Remember folks, if you see someone shoplifting food, no you didn’t.
I work for coles and I always give them a nod of approval then walk off like nothing happend when I see people stealing, fuck coles, they profited over a billion dollars last year off of ripping of customers and workers.
Yeah, I did, and I’ll actively cover for them (the food “shoplifter”)
Yeah, of you feel guilty, buy them something.
People taking fruit, cereal, milk… sure. But taking premium steaks, beer/wine/spirits, or anything else they can resell - no, that’s just theft.
Theft from billion dollar companies is a cool thing to do 😎
Got me fucked up if you think in gonna report it though
I understand your point…but at the same time depending on the shop/company owing the store, if they make millions and pay shitty wages or whatever bad, fuck then
I feel like you assume they’re reselling for a business. They could be buying baby shoes, or a gift for that nephew for his birthday, to make him forget how bad life is.
No, most people who steal steaks are taking them to the pub and selling them for drugs or similar. Huge problem in the UK at least.
If you want baby shoes you steal baby shoes.
This comment is just so tragic in its truthfulness.
We’re all stolen from every day. The difference is that we’re told that it’s OK when it happens to us but that it’s wrong when it happens to the company stealing from us.
No, they’ll sell it cheaper than the store
That doesn’t make it not theft
True, but if it ain’t a mom and pop sized shop then it ain’t my business. Go on down the road to the store that came in underpriced in order to drive out ma and pa so they could raise prices once those stores are out of business.
idk for you but in my area the “ma and pa” stores are all like 2x the price of the big names because they all have a weird gimmick like “all we sell is gluten free”
I’ve seen a lot of those and tend not to go there. Good luck to them, but I hate the gimmicks.
I visit the farmer’s market pretty often where it’s families selling things they grew or made. I like the tomatoes there and I get to buy better meat that isn’t factory farmed. There’s a regular independent grocery store where my parents live. The prices are a little higher but the produce tends to be better (mostly fresh and local) and there’s actually a butcher in the meat department. Those kinds of places are dying.
Alternate headline : “Supermarkets have jacked the prices so high, making record profits in tough times, that people have resorted to stealing in order to live”.
I saw a shitty looking steak at coles the other day, over $60 a KG. It had bloody RFID sensors on it. What a world.
That’s more an issue of the limits that earth has to make unsustainable foods
Pay people more so theft goes down? Fucking never!
Give body cameras to staff. Sounds perfect
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
In Australia Woolies and Coles are artificially jacking prices up, this isn’t about wages but about corporate greed using inflation as a disguise to rip off literally everyone. Instead they should be forced to lower prices.
What if I told you all inflation was just corporate greed.
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just don’t charge more for stuff lmao
Then you’d be wrong
no u
Well articulated, good job
Sure is a shame we accidentally covered up the cameras 90% of the time.
Would Coles paying their staff more prevent non employees from stealing?
I mean, people should get payed more, but what do you expect a single (relatively) small grocery chain to do? Also this is more about protecting staff as they have to be the ones to turn them on when an incident occurs rather than an always-on thing
In the context of the country this is taking place in, Coles cannot be considered small by any stretch of the imagination
Literally part of an almost duopoly
Probably a large reason inflation is so high too, putting prices up “because inflation” and pulling record profits
This is not a small grocery chain. This is one of the two largest supermarket chains in Australia.
People can’t afford to shop at those small stores. When I was making $100k I exclusively shopped at locally owned stores. But after being laid off, I can only afford to shop at Walmart and Amazon.
Coles is part of a duopoly with Woolies in Australia, so… They aren’t small by any means.
Considering how much shit I see retail workers go through, this… honestly seems like a rational response. I’m sure it will immediately turn into middle managers using it to abuse employees of course though.
Sure, a rational response in a dystopian country
My life has gotten so fucked I’m starting to think about shoplifting just to feed myself.
Yeah, that’s about where our society is pushing people. I hope you find better work - I know that sound like a platitude, but try reaching out to people you know and hope for luck. You deserve a living wage and respect.
That sounds like a horrible situation you’re in and I hope your life picks up soon. You should have a look at your local council website for food rescue/food bank initiatives in the area as they are definitely a safer avenue for you than theft. I have a relative who volunteers for one of these services who spends a few hours each week driving around to the local Colesworths/Bakers Delights etc. picking up food (ie. bakery/deli/produce goods etc. - not sure about actual packaged stock) that is near its use-by/best before date (and would have been thrown out otherwise) and brings it to a market where absolutely anyone can go and take it. All for free.
