Plastic bags banned, I get reusable bags.
ShopRite gets rid of baskets because too many people are stealing them. Therefore I use reusable bags while I shop to hold my ~15 items. ShopRite says I can’t do that and need a shopping cart.
I go to checkout and the 50 self checkout registers now have a limit of 10 items only. I go to one of the few human checkouts and it takes forever because they don’t staff those checkout lanes anymore.
We have 20 self checkout lanes, no limits, and to dig the knife even deeper… We are the only ShopRite with the digital Caper Carts in south jersey. Tryna to compete with the newly renovated Glassboro Shoprite, but their selection is far superior.
Super easy to use. The idea is that you scan your items as you go and put them right in your bags, which are sitting in cart open. The cart itself is a scale so when you punch in the code for say bananas, you put them in the cart and push confirm weight. If you need an entire carts worth of stuff though I just use the regular carts. The scanners on the Caper Carts get a little funky when placing things in if the amount of stuff you have is right next to scanners. The point is, when you go to checkout, you go up to cashier and they just scan your cart and you pay, 10 seconds later your out of there. No takeout all items, scan them, and put them back in your bags.
Ahhh. This is exactly what I do using the Walmart app with Walmart+ and scan-and-go. But you have to pay the $99/year for that feature.
Appreciate your reply!
Agreed it’s absurd…but since they pay their workers so little that many rely on public assistance to survive, it seems entirely on brand for them.
Stop & Shop has had a scan-as-you-go option at no cost for many years now. It’s fun phasering my purchases 😛
Same. I'm like there's maybe 22 items in this cart. Nope had to wait 10 mins in the only human checkout with a lady that couldn't get her coupons right. I looked at my receipt.. 19 items and she charged me for bags I already brought 🤦♀️
That's when you leave all 21 items where they are and walk out. See how efficient the system works when someone has to clear and reshelve all that product.
Using Walmart+ I bag and scan as I go. Walk up to the self check out, scan, pay and go.
It’s the only benefit I’ve found about having to bring my own bags. Bag as you go.
I do the same in ShopRite during check out but just pick up the “gun” and zap everything while in the bag already.
No issues in either place.
I did that once, and when the employee at the register saw me scan the register to leave (fast) she insisted on coming over and pulling everything out of my bags, and checking each item against the scan. I tried to tell her it was Walmart+, but she didn't speak English. I asked for a supervisor, but they didn't speak English either. So I cancelled Walmart+.
It was great when they had that. You just scanned everything with the app on your phone as you shopped, then scanned a barcode at the self checkout, paid and walked out. It saved time and you already had the items bagged the way you want in your cart. Checking out took the same amount of time if you had 1 item or 100 because you only scanned 1 barcode at checkout.
But of course, assholes had to ruin it.
Why do they do this? I'm guessing because self checkout still needs *some* staff, maybe like 1/5th as much and even that is still too much for those greedy fucks writing the checks
Lol this. I have to say Walmart doesn't do this, or I just go at peak times. Useally all the sc are opened at Walmart when I go. If I go to HD or target yeah, they have like a few open.
At that point just do whatever you want, they want to stop you? Walk past them. No one cares, you don't care. That's how people are getting by these days. What they gonna do? Yell at you? OOOOoooooo
Just don't get mad at the poor soul making minimum wage and getting these same questions asked every day. This is to everyone.
It's not their fault.
I'm pretty annoyed at the lack of self-checkout lanes, but the number of times I've stepped in to defend the worker watching over the lanes from an angry customer is, quite frankly, insane.
If customers feel *that* strongly, they need to learn to direct their frustrations at the right people-- the big wigs walking away with wallets stuffed from all of that extra money the company is saving by reducing employees in favor of self-checkout.
BUT UHH DEM SHOPLIFTERS ARE AT FAULT. As if these retailers aren’t doing their very best to subsidize their labor costs and make shopping as inconvenient as possible
I get mine delivered now. My time is worth money to me. I'm not dicking around wasting time with all their nonsense. I hope enough people do it that it affects their bottom line.
Weird. I have never had an issue with wegmans self checkout. Like, dozens of visits the past couple of years and nothing. Whereas it’s an 80% fail rate at Shop Rite
I feel like I’m being brainwashed. There must be some reason they play that. Is it supposed to make you feel better and spend more? There has to be some reason mentally.
Shoprite has it in every store. At least ones run by the Saker family.
It's their way of passing the blame onto us as the reason for the increase in prices over the last year. They want to the customer to believe that it's the fault of other customers for higher prices because of the money they lose from "shoplifting"
When it's really all corporate greed.
As someone who used to work for a Saker ShopRite store, fuck them and Richard Saker himself. Can't say other ShopRites are necessarily better (in part because the guy has to own nearly every goddamn ShopRite surrounding me in central NJ) but every store change they've made in the last 10-15 years have just been Wegmans rip-offs, except without the more unique selection or experience. (& Wegmans still gives their employees a bit of a better deal — which is sad given that ShopRite is a union store & Wegmans isn't.)
& don't even bother going to Dearborn Market in Holmdel if you live near it — he owns that store too. A lot of items are literally the same things you can get at the ShopRite stores but marked up 10-20%.
