Viral TikTok shows steak locked up to prevent theft at Walmart

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In 1950's grocery stores the fresh meat was behind a counter, you had to talk to someone to get it. Stolen raw steaks are easily fenced to restaurant owners, that has been going on for a long time.
Whole Foods and the “higher” end markets still do, as well as the Asian/Mexican market there. But I’ve seen meat get left behind the shelves at Whole Wallet, like people at Home Depot leaving tinted paint. I’m seeing more cryovac packs at one of the Asian-centric stores.
 
For years, I've always thought that eventually there will be stores where all products are under/behind glass....something like a candy vending machine. In other words, you pay for it and the machine drops it down for you to pick up. We're getting closer to that. As most of you know, a lot of smaller automotive items at WM are now behind locked glass.
This is essentially what Service Merchandise did for years.

Funny story about WalMart - we went shopping there yesterday, and I needed a new watch battery. They have a small box at the jewelry counter that has around fifteen small pull-out drawers filled with all the different battery sizes. This box is easily accessible and doesn't have any provisions for a lock. Since there's never anyone at the jewelry counter, I always walk up, open the drawer with the battery I need, pick one out, and walk up front to pay. I've done this for years.

This time, as I'm picking out the battery I need, the woman who actually runs the counter shows up. She asks my wife and I if we need any help - just picking up a battery, I say.

The counter woman tells me, "I'm going to have to walk you up front with that."

My wife and I look at each other in bemusement. Everyone involved in this conversation is in their 60's.

To make a long story short, the counter woman sheepishly apologizes, but says that's what she's been told to do.

So....we tell her that we just started shopping, and we'll have to come back in a few minutes to make it our last stop so she can walk us up front. Of course, when we return 10 minutes later, she's nowhere to be found, and I grab a battery out of the drawer. I then walked it up front and paid for it (sorry, counter woman). (y)
 
They lock up games and Beats and Bose headphones too. The outrage!

Gangs stealing stuff is insane. Glad I live out in the semi-boonies of NH - but drugs have made their way here.
 
For years, I've always thought that eventually there will be stores where all products are under/behind glass....something like a candy vending machine. In other words, you pay for it and the machine drops it down for you to pick up. We're getting closer to that. As most of you know, a lot of smaller automotive items at WM are now behind locked glass.

Probably be like a pawn shop where they buzz you in and buzz you out….
 
Without going politial, it is a game of cat and mouse ever since retail going self service from the general store to supermarket days and now further along to the self checkout days.

Very soon we will have a lot of stores being membership only and the bulk of sales would be big items that are hard to steal, and if you do steal you would be caught because it is a membership store.

No credit card? You better have some sort of electronic payment because they don't want to deal with cash and their security cost. Want small items locally? There's a 7-11 2.0 next door, or you can order online and get it tomorrow if it is too expensive and you can wait 1 day.
 
Without going politial, it is a game of cat and mouse ever since retail going self service from the general store to supermarket days and now further along to the self checkout days.

Very soon we will have a lot of stores being membership only and the bulk of sales would be big items that are hard to steal, and if you do steal you would be caught because it is a membership store.

No credit card? You better have some sort of electronic payment because they don't want to deal with cash and their security cost. Want small items locally? There's a 7-11 2.0 next door, or you can order online and get it tomorrow if it is too expensive and you can wait 1 day.


And all of that relied on the honor system that we were taught right from the beginning and all the way through life. Somewhere along the way that stopped.
 
If it is a smash and grab, I always thought store LPs were not allowed to lay hands on the person? Not everyone does this but, as mentioned, was this an isolated incident or are Smash and Grab robberies on the rise again?
Have you been watching the news?

Yes retail theft is on the rise, everything is free now and paying the clerk is optional, that is if you live in or around areas where laws aren't enforced. Walmart in general tends to attract this behavior, no idea why..... It think it's common to have $40 shaver heads and small expensive items locked up though, too opportunistic. Anyway ever been to an inner city fast food restaurant? 2" bullet proof glass with a turnstile to get you food from. You can't even reach your hand inside to grab anything.
Without going politial, it is a game of cat and mouse ever since retail going self service from the general store to supermarket days and now further along to the self checkout days.

