Of course there has been a huge rise in shoplifting and theft. You'd have to be in serious denial to pretend this isn't the case. Businesses 10 years ago didn't forgo class containers out of the goodness of their hearts. And it's pretty obvious why. People aren't being arrested or prosecuted for petty crime any more. And we're now reaping the rewards. Same with anti social driving behaviors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in a different city with a bunch of closing Targets that had a lot of theft, but the very most theft-iest ones are *not* the ones closing. My guess is that Target couldn’t get the merchandise mix and real estate costs to work at City Targets but they’re hiding behind “theft”.

This. It's not just Target either.

Looks like a lot of retailers are trying to save face and sell real estate without their stock price tanking.

Target has opened more stores than they closed. In the big cities they are opening smaller stores. One I go to now locks the bathroom because too many people were overdosing in the there.

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone pulled the P&L's?

You do it

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Target Corporation estimates that inventory shrink could total $1.2 billion this year, an increase of $500 million from last year. It is important to note that “shrink” isn’t all or even mostly theft. It’s loss due to any cause—spoilage, damaged shipments, supplier fraud, sloppy inventory tracking within stores, employee theft, etc. Neither target nor any other retailer squawking about theft has publicly released any data on percentage inventory losses or due to theft or gross value of goods they believe to have been stolen.

Anyway, the retail theft panic is a manufactured one.

What a strange thread. Of course theft has risen massively. Target, and others, are reporting huge shrinkage numbers, in terms of absolute dollars, YoY growth, and as a percentage of sales. Is anyone seriously going to argue that Target has just suddenly forgotten how to refrigerate food? Or that their workers suddenly developed butter fingers and keep dropping big screen tvs? Maybe their truck drivers are suddenly flipping their big rigs at a rate 70% higher than normal???

I’ve worked in operations for 20+ years. Controllable shrinkage like spoilage should be improving every year as a percentage of sales (and almost certainly is). Short of some very specific issue like a new inventory tracking system going live, Target is clearly getting ripped off. Whether from suppliers, employees, or customers, I can’t say, but people are stealing from them.

Target posts 70+% YoY shrinkage growth and 2.2% sales growth, and everyone’s like “The media is dishonest for reporting on rising retail theft!!!” 😂😂😂

I don't know. In my local Target, I see a ton of mismanagement of inventory. I've stopped buying refrigerated goods there because they've so often been past the "use by" or "sell by" date, and still sitting on the shelves. I've pointed it out to staff who seem unsurprised but apologetic. Shelves are half empty all the time while aisles are filled with boxes and boxes of unpacked merchandise that is hard to navigate a cart around. They only have one check out open, but self check out is now 10 items or less - frequently no staff are attending self checkout so theft would also be quite easy. Just LOTS of problems. At our local Targets, these issues started when they "updated" the stores, changing layouts, adding the mini-Ulta. The stores are a hot, hot mess ever since the updates. Staff seem stressed and exhausted. I don't even enjoy going anymore and I used to love Target

Has anyone pulled the P&L's?

I don't know what to make of Target. If you do a 10 year view of the stock, you see that they trades sideways, hovering between $30 and $50 for the better part of a decade. Then, they had a massive spike up in 2020-2022, making it up to $260ish, before dropping like a hot knife in butter.

During the pride month target fiasco, I read things here on DCUM that both made the case that 1) the stock was dropping before the backlash (true) and then strangely, 2) buy up because the stock is on sale due to the backlash. It's continued its long slide, blaming the issues on the backlash and theft.

This is why I'm inclined to believe there is something more going on than theft, or backlash for that matter. They aren't offering any context to help understand the massive run-up of the stock, and are pointing to broad political issues that are both probably on the way to improving (ie, corporate activism is way down, voter interest in law and order is way up). I think they are blaming these issues, which are probably having an impact, but not to the extent that they are claiming, as a sort of diversion from the deeper corporate or economic issues.

Good target sucks. Their pricing games are next level crazy.

Anonymous wrote:My Maryland Food Lion now has body washes, deodorant and other personal care items in individual locked cases that the cashier removes.

This increases costs to the honest customers due to the time to stock the personal care items in locked cases and the time for checkout operator to remove the deodorant from it's individual locked container.