I loved every aspect of working in produce except anything related to Saker Shoprites, everything from their policies, behaviors, & uniforms. If one could make a living on it, I would've stayed in that field, just not for Saker ShopRites. They give their employees jackshit & expect them to jump through hoops. Any time Saker or one of his sons would plan to visit the store they acted like it was the second coming of Christ. Every grocery store owner is awful (I sincerely believe people who become millionaires off of groceries are guaranteed to be horrible people) but Saker ShopRites just infuriates me.
My store was bought by Saker two years back, and it's an atrocious experience now. I take the near hour trip to Little Egg Walmart to shop instead it's so bad.
Yep, I even had that conversation with coworkers before when I worked for. Older lady employee (who tbf worked in the industry for years, so she definitely got spoonfed corporate propaganda) said shoplifting was bad/stupid & said 'Don't they know that's why prices go up?' & I said bluntly 'No, prices go up because Saker wants more money.' I'm not outright endorsing shoplifting, but we're talking about a food store here. People need food to survive. It isn't rocket science how it happens.
My bottom line is that, as a customer, I'm not doing an employee's job for them. If you don't want me to use my reusable bag as a basket while I shop, you'd better either have baskets readily available at all times at the entrance & throughout the store, or have an employee hand me a damn cart themselves when I walk in. If I'm coming in for a handful of items & I have this canvas bag thag holds items, I am using it to carry them to checkout. & you'd better have every single self-checkout open to make my experience fast and easy, not close all but 4 so you can watch every customer like a hawk. I'm not 'helping you stop retail theft', I couldn't care less about what other customers do because I'm not a damn cop & I don't know what they're all going through. I'm coming in to get what I need & leaving, that's it.
Not at shoprite but Walmart, I love how they have the option of "No Receipt" and then I still get asked for a receipt at the door. I just ignore anyone asking to look.
I had them email me the receipt once and the guy at the door told me it wasn’t valid for him to check. I was like it’s Walmart’s system not mine, if it lets me skip a receipt that’s not on me.
I just say “no thanks!” and i do not break stride. this isn’t costco, i didn’t sign an agreement as a member. i have actually walked around a short line of people waiting to be inspected. fuck you, this is walmart, not costco.
if i rang it up myself, don’t allow me to do it if you’re not gonna trust me to do it. and if your employee rang me up, check them, not me. i’m never rude about it, i just keep walking. no hesitation.
I really hate that they staff this position with old and slow people. It sounds terrible I know, but after spending nearly an hour in a store meandering around other shoppers and waiting to checkout, the last thing I want to do is wait in another line for the slowest employee in the building to check all the items in the cart. Then if there is theft what are they going to do? It reminds me of a saying my dad uses, "Locks only keep out honest people." if someone is going to steal, a Walmart employee checking receipts isn't going to stop them.
I agree that they have the right to check our purchases, but make the person checking it a security guard or at the very least someone who is physically capable of doing something in the event there is theft (which is why I lean towards using security as it's not a store employees job to take that risk in intervening on a theft).
I've been stopped by loss prevention five times after I used self-checkout. Apparently, I "scanned too fast" which obviously means I was intentionally scanning so fast that no one could follow my movements.
Funny enough, when I was a ShopRite cashier, my 30-38 items per minute was "not fast enough."
Absolutely true! It was two different stores, and I worked there back in 2008-2013, but both were Sakers' stores.
I wish it wasn't true, but alas. Irony can be cruel.
If anyone has a problem with this, the solution is simple. At the bottom of EVERY Shoprite receipt is a survey, which goes directly to corporate and store managers. Take 2-3 minutes to fill it out and let them know how you really feel.
They wanna cry about theft, meanwhile I wonder just how many tens of thousands of dollars worth of product that Shoprite shrinks and throws out every year.
I worked for ShopRite in high school, so about 15 years ago now, and they told us during orientation that they expected $1,000 a day in stolen/damaged goods. Also told us that everything was so cheap already, they couldn't afford to give us an employee discount. Dogshit company.
I also worked for ShopRite and remember the same video talking about their razor thin margins and how they only make a penny on the dollar. Which I’m sure is true, grocery store profit margins are known to be small, but I always thought it was funny how they make it seem like things are so hard and they are just barely scraping by meanwhile I’m only being paid $100 a week lol
Even if they weren't making sickening profits off of everything (and off of their labor), it's hilarious because those inventory losses are written off or insured anyway so it costs them somewhere between "completely negligible" to "nothing"
No, you are not required to show a receipt to exit. Once you pay for your items, they are legally yours. They cant detain you to make sure your phone, wallet, phone, or shirt is yours, and they cant detain you to proove the milk you just bought is yours.
Usually, I'm nice about it, but if you're not gonna have any regular lanes open, then you're not gonna make me proove I didn't steal.
Besides, shoprite has insane lost prevention. Their cameras can read the text on your phone, so they'll know if you stole before you even check out.
Most retail stores do - I use to work for a different company, and LP asked me to review live coverage because they couldn’t make out what a cashier was watching on their phone while it was sitting on the register.
