And in the world of The Progressive Retail Experience:
Walgreens CEO describes drawback of anti-shoplifting strategy: “When you lock things up… you don’t sell as many of them.”
From Fortune magazine:
After reporting a 52% increase in shrink, or lost inventory, in 2020 and 2021, Walgreens invested in increased security that proved to be “largely ineffective.” And while many drug stores have taken to locking up commonly looted goods, Wentworth admitted, “When you lock things up… you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively.”
During the lengthy interview quoted above, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth hints at the development of “creative” solutions for customers demoralised by unimpeded thieving and the subsequent lockdown status of many stores. Paying customers, a seemingly shrinking demographic, will, we’re assured, be offered a “better… in-store experience” via “new scheduling optimisation logic” and “leveraging our omnichannel capabilities.”
Oddly, Mr Wentworth, whose business is planning to close another 450 stores during the coming year, avoids any use of the words shoplifting, looting, or theft.
Perhaps he finds such terms unsavoury, much like the Observer‘s Martha Gill, the Guardian‘s Owen Jones, and academic Gloria Laycock, according to whom, the law-abiding should resign themselves to ever more inconvenience and social degradation, and being alienated from their own neighbourhoods, because punishing habitual criminals – who are, we’re told, “traumatised” and “vulnerable” – is somehow unfair and terribly unfashionable.
Update:
Commenter [+] adds,
So normal people don’t like shopping in a prison surrounded by ferals? Who would have guessed?
It has to be said, the prospect of shopping for shampoo in a store where pretty much everything, including shampoo, is under lock and key and requires elaborate and protracted negotiation in order to actually buy it, and in which looters might at any time appear and start smashing up the place, with little opposition, does not entice. But hey, maybe that’s just me.
John D observes, not without cause,
If a store has even basic stuff locked up it’s a sign the neighbourhood is unsafe and you should leave.
It doesn’t exactly bode well. And as noted previously,
The preferred, progressive trajectory, as implied above, entails a more demoralised, more dangerous, low-trust society. In which pretty much anything one might wish to buy will be out of reach or shuttered away, and in which every customer will by default be treated as suspicious… We will lock up the product, but not the thief. And utopia will surely follow.
And being insulted in this way, as if one were uncivilised and not to be trusted, seems unlikely to invite warm feelings or repeat custom.
Quetzalovercoatl adds,
The killing part of this is that the answer to the problem is apparent to all, but no one in power will take the necessary steps. It’s almost like they’ve never seen
It’s Not About the Nail.
At which point, readers may wish to cast an eye over the previous shoplifting post, linked above, in which you almost have to marvel at the mental contortions, the elaborate contrivance. Whereby this increasingly aggressive and routine predation is romanticised, despite all evidence to the contrary, including countless videoed examples and the use of machetes. And in which, the aforementioned Observer columnist dismisses the thieving and looting as “relatively trivial,” as businesses close and entire neighbourhoods are demoralised and robbed of amenities.
Mental contortions in which the obvious, practical, and traditional response to such behaviour is hastily waved aside as “exactly the wrong approach” and “the worst instincts of the electorate.” As if arresting and imprisoning habitual thieves, thereby interrupting their criminal adventures, should be considered a total failure and unworthy of the effort. Instead, our Observer columnist and her equally progressive peers blame the retailers, the victims, and suggest more padlocks, and more barriers on shelves of shampoo.
Oh, and “decriminalise shop theft,” of course.
As if that weren’t already a common assumption of those doing the looting. And as if the lack of prompt punishment, and the consequent air of impunity, somehow wouldn’t embolden the creatures being so grotesquely indulged. A boldness with no obvious upper limit. As if signs of weakness in one area of life, this cowed impotence, couldn’t possibly inspire other kinds of crime and antisocial behaviour. As if the response could never, ever be, “Ooh, what else can I get away with?”
All to avoid enforcing even the most basic standards of behaviour. Of civilisation. Because, what, somehow that would look bad…?
For those unfamiliar with The Progressive Retail Experience, the series to date, numbering some 608 entries, can be found here.
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