It was when I saw an entire crate of orange juice exit my local supermarket that I knew something had died. The Artful Dodger school of shoplifting has officially been boarded up, its artisan poachers and pilferers as redundant to the modern world of thieving as swag bags, eye masks and soft sole shoes.
There’s no longer any attempt at discretion or skill when it comes to shoplifting in my nearest Co-op in south London. The thieves don’t enter in trench coats and furtively peruse the aisles. They stroll in, take as much as they can carry and walk out again, knowing that the worst punishment they face is being given some scatological invective from the five-foot-nothing woman of venerable age who is usually locked inside her till cubicle.
I’ve seen the new breed of urban kleptomaniac in action four times in the past two weeks. And it’s making me wonder if perhaps the reason why Co-op were so slow in restocking their shelves after the recent cyber-attack on their network is that, quite frankly, anything they put back on the shelves, around my way at least, will just disappear into the grasping hands of looters.
As for us SW9 shoppers who still have the quaint notion that we really should pay for milk, bread and loo roll, a successful trip to my local Co-op means possessing the ability to juggle as well as W.C. Fields did in The Old Fashioned Way while also displaying patience that would test the fortitude of Gandhi. In their wisdom, my Co-op has decided to remove all the baskets from the shop, rightly seeing them as a receptacle designed to make shoplifting even easier. For us men and women of honest toil, however, this means that what you buy is restricted to your balancing skills with cat food, courgettes and chocolate.
The Co-op has also opted to lock the doors of the fridges containing any product with meat or dairy in it. I have composed limericks, re-tied my boot laces and sung three verses of Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ while waiting for an assistant to find the right key so I can access some medium cheddar.
Yet none of it stops the crooks. And of late, I’ve started to become suspicious that perhaps there’s a Faustian pact going on between supermarkets and shoplifters. My local Co-op has just small door for customers to enter and exit through. The one security guard who does an occasional shift is a man who looks old enough to be David Attenborough’s dad and is clearly not getting paid enough to put up entirely futile physical resistance to a man a third of his age who is intent on leaving without paying for his bottle of chenin blanc and packet of Quavers. Two security guards of fighting weight and age could eliminate the shoplifting overnight by simply standing in front of the door and refusing to let any suspected thieves leave. But the shop hasn’t done this, despite the tsunami of stealing.
Shoplifting isn’t redistribution of wealth. It’s cocky, damn-the-consequences-because-there-aren’t-any gluttony
Call me cynical, but could it be perhaps that some supermarkets have calculated that it’s actually cheaper to let shoplifters go about their warm work with freedom than it would be to employ an extra security guard who, quite reasonably, would demand more than minimum wage for what is a potentially dangerous occupation?
I’m not picking on Co-op exclusively. The Sainsbury’s, Iceland and Superdrug near me all have similar problems. But is it ludicrous to ponder whether the bean-counters in various head offices have done some quick maths and found that the agency fees, potential insurance claims, DBS checks and even the cost of the hi-vis jackets that the creation of more security jobs would entail simply cost far more than seeing a fair-sized litany of wine, doughnuts and chocolate disappear from their shelves each day?
It’s not especially difficult to prevent the vast majority of the general public from walking through a shop door if you don’t want them to. And that’s all that is required to stop the shoplifting epidemic in my part of south London reaching the point where I suspect the shop doors themselves might be the next item bandits walk away with. Yet if it’s a choice between job creation and low-cost pilfering of goods that seldom add up to more than £15 in value each time, I wouldn’t be surprised if supermarkets in high-steal areas have decided to just let the bad guys win.
Shoplifting isn’t redistribution of wealth. It’s cocky, damn-the-consequences-because-there-aren’t-any gluttony. I have never seen anyone steal the kind of goods which could feed a young family a hot meal. It’s chocolate and wine, not bread and pasta that gets a shelf-rustler excited. This boiling rash of picayune robberies are inevitable if shops aren’t prepared to invest in the kind of ultra-basic security detail that would struggle with an armed raid but are capable of stopping a large man with a purloined pint of milk in his tracks.
As for me, I’ll just carry on with my obsolescent habit of using my wallet and the self-checkout. The only thing I’m taking away from shops without payment is a sense of righteous anger. And that, I imagine, doesn’t taste anywhere near as good as a nicked Kit Kat Chunky.
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