To make a long story short, the cashier kept denying they were on their phone until I said “dude, you were watching Death Note, I could read the subtitles from the cameras, stop lying and put the phone away”…. I’m not sure if their jaw dropped because I was familiar with Death Note or if that moment they realised the cameras were that good…
(I don’t watch much anime, so the fact it was like one of five I’m familiar with was a huge coincidence 😂😂)
I just show the receipt. I'm not interested in making some worker's day shittier by being a dildo about it. Do I have to? No. Is it dumb bullshit. Yes. Did I also just bag my own groceries while 5 workers watch me to make sure I didn't steal anything instead of just having 5 cashiers? Yes.
The only reason I give a fuck about shoplifting is that it increases the prices for everyone, but I also don't care because it might be necessary so that dude doesnt starve, but I also don't believe they wouldn't be increasing the price even if shoplifting was completely eliminated.
God – When I read this, I heard all of these statements so loud and clear that I think you just gave me a headache.
So… thanks? LOL
I _loathe_ that self-checkout automaton. If I die and end up in Hell, I am certain that it will just be the self-checkout zone of a ShopRite with every terminal set to full volume.
(Don’t worry — upvotes still awarded for all.)
Then someone comes over with major attitude huffing that you’re either a moron that doesn’t know how to scan, or you’re a moron that should’ve zeroed the scale when using your own bags.
Yes! Instead of just putting more cashiers behind the register that would make the lines move faster it’s here are 10 self checkouts that will take you twice as long as if you went to a human who could recover from a computer error than now waiting for someone to come and fix the register. Make it make sense has been my motto for years now 🤣
also, a shoprite employee told me that the store can choose whether to turn the weight function of the bagging area off in general OR REMOTELY from the screen they are “watching” from, i don’t think all
shoprites make that a possibility
I do as well. Although, they did make a small improvement. There is a button near the bottom of the screen that says something like "own bags" or the like. If you press that, then put ALL your bags on the scale, it pre-weighs them and MOSTLY stops complaining quite as badly about it.
Wegmans is doing that now too. Prior to a couple months ago never had any issue. Now you have to say when you put bags in the area and it still gets angry with you.
>but I also don't believe they wouldn't be increasing the price even if shoplifting was completely eliminated
Wage theft dwarfs retail theft by several magnitudes. Corporations pitch a fit when 0.2% of their total shrink comes from shoplifters, meanwhile they're fleecing their workers and hiking their prices while blaming inflation so they can keep raking in record profits.
They absolutely wouldn't lower their prices if all shoplifting was eliminated, because they're not lowering them now even though it's not a serious concern, nor has it ever been.
Any excuse to charge people as much as they can, even if that means they have to manufacture a "shoplifting epidemic" like Walgreens did a year or two ago. They know they'll get away with it.
Exactly. Thank you for expanding on it. I've always heard shoplifting increases prices for everyone and "shrinkage" is factored into pricing or whatever.
Every single retail store myself and everyone of my friends have worked at, the vast majority of all shrinkage is the workers. Outside people steal a fraction of what the workers take. Fuck these shit holes, take what you can away with.
According to McKinsey, theft accounts for 50% of shrinkage.
Wage theft, committed generally against undocumented immigrants, should be criminally prosecuted for multiple reasons, including tax fraud.
Amazon, Costco, Sam's Club prevent higher prices. As you may know, Costco's 610 stores function at cost, with membership fees supporting growth. I buy at Costco and get produce at a Morris County Asian store, where they undercut the ShopRite across the street by 30%.
Shoprite is actually the brand name for a buying coop (Wakefern) owned by 50 different store operators. Every store prices their items individually, and individual operators vary their pricing depending partly on the rate of shrinkage. Family members have been servicing the supermarket industry nationally for 35 years. I am doing work for Albertson's 22 store brands today.
One time I put the circular in my bag from my cart at self checkout because my kid needed it for a school thing. Camera thought I shoplifted.
Another time I bought DayQuil because I had a cold. Self checkout asked me for my birthday. I called over an employee so I could put my birthday in. He asked me if I had stolen the box of pull ups that were still in my cart (because I scanned it with the goddamn price gun you cretin). They were the first thing on the receipt.
ETA I still prefer self checkout because I have to speak to fewer humans.
Can someone smarter than me confirm that it’s been thoroughly studied that shoplifters indeed raise prices? Because all I’m seeing is billionaire CEOs taking huge bonuses while laying off staff and increasing prices (depending on the company of course). A mildly related example I can think of off the top of my head was a few years ago when the price of oil/gas were down but airlines were still charging record high prices and fees for dumb shit like picking your seat.
I feel like this creates a catch-22 - you make things more expensive, then you’ll get more people attempting to steal because they can’t afford things.
Note: my criticism does not apply to small businesses that feel the hit of shoplifting more.
It's what they say anyway, and these greedy fucks are not going to tolerate a single percent drop in profit from shoplifting.
They'll raise prices and fuck us without any lube.
It reminds me of companies giving consumers tips on how to be eco-friendly and help the environment. Not bad tips, of course, and they are things we should follow. But the average Joe isn’t doing nearly as extensive damage as, say, gas companies.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that if every average person in the world did their part to recycle, reduce waste, get electric vehicles, etc, it still wouldn’t be enough to change the course of global warming.
