The Decline and Fall of the Retail Empire
Recent headlines have made the point that retail theft has reached all-time highs and retailers are concerned about their long-term profits as a result. Theft — along with other inventory losses known in the industry as “shrink” — has been around since the start of retailing.
Employee theft was long pointed to as the major culprit, and with good reason. Cashier “sweethearting,” i.e., not ringing up every item for friends was a favorite. Lots of merchandise came in the back door and went right back out as certain people looked in the opposite direction.
Today retailers are blaming professional shoplifting rings for the increase in losses. According to them, the pros are cleaning them out of high-ticket items and reselling them in online stores. This is no doubt a problem — 30 years ago it was flea markets — but I doubt it’s quite the scourge claimed.
In my store days we always kept a watchful eye on certain types coming in the stores. The greasy, long-hair wearing a long coat in the middle of summer. When we saw one come in, a couple of us would follow that person around the store, pretending to do something else but making it obvious that we were on to them. Most of the time, those being followed would leave after a few minutes.
Once, after following a couple of suspicious-looking women around, they walked out and one yelled over her shoulder, “next time I want to get treated like a thief I know where to go!”
Twice in the last week, at two different stores, that’s how I felt. Both occurrences were in the self-checkout; one at Walmart, one at Whole Foods. In each case, the “system” saw something it didn’t like and locked up, forcing me to wait for a clerk to come over and review my order.
In both instances, I was found not guilty and allowed to pay for my order and leave without further review. But that’s how low the shopping experience has sunk: we are now expected to do the work of checking out our own order while we are watched by some all-seeing AI. Do something unexpected, go too fast, or stumble when looking up the code for turnips, and everything locks up until you can be deemed trustworthy by someone you wouldn’t trust to return your wallet if you left it behind.
Retail marketers like to talk of the “shopping experience” as if it’s still the goal. Guess what — the goal increasingly is to get out without feeling violated. For some people, the goal takes a dark turn and becomes a game of “what can I get away with?” Maybe the increase in theft has more than a little to do with making shoppers feel like criminals to start with.
After working in stores and then running marketing for one of the largest supermarkets in the US, the idea of ordering online and having it delivered is anathema to me. But I am warming to the idea more and more as each trip to the store feels like a game of Operation. It takes all my concentration to go through self-checkout and not bump the sides to set off the buzzer.
Retail — especially food retail — has always been a game of pennies. It doesn’t take much to go from black to red on the ledger, and I understand the ongoing battle for cost control. But forcing me to do the work that used to require weeks of training, and then making me feel like a criminal when I go outside your pre-set parameters, doesn’t feel like a way to enhance the shopping experience.