Don’t like the increasing surveillance but this seems like a pro worker move actually. You don’t have to turn them on to be a snitch, you just have to turn them on if you’re being harassed. I got fired after being harassed by a customer and my employer took their side. If I had footage of it and audio then things might have been different
2 employees in the store
riiiiiiiiight
Kinda like grocery store bitching about people abusing self check out kiosks 🤡
What are you talking about?
I only buy bananas at self checkout, it’s the reason I go to self checkout.
50lbs of bananas and nothing else.
Avocados and all sorts of other pricey things look really yellow and oblong when there’s no manned registers open. I’ve never been confronted about the 4-6 bananas I buy when I used the self check. I really wonder if they can even prosecute you. You just did a bad job, guess they should fire you from your unpaid employment.
I’m not aware of any court precedent about self checkouts. I’d imagine no court would let you off on something like that. I could see missing scanning an item, but willfully miss registering produce so you get a cheaper price, especially if they catch you doing it on multiple occasions is not going to be allowed.
Mushroom bags are your best friend, can’t see inside and unless you got a weirdo worker who cares way too much in the self service, no one’s gonna check if you have mushrooms or whatnot, those cameras on the checkout are just to scare people into thinking they’re being watched.
They are being warched but what’s re they going to do when people are poor and need to eat?
They get watched after the fact if they suspect something, if you’re just acting normal and doing your shopping, no one’s gonna know, fresh Produce counts are always off, so they’ll just think someone’s messed up counting and fix it…
I wouldn’t have to abuse the self checkouts if they just shut the fuck up and let me do the job they’re not paying me to do.
I’m 99% sure we’re gonna start seeing an uptick in employees “accidentally” obscuring and/or destroying these body cams
The cameras aren’t on at all times. Employees are supposed to turn on the cameras to record abusive behavior by scumbags because the company found that people who were stealing were also abusive towards staff in 1 in 4 incidents. It’s so employees have a record of the interaction. This also means when the thieving piece of shit makes fake complaints its even easier to ignore because the employee has proof.
Having said all that, if you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t.
Most people are able to get assistance with food which is why most people don’t actually steal food they steal stuff to sell to buy drugs.
If you’re gonna steal food, go steal from walmart or some big retailer that can handle the losses. The little stores like this don’t deserve the theft.
Coles isn’t small. They’re part of what is essentially a duopoly in Australia.
They have over 800 shops, they aren’t small.
Hey, look, it’s somebody having a strong opinion about something they’re ignorant about!
Coles isn’t even a small store! It’s basically the Target of Australia, with Woolies being Walmart.
but retail employees will get fired, unlike police
They’re not police, they actually have accountability.
The comments about poor independent grocer Coles is doing my head in.
In the USA shoplifting is up because most states no longer prosecute. Which is also the reason a lot of retailers have or are in the process of closing stores in big cities. Had a friend that worked at Riteaid, once a week several women would come in with trash bags and empty the makeup section. Even with them on video nothing came on it.
Well, the police have to do work and find the people. You can’t expect the police to actually do anything. That’s asking way to much. Ask anyone who’s ever needed the police to do their jobs (aside from beating or shooting folks who don’t pass the patented brown paper bag text of course).
I’m sorry, but that is just not accurate (they also shoot your dog, when they try to enter the wrong house)
Shoplifting is up by a very, very inconsequential amount, stores aren’t closing from it
He is right when it comes to the UK though: Article today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66819837 Earlier this week, referencing violence towards shop keepers too. Coop having a very rough time with it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66784250
I’m not trusting the paper owned by Bezos on anything. Sorry.
Watch the video then. It’s from an anarchist. He says essentially the same things as the article but doesn’t dance around the issue or it’s implications. As long as you’re aware of the biases of corporate media, you can still glean useful information from it.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The supermarket recently announced a $1.1 billion annual profit, but it also reported a spike in shoplifting and attacks directed at staff.
Theft is costing Australian grocery giants hundreds of millions of dollars annually, with Coles reporting a 20 per cent jump in stock loss.
“The use of these cameras has seen a substantial reduction in the amount of abuse and physical incidents our teams have faced,” a Woolworths spokesperson said.
Retail theft is up across the board, driven by the rising cost of living, according to the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees’ Association.
Mr Peak says while the association welcomes the use of cameras, it believes they should only be used for deterring or filming threats towards staff, rather than “asset protection” for supermarkets.
“We don’t want any suggestion that workers are some kind of mobile security camera – that’s where we can absolutely see this actually [causing] violence and abuse.”
The original article contains 333 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