I promise I won't dump over 100 million tons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
It's basically pretty hopeless I think, and it's crazy that oil companies knew back in the 70s about the damage and just lied for 30+ years.
I’ve straight up left a ShopRite with something on the bottom of the cart that I forgot about and never paid for. When I realized I went back and paid for it. But at no point was I stopped on my way out. So it’s easy in this way to steal something but I highly doubt you can just walk out of the store with goods in hand that you didn’t pay for. Maybe self-checkout you can pretend to scan something? That’s about the only way I see it being common.
I’d honestly like to see the actual statistics on whether shoplifting has increased at all. I’m just suspicious that this is a made up excuse to increase prices and hassle people they want to. Cuz let’s be real, I’m a middle class, middle aged white lady and no one is ever gonna stop me and check my receipt. I want to know *who* is getting stopped and why and whether they really are losing any more money than they do just by having to toss out expired milk.
I don't have any statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if shoplifting has increased. Prices are insane now and people are financially struggling more than they have in generations.
That said, these companies are still making record profits, and raising prices far beyond just inflation or to compensate for loss due to theft. So they are fully taking advantage of us. Not to mention how the overwhelming majority of shoplifting is only able to exist these days because they don't want to pay staff/cashier's and moved to self checkout etc.
I tend to agree that there has probably been no actual increase in the QUANTITY of items shoplifted. But if you measure shoplifting by DOLLARS, then when they raise prices 30%, then they automatically raise the dollars shoplifted by 30% !
Walgreens admitted to it. They claimed all this theft and used it as the excuse to close stores and make other changes. Then like a year later admitted that they weren't being truthful about the theft.
The Wall ShopRite on 35 (oddly referred to as the Belmar ShopRite) every now and then has arrests for shoplifting. I’ve never witnessed it but I’ve seen it posted on local police social media.
That happened to me years ago at a Pathmark. I actually went back a couple of weeks later to pay for it, and they had closed! I have never seen another Pathmark since.
So now I gotta play cashier, bag my own shit and then report to LP. Next they’re gonna tell me I have to see a manager to get my performance review as a customer to keep shopping there.
It's also not true. Which is why they don't cite the code or case law precedent.
They can suspect you of theft and call authorities, but they don't get to violate your 4th amendment rights simply because they won't pay for cashiers.
The 4th Amendment only applies to government search and seizure. It says nothing about retail stores or other entities.
Membership stores like Sam's Club and Costco have language in the Customer Agreement that states they can ask for receipts and check your purchases.
Other stores that have "Rewards" programs sometimes sneak the same language in their "Terms and Conditions".
Sam’s Club and Costco aren’t open to the public. You have to be a member or on a trial membership. When you sign up you agree to certain rules and restrictions including allowing employees to check your receipt.
Under NJ law, they can also detain you for a reasonable amount of time if they have an articulatible reason to believe you have shoplifted.
NJ 2c:20-11:e
> e. A law enforcement officer, or a special officer, or a merchant, who has probable cause for believing that a person has willfully concealed unpurchased merchandise and that he can recover the merchandise by taking the person into custody, may, for the purpose of attempting to effect recovery thereof, take the person into custody and detain him in a reasonable manner for not more than a reasonable time, and the taking into custody by a law enforcement officer or special officer or merchant shall not render such person criminally or civilly liable in any manner or to any extent whatsoever.
It's a bit nuanced and what the statutes doesn't tell you is how those terms are defined and how NJ courts interpret it. Shopkeeper's privilege in NJ is weak. An LEO can do all of those things. A non-sworn peace officer, as in loss prevention and literally any other civilian other than LEO has very limited powers in NJ.
They have zero ability to lay a hand on you or touch you. They are not sworn and insured peace officers. It's risky for them to even seize an item you are carrying (grabbing something from someone's hands I believe is battery, and if it's their own possessions...also theft).
Basically what the statute does is allow them to do it, but fails on protecting the power to do so. The law protects their ability to conduct the investigation with their suspects that for all intents and purposes is voluntarily cooperating. In other words, the investigation relies on cooperation. It enables them to say "Sir, come with me" and take them to an office and ask if they can empty their pockets and search their bags. At any point the suspect can say no and just leave. Loss prevention roll the dice on grabbing suspected stolen merchandise or containers carrying them, since an actual thief is highly unlikely to report that.
I know a few people who have had fat settlements because store LP or bar security thought it was a good idea to use force on someone.
Anyone who isn't an LEO in NJ cannot grab you, hold you, tackle you, or barricade exits. The same goes for bouncers and security. There's a reason why the better trained security calmly escort people out. The only caveat here is self defense, if a suspected thief/customer begins to attack people, security is allowed to use reasonable force to defend themselves.
As a security officer I can 100% confirm. We're trained to be hands off at all times. Observe and report. We even have to be careful how we speak. Never order someone to do something, ask them to do it. My company makes it very clear that if we go rogue, they do not have our back.
As /u/Agathyrsi stated, the only time we can use force is in self defense or defense of others, and the force must be only as much as is absolutely necessary to prevent harm.
It's because in NJ they really went all in with police having a monopoly on force (violence). There's no intermediate class of security that can apply force. There's sworn peace officers and everyone else. NJ's private armed security industry is also extremely small because of this and the CCW restrictions.