Matter of time til these places all close and get get everything from giant vending machines.

My Maryland Food Lion now has body washes, deodorant and other personal care items in individual locked cases that the cashier removes.

This increases costs to the honest customers due to the time to stock the personal care items in locked cases and the time for checkout operator to remove the deodorant from it's individual locked container.

"defend" not definitely, sorry for the typo

I am continually amazed with how the top .01% will type from behind their keyboards and definitely a complete criminal class while themselves driving to these same stores and shopping like normal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why so many of you are obsessed with pretending the criminal class doesn't exist.

They are too emotionally invested in their yard signs and terrified of being called racist if they acknowledge that crime occurs more frequently now than it did a few years ago. I would also point out that if your expectations and tolerances for behavior for the one group of people is different for another group of people - and the defining characteristic of those groups are race - then you are STILL a racist. Because being overly tolerant based on race, is also racism.

If you saw the report on the mentally challenged man who was found in a room in a Metro station, you will see that a fair jumper kept the gate open for the man. It was probably the nicest thing the little s**t ever did.

The city is putting in 8 foot tall fare gates at every station. Fare jumpers will be a thing of the past.

All Target needs to do is treat the “customers” with the same approach Metro is taking:



This is the smart approach.

Why don’t they just do what the CVSs in NE do, and replace the goods on the shelf with a photo of the merchandise, then just store all the merchandise safely in the back storeroom.

Then, you can just ask for the item you want, and they bring it out to you.

Problem solved! : - )

Anonymous wrote:Weird that virtually all of the stock is gone, but some pizza remains. I mean, everyone wants pizza. How is pizza still there when all of the thumbtacks, bathmats, garden hose nozzles, etc, are gone?

When large companies close, they sell the merchandise to companies who specialize in dealing with disposing of lots of merchandise (sell to discounters, Ebay bulk, Family dollar, Roses, etc.). They cannot sell the food for health department reasons so can only cook it and sell it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why so many of you are obsessed with pretending the criminal class doesn't exist.

They are too emotionally invested in their yard signs and terrified of being called racist if they acknowledge that crime occurs more frequently now than it did a few years ago. I would also point out that if your expectations and tolerances for behavior for the one group of people is different for another group of people - and the defining characteristic of those groups are race - then you are STILL a racist. Because being overly tolerant based on race, is also racism.

If you saw the report on the mentally challenged man who was found in a room in a Metro station, you will see that a fair jumper kept the gate open for the man. It was probably the nicest thing the little s**t ever did.

The city is putting in 8 foot tall fare gates at every station. Fare jumpers will be a thing of the past.

All Target needs to do is treat the “customers” with the same approach Metro is taking:



This is the smart approach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Target Corporation estimates that inventory shrink could total $1.2 billion this year, an increase of $500 million from last year. It is important to note that “shrink” isn’t all or even mostly theft. It’s loss due to any cause—spoilage, damaged shipments, supplier fraud, sloppy inventory tracking within stores, employee theft, etc. Neither target nor any other retailer squawking about theft has publicly released any data on percentage inventory losses or due to theft or gross value of goods they believe to have been stolen.

Anyway, the retail theft panic is a manufactured one.

What a strange thread. Of course theft has risen massively. Target, and others, are reporting huge shrinkage numbers, in terms of absolute dollars, YoY growth, and as a percentage of sales. Is anyone seriously going to argue that Target has just suddenly forgotten how to refrigerate food? Or that their workers suddenly developed butter fingers and keep dropping big screen tvs? Maybe their truck drivers are suddenly flipping their big rigs at a rate 70% higher than normal???

I’ve worked in operations for 20+ years. Controllable shrinkage like spoilage should be improving every year as a percentage of sales (and almost certainly is). Short of some very specific issue like a new inventory tracking system going live, Target is clearly getting ripped off. Whether from suppliers, employees, or customers, I can’t say, but people are stealing from them.

Target posts 70+% YoY shrinkage growth and 2.2% sales growth, and everyone’s like “The media is dishonest for reporting on rising retail theft!!!” 😂😂😂

You are really bad at your job if that's your assertion. Your "of course" was the first clue. Your failure to address any of the points made by debunkers was the second.