Very soon we will have a lot of stores being membership only and the bulk of sales would be big items that are hard to steal, and if you do steal you would be caught because it is a membership store.

No credit card? You better have some sort of electronic payment because they don't want to deal with cash and their security cost. Want small items locally? There's a 7-11 2.0 next door, or you can order online and get it tomorrow if it is too expensive and you can wait 1 day.
 
The Starsky's stores in Toronto is still that way, its an eastern European grocery store. The meat counter in near 100' long with ~10 or more people behind the counter. You still pay at the checkout though.
Fortino's, Highland Farms (longest counter ever) and Longo's too; Fresh Market in the US. Starsky's deli counter is the longest though.
 
Ah yes, Walmart.

Using the country's infrastructure to build their massive empire while exploiting their workers - relying on the the taxpayers to subsidize their pay with government benefits. And people just eat it up because they can get their Chinese crap for cheap.

I think I'll go to Walmart and steal some steaks on principle.
Last I checked, Wal*Mart doesn't have a higher percentage of its workforce on assistance compared to the population in general.

If someone has 12 kids and works at Wal*Mart, they are probably getting assistance. Not because of the wages, but because they chose to have 12 kids.

I'm not saying Wal*Mart is an angel beyond reproach.

They simply reflect society as a whole. IIRC, their margins are about 3% and if all the profit was given to workers, it would be less than $1/hour in additional wages or somewhere in that range.

The numbers are in the billions because the sales are in the hundreds of billions.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-profit-margin
 
Without going politial, it is a game of cat and mouse ever since retail going self service from the general store to supermarket days and now further along to the self checkout days.

Very soon we will have a lot of stores being membership only and the bulk of sales would be big items that are hard to steal, and if you do steal you would be caught because it is a membership store.

No credit card? You better have some sort of electronic payment because they don't want to deal with cash and their security cost. Want small items locally? There's a 7-11 2.0 next door, or you can order online and get it tomorrow if it is too expensive and you can wait 1 day.
Amazon is well on that way - as soon as Go comes to Whole Foods, game over. And Amazon is willing to get others use it(it’s also revenue for AWS). Walmart and the dollar stores will fight for the crumbs.
 
Whole Foods and the “higher” end markets still do, as well as the Asian/Mexican market there. But I’ve seen meat get left behind the shelves at Whole Wallet, like people at Home Depot leaving tinted paint. I’m seeing more cryovac packs at one of the Asian-centric stores.

I still see meat counters at larger supermarkets including Safeway and Lucky. A smaller location might not have one though. However, that's in addition to the prepacked meat. One thing about those is that plastic wrap they use is designed to let in oxygen. Otherwise, fresh cut beef looks purplish, and most people want to see it look pink. I guess in a meat cooler it has enough time to take in oxygen.

However, someone could still conceivably steal those, although probably not by just take a bunch and running.
 
Home Depot has cameras and warning sounds on the tool, plumbing, and electrical aisles, on some stores. All have it in tools I think. I found it a bit unnerving to have the sounds. I have to go again to remember what the sound was, it made you feel like a thief. As soon as you go in the tool section it starts the watching. Its their money, don’t blame them.
In days of yore there were less people, and people were watched by clerks. I don’t know if people were more honest. In small towns you had to be more honest as everyone knows everything. Big cities are very anonymous, and thieves have cars to get to cities. A thief would be more inclined to drive somewhere farther away to do the stealing. Like to the richest area they know of.
 
I don't necessarily get how some of this works. My kid likes Hot Wheels, and they're less than $1 each. But now they have a locked case for that along with other toy cars that might all be less than $5. However, they often have freestanding or hanging displays of those in the same store. Sometimes it might even be right next to the locked case.
 
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