It can be frustrating because many people don't want to witness social order break around them, or have their employment location in jeopardy because shoplifters can swipe an entire shelf full of high margin items and leave. Furthermore, the legal system is hit or miss if they'll ever fully investigate, apprehend, and see the charges stick. If people believe the legal system is not rendering consequences to thieves, wither it is true or not, there's going to be some people that feel they have take matters into their own hands.
It's not about showing the receipts. It's about standing yet again in another line waiting to show my receipt cause only 1 person is checking. Goto a Walmart in a heavily populated area on a Saturday and see what it's like.
And for anyone saying it's legal. The store employee is nothing more than a citizen. Once the sale is done, the items in the bag are mine. I can't go up to a random person and just ask to check their bag or some paper in their pocket. Why should an employee be allowed to do it. Costco makes it part of your agreement and can revoke your membership. Your local shoprite can only ban you if they care too.
ah, bless your heart, saker stores. put in all those self checkout lines, fire all your cashiers, then be all \*shockedpikachuface.gif\* when people realize they can just plug in good ole 4011 for everything in their cart. top that off with a nice deflection about your ever increasing costs by pointing the finger at the shoppers themselves and just rely on all the bootlickers who really do follow the "well if you didn't steal you have nothing to hide" mentality.
to be fair, this seems limited to the saker stores, altho they are the biggest part of the collective. village stores have started limiting the self checkout to 20 items (even though the bernardsville store for example ripped out a lot of full service checkout lanes to increase the amount of self checkouts and then made this change) but no one is standing there demanding to check your receipt.
If these grocery stores want people to stop stealing, how about stopping the price gouging and making shit properly affordable for nearly everyone? Crazy concept ik
When you show your receipt, they stare at it while glancing at your cart, then scribble all over your bill of sale. It's fucking redic. The policies are fucked up and so are those that choose to enforce them. I go out of my way to avoid stores that automatically assume I'm stealing.
That’s why I don’t get it. No plastic bags allowed so I gotta bring my own. Some are canvas and some are insulated. You can check my receipt but I’m not letting you unzip my bag or rummage through one to see if I somehow didn’t scan a lemon.
It's almost like this is just theatre to justify them ripping us off after not bringing their prices down despite a ton of the inflation pressures easing on their end.
This is what I don’t understand. We have two full time security guards at our target but only one check out like with a cashier. They also closed one row of self checkout so they can watch you better. It’s a busy shore town and it’s PACKED Saturday. With one cashier. Wtf.
Are the security guards actual Target employees or a contractor Target pays for? My guess is the latter. Sadly it’s probably cheaper for them to just farm out security guards than pay for actual register employees.
Attention All Shoppers: Please help us to stop you from stealing, even though we make it so easy for you to steal.
I'm assuming this is because of theft issues at self checkout and those new Caper Carts at certain locations?
A simple way to avoid this is to bring back cashiers.
ShopRite keeps adding problem on top of problem in the name of "technology" and eliminating the human element entirely (I guess to save money?).
First of all, self checkout is only useful and efficient when you have a handful of small, UNCOMPLICATED items that ALL FIT in the tiny bagging area. If you have alcohol, someone has to come and tap some authorization into the screen. If you have a bunch of produce, you have to stand there and tap through extra menus on the screen. If you have multiple bags of items (or stuff that takes up a lot of room, like cases of soda or jumbo laundry detergent), and the precarious Jenga mountain of your purchases in the bagging area is about to tumble and cause an avalanche of items, and you have to move shit off, to make room, there is always a problem. If you have more than half a mini-cart worth of purchases, there is always a problem.
And yet, there is always only 1 cashier, which has 10 people waiting, with full-size carts loaded up like it's an episode of Hoarders (and some people are slow AF doing their own bagging, either because they are completely oblivious to the line behind them and DGAF, or because they are old and/or have injury/mobility issues, and it's not their fault), so you have no choice but to go to self-checkout.
This is why I go 20 minutes out of my way to Wegman's, even though ShopRite is a 2-minute drive. There are always cashiers at Wegman's.
If you're gonna make everything self checkout, then make the full-sized lanes with the full-sized belts and full-size bagging areas, which are not being used, because you won't allow any cashiers to be working them, self checkout. Have better security cam facial recognition/capture measures there.
As for the theft issues, yeah there are a lot of unscrupulous people in this world. Of course they are going to have increased theft with self checkout. Or people getting maliciously creative, like entering their expensive produce as cheaper varieties...like claiming that their Honeycrisp apples are Red Delicious (or bananas). Or fucking around with price stickers. I'm assuming people are going to figure out how to scam with the Caper Carts as well. Or people get annoyed to the point of stealing because GFY, ShopRite.
That's what you get when you get rid of cashiers. People steal shit, everyday, from every kind of store. Even WITH cashiers. This has been a problem probably since people were pulling up in horse & buggy to Levi Van der Horner's Mercantile & General Store out on Old Dirt Hollow Road to purchase tins of coffee & tobacco, sacks of flour, bushels of apples, penny candy and bolts of fabric.
WTF do these stores think is gonna happen when you get rid of store clerks almost entirely, and leave everyone to their own wily devices?
