As a cis woman living in post-Roe America, I didn’t think my feelings of patriotism had any farther to fall, but your latest “loss prevention” measure has surprised me by alienating me yet further from the AmeriCone Dream®️.
Yesterday I swung by your store on my way home, hoping to pick up fixings for a quick dinner and ice cream for dessert. Imagine my confusion when I tried the handle on the freezer case door only to find it locked—and taped to the door beside it, a sign instructing me to push a red button for assistance accessing the ice cream pints within.
I dutifully pushed the button and waited for about ten minutes, shivering in the cold of the frozen aisle, before finally shaking the icicles from my nose hairs and accepting that nobody in your chronically understaffed store was coming to help me. I proceeded to check out without the Cherry Garcia I had come for.
You successfully deterred an ice cream seeker, but not the one you probably wanted to deter.
As I understand it, the cost to you of the predicted rate of shoplifting is already factored into the prices your customers pay. I can imagine why ice cream might be one of the most pilfered items—it’s calorically dense, sweet enough to take the edge off for someone who’s withdrawing from an illicit substance, and refreshingly cool. So, as far as I’m concerned, just let the poor people and the addicts steal the ice cream.
In fact, you sort of already do: one cold case out of eight was left unlocked, the one containing the larger quantities of ice cream. A few pints could even be accessed by reaching one’s arm into the next case over via the opening for the 1.5-quart and 1-gallon tubs. So those least able to afford to be sticklers for specific brands and flavors—i.e., those not planning to stop by the register on the way out—can still grab a good-enough option to fulfill their needs. It’s only customers like me—people with the intention of paying and the privilege of pickiness—who are likely to be meaningfully deterred from leaving your stores with ice cream. What a stupid, annoying self-own! Get it together.
Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous and we’ll illustrate it! Send your unsigned rant, love letter, confession, or accusation to ianonymous@thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and the guilty.
You lost me after “cis”.
The Fred Meyer were go to has the entire beauty/cosmetics section of the store blocked off now and you have to go in there and make a separate purchase at a register in there and then keep your receipt if you want to shop for anything else in the store. Target has almost everything locked. It’s getting really bad.
“Just let anybody take all the free ice cream / snacks / liquor they want without paying” is some genius-level business advice.
@1 Of course they did. For the life of me I don’t know why you spend your time reading this site, let alone commenting on it.
In principle, I have no objection to stores restricting access to certain merchandise. That’s not new. Walk into any bookstore that deals in used books and you’ll almost surely find the most valuable ones are kept in a separate case, either behind the counter or under lock and key. No one I know of has ever complained about that.
But stores that do this with high-volume products like ice cream make a big mistake if they don’t designate an employee whose sole (or at least paramount) job is unlocking cases. That person shouldn’t be given any other tasks that they can’t immediately drop whenever a customer presses the call button. If a store can’t or won’t do this (which appears to have been the case here), they’re almost surely better off not locking up the product, even if it does result in some level of theft. Few people are going to wait around for more than a minute or two before they shrug and move on. I suspect this is especially true for ice cream, which is often an impulse purchase and one that at least some people will reconsider if they’re forced to stand there and ponder it for any length of time.
This IA needs to get together with the Security IA from a few weeks ago and revolutionize the grocery industry. This surely would be better in an email to the corporate complaints department, but heard IA, I too despise grocery shopping.
tbass1981 dear, Safeway is doing the same thing – a store within a store for the highly desired merchandise.
It’s actually sort of retro. Back in the day if you were to go to a department store, you would pay for each item at the local sales counter, and small expensive things like fragrances and jewelry were always kept under lock and key.
And when I was just a tiny Catalina, Papa Vel-DuRay would go to the state-run liquor store, put me on the counter, and ask the clerk for whatever liquor he was buying. The clerk would retrieve the bottle(s) bring them to the front and collect payment. (Note that this was in Iowa, which was not nearly as uptight as Washington state when it came to matters of Alcohol. If someone had attempted to bring a toddler into a WSLB store, they would have had the child placed in the foster home system)
Go easy on criminals, which progressives are always calling for, and this is what you get: stores that have to lock up the merchandise.
Congratulations
And we were told that crime is down. If this isn’t proof that’s a lie, I don’t know what would be.
@4: She identified herself as a woman. So the correct pronoun is “she”, not “they”.
So you think the police are liars, Coolidge dollar, dear? Are you one of those anarchists who are always breaking things?
@9 I’ll probably regret responding, but I’ve decided it’s a point worth clarifying in a public forum: I don’t know what this woman’s preferred pronouns are, and chances are you don’t either. In general, I default to “they” in cases where a person unknown to me has not specified otherwise. I’m not urging anyone else to adopt this practice (and I’m open to serious, thoughtful arguments against it), but it’s the rule I’ve personally settled on as least likely to cause discomfort.
@11: It’s your false assumption that everyone has or inquires about preferred pronouns. They’re like any other article of speech, up to the writer or speaker for which the usage of has been innocuous and non-controversial and should remain so. She said she’s a woman, so to accommodate the nonbinary is unnecessary.
@11 – Obviously it’s very rude to misgender someone who is presenting as the opposite sex, but that’s a “correct” pronoun error – not a disregard of a preferred pronoun.
(I better stop.)
@13 You said in your first post that the writer “lost you after cis”… so how do you know she identifies as a woman? That’s literally the word after cis.
What you meant to say is “I’m gonna be a dumb asshole on the internet again for absolutely no reason and argue with a bunch of people because I’m a boring shitty person with no friends.”
Never forget the vast majority of all theft (75-95%) is wage theft, and it’s often the companies carefully guarding their hoarded medicine, hygeine products, baby food, diapers, and calorie dense foods in their stores who are doing the stealing. Shoplifting is mostly fueled by desperate need, as is obvious if you look at the stuff that gets stolen most, but wage thieves are among the welathiest people in the world.
I would call the store and let them know you need help. Hopefully they’ll send somebody over. Otherwise spray paint the glass door w/sparkly gold and write a slogan. If this shit makes your patriotism sink, I’d say it’s been up for target practice for longer than we’d care to mention.
In case of emergency, break glass.