens-shoplifting-retailer-james-kehoe/
paywalled
Headline is right.
'When you lock things up…you don’t sell as many of them’The irony…
I mean when you give things away you don’t sell as many of them either.
Selling stuff works best in an environment where the goods aren’t free but the people are.
People make money at roadside food stands based on the honor system. Anyone who just thinks “that’s naive” doesn’t know what they’re missing. A trust-based society that keeps accounts is the best society.
Reminder, using the reader function in Firefox skips almost all pay walls.
More and more sites are only partially loading the reader function info so that it cuts out at the same place as the preview part.
Used to be very helpful though!
I’ve noticed some will truncate if you scroll before entering reader mode, can you provide an example that didn’t work?
Archive copy of the Fortune article: https://archive.is/PoraP
Thank you! It wasn’t paywalled on my end and I wonder if it activates on traffic.
How interesting, and annoying. Thank you for the post regardless.
Didn’t we finally realize that the whole “shoplifting epidemic” was all bullshit to cover up inept corprate management?
Yes. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html
They overbuilt because if a competitor opened a store, they’d open on right next to it…
That strategy was never going to be profitable, they were trying to run competitors out of business.
Most of those stores were going. To close for one reason or another, the growth wasn’t sustainable but it made stock prices go up and then they had to invent a reason to close store that would keep stock prices high.
Case in point, my Nephew once worked for Target in what used to be their flagship store in the area. Several years ago they opened a new flagship store literally 2.9 miles up the road. As the crow flies I think it’s closer to 1.5. This wasn’t a move. They left both stores open. They’re still both open to this day.
Management immediately started bitching at all the low level employees that they weren’t “hitting numbers” anymore as if the cashiers or stockers had anything to do with this. Uh, dickhead, you cannibalized your own business because now 100% of the people who live in the direction of the new store aren’t going to drive right past it to come here; they’re going to go to the new store instead. You didn’t make the pie any bigger, all you did was take the same pie and slice it in half.
I don’t know how many millions of dollars it cost them to build, stock, and staff that new store for no goddamn reason whatsoever.
Yeah at some point the metric people used to value a stock was Square footage space, but that rule broke a long time ago.
ny times links are cancer.
I can’t read what that article says, I don’t pay for news.
I ran out to Walmart to grab my kid some cough medicine. It was locked behind the cabinet and since it was later than 6pm they couldn’t unlock it and told me to come back tomorrow.
I will never go back to Walmart for medicine…
Meanwhile, my local Walmart is expanding their caged goods selection and they have been removing call buttons.
Its time to invest in vending machines.
If theft is this bad, these stores should just switch back to the traditional model used by pharmacies and general stores. Consider this photo of a traditional pharmacy:
Or this old general store:
This is what these businesses used to look like. In traditional pharmacies and general stores, most goods were kept behind counters or at the very least within direct view of those behind counters. A traditional dry good store might literally just be a big counter in the front with a huge warehouse in the back. You show up with a list of goods you want, and the clerk would run into the back and grab everything you wanted.
The model of a store with aisles that customers wander through is not the historical norm. As industrialization improved, the relative costs of goods lowered, while the relative cost of labor increased. So it made sense for stores to accept a higher level of theft and shopliting by offloading the item-picking process to their customers. They got the customers to do a lot of the work for them, but in exchange they accepted a higher level of theft.
Now they’re trying to have things both ways. They still want customers to do all the work of picking out their purchases from the shelves, but they’ve decided they don’t like the level of shoplifting that level of low labor cost business inevitably produces. They want the customers to do most of the labor of clerks, but they don’t want to accept the level of theft that inevitably produces.
Like cannabis dispensaries…
Yup. For whatever reason (likely regulations), most dispensaries are set up a lot like traditional general stores. Everything behind the counter.
I think it’s a security thing. Add in the whole “all cash business” thing, and it’s no surprise that I see armed security inside sometimes.
In Germany, pharmacies look like that today.
deleted by creator
Especially when you have one employee trying to cover the entire 16,000 square foot store. She isn’t able to stop checking people out to come help me get allergy medicine? It’s pretty bad when Walmart provides a better experience .
Several of the Walmart locations near me do this as well, now. One of them locks up diapers and baby formula, deodorant, shaving products, cough and allergy medications, basically all of their cosmetics department, the entirety of the tools department, most of paints, and all of electronics except for some reason the DVD’s. This is in addition to the usual stuff that’s under lock and key like the jewelry counter, ammo, and knives.
As a result, as if I didn’t already need a reason, I just don’t go there anymore.