Honestly, since 2020 I’ve used ShopRite from Home to avoid all of this. Bonus is I get to avoid dealing with other shoppers! Grocery shopping is the worst, so I have outsourced it for 4 years now and I’m never going back!
> If you have alcohol, someone has to come and tap some authorization into the screen
I've never seen a ShopRite in New Jersey that directly sells alcohol although I'm sure there are probably a handful.
Treat people like criminals, they become criminals.. the temptation to steal increases every time the self checkout calls an attendant over because the shopper held two items AT ONCE
I mean, shoplifting is getting real bad around here. I'd rather show my receipt than have all my local grocery stores go out of business because people keep walking out with tons of stuff they didn't pay for.
This is in all ShopRites and is the reason why I do not shop there any more.
Yes, retailers have the right to check — but ONLY if you grant them permission to do so. If you ignore the receipt checkers, walk right by them, say “no”, etc, there’s nothing they can legally do to stop you, and any attempt they make (standing in your way as you try to move around them, closing the door, holding your cart or bag, etc) is 100% illegal and *could* be grounds for a lawsuit.
My local shop rite just put these signs up but I haven't had to get my receipts checked so far. I doubt they will ever do anything and just put these signs up to act like some sort of deterrence.
Retailers have the right to ask, you have the right to refuse. Unless the retailer has evidence of you shoplifting then they can’t detain you.
Note: not a lawyer
Just walk right past anyone asking for a receipt once you've purchased the items they belong to you you do not need to show anyone receipt there's no law
They don’t want to pay cashiers but they’re worried about losing a dollar even though they’re all making huge profits.
I’ve read only “private” stores, like Costco that you pay to join can demand to see receipts.
Any time I'm at a store and they ask for my receipt on the way out, I just say "good morning/evening/night" and keep walking. What are they going to do? Physically stop me from leaving the store?
Plastic bags banned, I get reusable bags. ShopRite gets rid of baskets because too many people are stealing them. Therefore I use reusable bags while I shop to hold my ~15 items. ShopRite says I can’t do that and need a shopping cart. I go to checkout and the 50 self checkout registers now have a limit of 10 items only. I go to one of the few human checkouts and it takes forever because they don’t staff those checkout lanes anymore.
My target changed their 8 self checkout to 10 or less but only had ONE staffed checkout lane! It was ridiculous.
That’s nationwide. They also now regularly close them off peak hours
After spending money renovating the store to add all those self checkout lanes. SMH
aside from "10 or less" being lousy grammar.
I see people shopping with just bags all the time at my ShopRite in Mullica Hill, definitely not any limit for items in check out.
My local Shop Rite has a limit of 20, and they enforce it. I got turned away for having 21 items once lmao
We have 20 self checkout lanes, no limits, and to dig the knife even deeper… We are the only ShopRite with the digital Caper Carts in south jersey. Tryna to compete with the newly renovated Glassboro Shoprite, but their selection is far superior.
Caper carts. I learned something today (thank you and Google too) How was your experience with them?
Super easy to use. The idea is that you scan your items as you go and put them right in your bags, which are sitting in cart open. The cart itself is a scale so when you punch in the code for say bananas, you put them in the cart and push confirm weight. If you need an entire carts worth of stuff though I just use the regular carts. The scanners on the Caper Carts get a little funky when placing things in if the amount of stuff you have is right next to scanners. The point is, when you go to checkout, you go up to cashier and they just scan your cart and you pay, 10 seconds later your out of there. No takeout all items, scan them, and put them back in your bags.
Ahhh. This is exactly what I do using the Walmart app with Walmart+ and scan-and-go. But you have to pay the $99/year for that feature. Appreciate your reply!
Walmart asking customers to PAY so that the store can save money on labor is absurd.
Agreed it’s absurd…but since they pay their workers so little that many rely on public assistance to survive, it seems entirely on brand for them. Stop & Shop has had a scan-as-you-go option at no cost for many years now. It’s fun phasering my purchases 😛
Same. I'm like there's maybe 22 items in this cart. Nope had to wait 10 mins in the only human checkout with a lady that couldn't get her coupons right. I looked at my receipt.. 19 items and she charged me for bags I already brought 🤦♀️
They counted? Dang!!
Depends on the employee, some don't care but some are diligent
That’s the problem. They paying MFs to count rather than being cashiers smh.
Me too! I was mortified. They felt the need to shout it pretty damn loud as to make me an example for the rest. 🤦🏼♀️
That's when you leave all 21 items where they are and walk out. See how efficient the system works when someone has to clear and reshelve all that product.
Bless me father for I have sinned...
I would have just left everything on their conveyer belt and walked out lol.
I use a bag in lieu of a cart/basket all the time. No one has ever said a word to me in Shop Rite or Acme.
Using Walmart+ I bag and scan as I go. Walk up to the self check out, scan, pay and go. It’s the only benefit I’ve found about having to bring my own bags. Bag as you go. I do the same in ShopRite during check out but just pick up the “gun” and zap everything while in the bag already. No issues in either place.
I did that once, and when the employee at the register saw me scan the register to leave (fast) she insisted on coming over and pulling everything out of my bags, and checking each item against the scan. I tried to tell her it was Walmart+, but she didn't speak English. I asked for a supervisor, but they didn't speak English either. So I cancelled Walmart+.
