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Shoplifters run roughshod over Hyde Park dollar store
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Wow
50k at Dollar Tree.. That's 50,000 1 dollar items!
While I feel sorry for the guy... it's Dollar Tree. You know, the place that usually has ONE person for the entire store. Hard NOT to have shrink issues, especially with small pocket-able items like Dollar Tree has.
what the hell
its cheap 1 dollar stuff what do they plan to do with it give it to the poor ....
hey heres a mop and a shower curtain hope it helps!
Not necessarily shoplifters
Shrink can come from many sources - incorrect inventory management (eg, I write that we received 18 items of something when we only received 8; or I fail to record a sale so it looks like a loss); internal theft (employees stealing); or outright shoplifting.
Also, $50,000 sounds like a lot, but it needs to be in context; what is the total sales volume of the store?
Easy to point fingers
Way back in my days running grocery and convenience-store magazines, shrink was a huge issue. Chains loved to blame customers, particularly the young and those of color.
Yet when the outside investigators did their do, in most cases, it was employee theft. That also made good sense in many ways:
In short, many employees who stole felt they were owed. They took it.
Store management preferred to believe or at least pretend it was their low-class, low-brow customers who stole. Otherwise, they might have to clean up their own act pay fairly and treat employees well.
Shoplifting: A crime, no matter who does it.
Just because employees who are disgruntled due to being paid extremely low wages, doesn't mean they've got the right to steal from the store from which they work. The fact that store management has often contributed to this kind of piracy by turning their backs and pretending that it was merely low-brow customers who stole, in order to keep their employees from demanding better pay and better treatment makes a bad situation even worse...for everybody. People will be out of work, and the neighborhood will eventually be out of a place to go shopping. Each time shoplifting occurs, the proprietor of a business is compelled to raise the price of the merchandise in question, and, if that happened enough, a store could eventually be forced out of business altogether.
I'll also add that if a shoplifter has a scholarship to any college that s/he is attending, s/he could end up losing that scholarship, and a person over 18 will get a record that will follow him or her for the rest of their life.
Also, shoplifting is a crime, for which a person can be arrested. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it.
Confused
The store is located in HYDE PARK. Why the need to name Mattapan makes no sense.
Because River Street's a long street
That goes from Dedham to Mattapan. I wanted to give people who might not be familiar with the store some idea of where it is, in lieu of the map I didn't add because a bunch of other things were happening at the same time and I didn't know the store's exact address with which to plot the map.
And strictly for historical reasons, you do know the store is located on what used to be the campus of the Mattapan Paperboard company, right?
dollar tree store
THE COMPANY WAS TILESTON & HOLLINGSWORTH PAPER MILL THEY WERE ALSO JAMES RIVER CO, AND BAY STATE
PAPER MILL. .
I SHOP AT THE DOLLAR TREE STORE AND THE STAFF IS VERY HELPFUL AND PLEASANT.
Excuse me, I can't help wondering...
Is your CAPS LOCK key broken?
^^^ One Of Those.
^^^ One Of Those.
*
*dedham to dorchester
Yes, that's true, but ...
We're talking about the Hyde Park stretch here.
CLANG
He said Mattapan is near.
Who steals from a Dollar Tree?
When you figure out the right things to buy and to avoid, Dollar Tree is great. Anyone who steals from there (shoplifting, or internal) sucks.
Do that, and I will stop shopping there. No honest person wants to be treated like a criminal.
Sooooo
You don't shop anywhere? Most stores have RFID tags and guards.......
I do
I definitely have boycotted all stores that do bag/cart checks.
And the guards at the door usually make me want to avoid the store, and I'll go to one of their competitors instead.
Chain loss prevention people who are seen (approaching) similarly piss me off, and make me avoid the store.
And I know something about Target's technology, so I have mixed feelings about going there, not much better than going to Walmart.
People, not all bricks&mortar stores treat you like criminals. Go to their competitors when you can. If you can't get to a local bricks&mortar competitor, at least Amazon and eBay don't treat you like criminals.
Ebay
No because eBay is the criminal in that transaction. If you ever sold anything to a fraudulent buyer you'd know how they quickly steal your money right out of your account and refund the fraudulent buyer.
EBay needs to fail. I can't believe anyonr still uses it. Its nothing like what it was 10 years ago.
-- at least Amazon and eBay
-- at least Amazon and eBay don't treat you like criminals. --
Ebay treats you like a criminal if you are a seller.... unless you are a real criminal like the China bootleggers (do a search for lowest price new 3DS games).
I agree Ebay is nothing like it was 10 years ago.
But it is only at Dollar Tree
But it is only at Dollar Tree where EVERYTHING is $1.00!! No other competitors in the Boston area. Not Family Dollar, not the discount stores in the Save-A-Lot parking lot on Am. Legion, not anywhere. If they get guards at Dollar Tree, it will not stop me from going there. However, I look like a dirty homeless junkie bag lady on Saturday mornings. If I walk in with my pj's on they will be too busy watching me while the real thieves will use that to their advantage while they are pocketing the stuff right behind the guard's back.
Why would the residents ask for these things?
Most likely because they want to keep the store, rather than have it close due to continued thefts.
Who are "residents"?
The reporting could be better.
Ask
Christopher Roberson who wrote the article for The Bulletin. He stated that "residents" made those requests.
Dollar Tree Theft
I worked at a Dollar Tree in the 90's. This was before the registers scanned items. No way to tell if someone walked out with something.
We also lost a bunch of merchandise. People stole from there because they could. I once caught a group of kids stealing glow sticks. They ripped them out of the packages first.
I was more annoyed at how many people would ask me the price of an item.
Another reason those would be a problem
Adding the suggested security measures might well erase the profit margin on a lot of items. Probably the cheapest effective solution would be to add regular staff.
Sometimes stores do hire a tough, burly security guard.
It makes for a really unpleasant atmosphere, but sometimes there's no other choice, if they wish to prevent shoplifting. Also, the people who think that shoplifting is okay will be in for a rude awakening, especially because it's often much, much easier for them to get caught these days, with all the surveillance technology that now exists.
To be truthful, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for people who shoplift, get caught, are arrested and either lose their high school or scholarship, and, depending on one's age, can end up with a permanent criminal record that could very well hamper their chances of getting any kind of job or higher education/training for something. If somebody pulls shit like that...too bad; they made their bed...let'em lie in it.
You steal something valued at a buck
then you go to the local bar and hock it for 25 cents.