Retailers have consistently made retail shit, and then they turn around and whine that they’re losing money because everyone is shopping online. Well, this is surely another part of it. What customer is going to stand around waiting for one of the three employees you have left in the store find the keys and unlock the cabinet to buy a fucking can of shaving cream and perp walk them to the checkout so they can pay right then and there versus just having Amazon deliver it tomorrow without the hassle?
And thus, Amazon takes over another few square feet of the world.
I’ve been thinking about opening a regular corner store, but without having a ton of superfluous junk like all these other stores have. Like one or two options for a toothbrush, a few options for toothpaste, etc. Basically just the more popular stuff that people want to buy and make it easy for them to actually buy it. Maybe even offer a drive up window so you can grab a few things on your way home. People will pay good money to avoid Walmart and also for convenience.
Do it, and call it “The Lockup”, because you only sell shit that’s locked up everywhere else.
Yeah, no shit. It’s almost like the entire fucking world was telling you this when you embarked on this ridiculous plan.
Just recently, my wife wanted an eyebrow pencil, so we popped into a drugstore. All the makeup stuff was behind locked cabinets. We just turned around and went to a different store.
It seems like a particularly bad idea for anything that people might want to look at different versions of. If I wanted AA batteries that were locked, I might be okay saying, “Hey, can you grab me the batteries?” But for something that I want to look through the options, I’m not going to do that with the employee standing there tapping their foot.
Reminds me of getting the guy to unlock the video game and he hands me the game thinking we are gonna go ring it up, and I am just standing reading the back of the case, only to put it back and ask for another one.
Just ends up being me and Walmart bro shopping for a game together
That’s funny, and good on you for not being intimidated into being rushed or leaving. If they want to lock the stuff up, they should deal with the impact.
It’s a tremendous pain the ass buying vegetarian vitamins because I need to see the ingredients… On the back of the box, behind a locked door.
Sometimes the keywarden just waits there while I read through a bunch of them.
I go bonkers trying to pick what version of a tool I want at home Depot, you usually can’t even pick them up anymore, they’re hard bolted to the display.
Yeah, some things I don’t buy online because I want to hold it in my hand before I decide. Makes it tough when they’re locked up or bolted down.
No shit.
No better way to kill brick and mortar than to make people interact more just to be able to pay you money for something.
Not brick and mortar but a couple of sports leagues I was involved in. “We shouldn’t make it hard for people to give us money”.
I walked into walmart to buy underwear and socks, they were all in lockup. I opened the amazon app on my phone, matched up the exact thing I wanted that was behind glass and it showed up at my house the next for for approximately the same price.
The fuck? I understand locking up stuff like booze, since that shit do be quite expensive, but fucking underwear?
underwear, deodorant, and toothpaste are commonly locked up where I’m from. it’s the most stolen stuff as it’s a basic need for the homeless
It’s almost as if we should be providing these for free to less fortunate folks.
I remember one time finding a posting on marketplace looking for a tent as someone ruined theirs the night before. I had extra camp gear so I contacted them and hooked em up with a tent, sleeping bag and an air mattress. They were so sweet, I felt so bad for them and wish I could of helped them more.
Imagine how much it would cost for these companies to import through their supply chains some exceptionally cheap necessary goods to hand out for free to anybody who wants them.
People with any kind of money aren’t going to be using shit quality stuff but people who need it to survive will gladly take something that works well enough. It’s not like they’re stealing rolexes or luxury clothes when they go for that pack of socks.
This is not where I live. I think shaving razors are sometimes locked up, but nothing else.
There’s a cvs near me in a very affluent shopping area that locks up all the bars of chocolate and candy so that kids don’t steal them and take them to the movies.
In Boston a ton of shit is locked up at most convenience stores because the homeless population keeps growing and nobody wants to pay for shelters.
I think it’s just the next iteration of the detergent theft crap. Everyone needs socks and underwear; they’re stocked in bulk and are easy to resell.
When I worked at Walmart people were constantly ripping open the underwear packages and throwing them all over the place and we would have to repackage them every day
They did steal them too a lot of the times only one from a pack (if you have to steal underwear please take the whole thing not just one)
I’ve tried asking for help, but the person I find doesn’t work in that department and the assigned person doesn’t show up for like 30 minutes. It’s faster to drive across town to the store that doesn’t have my item behind glass.
The store in my neighborhood thought it wise to lock up the fancy Italian coffee beans. I’m absolutely sure it will not stem theft and will absolutely decrease sales. The bags are big - these are the 1kg bags - so I’m fairly sure most of the theft that is happening is internal anyway.
Yeah, I’m sure a lot of what they assume is shoplifting is actually internal. That’s going to happen if companies don’t pay their employees enough to cover food and rent.
Ah I hadn’t thought about that but that’s a good point