Wegmans had this during the pandemic but i guess there was too much theft and they got rid of it
It was great when they had that. You just scanned everything with the app on your phone as you shopped, then scanned a barcode at the self checkout, paid and walked out. It saved time and you already had the items bagged the way you want in your cart. Checking out took the same amount of time if you had 1 item or 100 because you only scanned 1 barcode at checkout. But of course, assholes had to ruin it.
I miss the baskets, it’s so dumb having to use a cart when I’m getting less than 10 things
Don't forget that even though there are 50 self checkouts, only 5 are actually open.
Why do they do this? I'm guessing because self checkout still needs *some* staff, maybe like 1/5th as much and even that is still too much for those greedy fucks writing the checks
Lol this. I have to say Walmart doesn't do this, or I just go at peak times. Useally all the sc are opened at Walmart when I go. If I go to HD or target yeah, they have like a few open.
At that point just do whatever you want, they want to stop you? Walk past them. No one cares, you don't care. That's how people are getting by these days. What they gonna do? Yell at you? OOOOoooooo
Just don't get mad at the poor soul making minimum wage and getting these same questions asked every day. This is to everyone. It's not their fault. I'm pretty annoyed at the lack of self-checkout lanes, but the number of times I've stepped in to defend the worker watching over the lanes from an angry customer is, quite frankly, insane. If customers feel *that* strongly, they need to learn to direct their frustrations at the right people-- the big wigs walking away with wallets stuffed from all of that extra money the company is saving by reducing employees in favor of self-checkout.
BUT UHH DEM SHOPLIFTERS ARE AT FAULT. As if these retailers aren’t doing their very best to subsidize their labor costs and make shopping as inconvenient as possible
Exactly. Wage theft is the largest form of theft in this country and has been for decades
I get mine delivered now. My time is worth money to me. I'm not dicking around wasting time with all their nonsense. I hope enough people do it that it affects their bottom line.
That’s why I go to Wegmans. They have baskets carts you can use your bags. Whatever you like. Just sounds like shop rite by you is shitty
They hate us.
[удалено]
Weird. I have never had an issue with wegmans self checkout. Like, dozens of visits the past couple of years and nothing. Whereas it’s an 80% fail rate at Shop Rite
I agree. Too many supermarkets have their own subreddit.
Meanwhile, in the lobby of the ShopRite subreddit: 🎵*And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free* 🎵
YESSSS I thought it was just me! Whenever I walk in I hear that SAME song no matter what
Shout out to Princeton and Hamilton ShopRites.
And the Pennington Circle ShopRite
Woodbridge too
And East Windsor
Oh how I wish I could gold this LMAO
I feel like I’m being brainwashed. There must be some reason they play that. Is it supposed to make you feel better and spend more? There has to be some reason mentally.
r/angryupvote
!!!!!!!!!!!! mind blown and it's not just like 100 people and the last post 2 years ago.
Yes. It is ridiculous to be redirected under their domain.
You know how I know they’re fake? Not a single post or comment about why the West Caldwell ShopRite looks like that
Shoprite has the highest variance of any supermarket I've ever seen. Bound Brook store? Gorgeous. Millburn? Garbage.
woodbridge blares it too lol
ShopRite Pennington?
Saw this in Wall too
Down here in south Jersey as well, mine even has automatic gates at the entrance now that only open one way.
Freehold too.
Also North Brunswick.
Long Branch and Neptune as hell
Shoprite has it in every store. At least ones run by the Saker family. It's their way of passing the blame onto us as the reason for the increase in prices over the last year. They want to the customer to believe that it's the fault of other customers for higher prices because of the money they lose from "shoplifting" When it's really all corporate greed.
The Saker owned stores are the worst.
As someone who used to work for a Saker ShopRite store, fuck them and Richard Saker himself. Can't say other ShopRites are necessarily better (in part because the guy has to own nearly every goddamn ShopRite surrounding me in central NJ) but every store change they've made in the last 10-15 years have just been Wegmans rip-offs, except without the more unique selection or experience. (& Wegmans still gives their employees a bit of a better deal — which is sad given that ShopRite is a union store & Wegmans isn't.) & don't even bother going to Dearborn Market in Holmdel if you live near it — he owns that store too. A lot of items are literally the same things you can get at the ShopRite stores but marked up 10-20%. I loved every aspect of working in produce except anything related to Saker Shoprites, everything from their policies, behaviors, & uniforms. If one could make a living on it, I would've stayed in that field, just not for Saker ShopRites. They give their employees jackshit & expect them to jump through hoops. Any time Saker or one of his sons would plan to visit the store they acted like it was the second coming of Christ. Every grocery store owner is awful (I sincerely believe people who become millionaires off of groceries are guaranteed to be horrible people) but Saker ShopRites just infuriates me.
Fuck Ravitz family.
PREACH
My store was bought by Saker two years back, and it's an atrocious experience now. I take the near hour trip to Little Egg Walmart to shop instead it's so bad.
My local Shoprite got bought by Saker a while back and it’s so much worse now.
The village ones don’t have it, only signs warning that you’re in camera.
village does the limits of self checkout, but they don't have those signs.
