Canada

They can afford these insane security measures, and buying all the equipment that goes with it, but lowering prices? Paying their employees more? No no, that's too much money.

I get when a company puts wheel locks to ensure carts don't leave the property, believe it or not, buying new carts is quite expensive; each one is several hundred dollars and the store likely has nearly 100 of them, if not more. It's not a cheap asset. I get that.

Loss due to theft is also a non-trivial problem for obvious reasons, though there's plenty of loss due to damage, best before expiry, bad handling by workers, defective products, etc.

I've worked in grocery and every store I worked at had a bin on a pallet overflowing with damaged or otherwise unsellable stuff. It happens.

But, criminalizing your shoppers? The vast majority of them are people who live local, and are regular shoppers spending thousands a month on products. In business, this is the 80/20 rule. 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients (the ones who shop there regularly). I'm betting for grocery stores, that number is a bit different, but the concept stands. Start alienating those regular shoppers, and they will walk, and 80% of your sales get flushed down the drain as a result. It's both shocking, and completely unsurprising to me that Loblaws doesn't seem to understand this.

The reason they aren't responding on social media is they recently fired a friend of mine who worked as their social media manager. She was the only person I know who refused to say anything negative about Galen Weston. I personally think they're adopting a policy of ignoring everything the public says about them and fucking us all as hard as they can until the government steps in. Stop giving them your money!

Anti-theft or not, these strategies absolutely deter me from spending more money in these places.

It's incredibly frustrating that a simple errand run feels like you're travelling through a maximum security airport. The only thing missing are armed guards.

I've never seen security gates (at least anything more than the basic magnetic beeping ones), but locking shopping carts are a must. Hundreds or even thousand dollar equipment get stolen even a few times a year can seriously hurt a store's viability, and I used to see stolen carts everywhere before locking wheels were invented. Half the time, it wasn't even to be used personally, but because someone just wanted to use the cart to carry their groceries all the way home, then dumped the cart on the side of the road to rot afterwards, only to do it again the next week. This extreme was not common, but I did see it as a child.

And at my store, security guards have become mandatory, if only to protect against stealing beer. I think the guards catch a dozen people trying every week. When they were fired hired, I heard a story that most of the people they caught weren't even homeless. One of them was a pensioner who was doing it only for fun. Some old woman who wanted the adrenaline rush because she was plenty wealthy, but bored.

On the flip side, they generally ignore regular shoplifting as long as the product isn't expensive, and I've heard one guy who grabbed a shoplifter, only to take out the beer and leave the food in the guy's bag after kicking him out of the store.

There are serious issues going around, but putting the blame purely on corporate greed is unfair, as they're not the reason why there's so many desperate people about these last few years.

I will more than happily use self checkouts over waiting for a cashier, we only have so much time in this life and i refuse to waste it standing in line.