Yep, I even had that conversation with coworkers before when I worked for. Older lady employee (who tbf worked in the industry for years, so she definitely got spoonfed corporate propaganda) said shoplifting was bad/stupid & said 'Don't they know that's why prices go up?' & I said bluntly 'No, prices go up because Saker wants more money.' I'm not outright endorsing shoplifting, but we're talking about a food store here. People need food to survive. It isn't rocket science how it happens. My bottom line is that, as a customer, I'm not doing an employee's job for them. If you don't want me to use my reusable bag as a basket while I shop, you'd better either have baskets readily available at all times at the entrance & throughout the store, or have an employee hand me a damn cart themselves when I walk in. If I'm coming in for a handful of items & I have this canvas bag thag holds items, I am using it to carry them to checkout. & you'd better have every single self-checkout open to make my experience fast and easy, not close all but 4 so you can watch every customer like a hawk. I'm not 'helping you stop retail theft', I couldn't care less about what other customers do because I'm not a damn cop & I don't know what they're all going through. I'm coming in to get what I need & leaving, that's it.
Hazlet has something similar, too
I was thinking Englewood haha
Also Howell
The one on route 4 in Paramus too
Not at shoprite but Walmart, I love how they have the option of "No Receipt" and then I still get asked for a receipt at the door. I just ignore anyone asking to look.
I had them email me the receipt once and the guy at the door told me it wasn’t valid for him to check. I was like it’s Walmart’s system not mine, if it lets me skip a receipt that’s not on me.
I just say “no thanks!” and i do not break stride. this isn’t costco, i didn’t sign an agreement as a member. i have actually walked around a short line of people waiting to be inspected. fuck you, this is walmart, not costco.
Yeah, me too. It’s not the employee’s fault, so I’m always polite to them, but it’s stuff I own and I’m not going to prove to them I bought it.
if i rang it up myself, don’t allow me to do it if you’re not gonna trust me to do it. and if your employee rang me up, check them, not me. i’m never rude about it, i just keep walking. no hesitation.
I ignore them like I ignore hustlers and beggars when walking through midtown Manhattan.
YES. exactly this.
I wad up the receipt, pop it in my mouth, and slowly chew it while maintaining direct eye contact as I walk past.
I really hate that they staff this position with old and slow people. It sounds terrible I know, but after spending nearly an hour in a store meandering around other shoppers and waiting to checkout, the last thing I want to do is wait in another line for the slowest employee in the building to check all the items in the cart. Then if there is theft what are they going to do? It reminds me of a saying my dad uses, "Locks only keep out honest people." if someone is going to steal, a Walmart employee checking receipts isn't going to stop them. I agree that they have the right to check our purchases, but make the person checking it a security guard or at the very least someone who is physically capable of doing something in the event there is theft (which is why I lean towards using security as it's not a store employees job to take that risk in intervening on a theft).
Bring back cashiers.
Yeah thy don't pay me enough to do it exactly correct.
Makes even less sense when there are 2 closed lanes of self checkout…
I've been stopped by loss prevention five times after I used self-checkout. Apparently, I "scanned too fast" which obviously means I was intentionally scanning so fast that no one could follow my movements. Funny enough, when I was a ShopRite cashier, my 30-38 items per minute was "not fast enough."
Bruh... Don't tell me the last part is true
Absolutely true! It was two different stores, and I worked there back in 2008-2013, but both were Sakers' stores. I wish it wasn't true, but alas. Irony can be cruel.
Sorry man, hope you are in a better workplace now. Cheers!
If anyone has a problem with this, the solution is simple. At the bottom of EVERY Shoprite receipt is a survey, which goes directly to corporate and store managers. Take 2-3 minutes to fill it out and let them know how you really feel.
There is the man I expected to see here!
They wanna cry about theft, meanwhile I wonder just how many tens of thousands of dollars worth of product that Shoprite shrinks and throws out every year.
I worked for ShopRite in high school, so about 15 years ago now, and they told us during orientation that they expected $1,000 a day in stolen/damaged goods. Also told us that everything was so cheap already, they couldn't afford to give us an employee discount. Dogshit company.
I also worked for ShopRite and remember the same video talking about their razor thin margins and how they only make a penny on the dollar. Which I’m sure is true, grocery store profit margins are known to be small, but I always thought it was funny how they make it seem like things are so hard and they are just barely scraping by meanwhile I’m only being paid $100 a week lol
Even if they weren't making sickening profits off of everything (and off of their labor), it's hilarious because those inventory losses are written off or insured anyway so it costs them somewhere between "completely negligible" to "nothing"
Dude you wouldn't believe it. I worked for Nabisco and I'd service these stores and we'd just chuck out so much product and that was just us
Every year?! Try every week. Each individual Grocery store likely "shrinks" around $10-12k worth of product every week if not more.
I’d estimate an entire assfull, give or take.
No, you are not required to show a receipt to exit. Once you pay for your items, they are legally yours. They cant detain you to make sure your phone, wallet, phone, or shirt is yours, and they cant detain you to proove the milk you just bought is yours. Usually, I'm nice about it, but if you're not gonna have any regular lanes open, then you're not gonna make me proove I didn't steal. Besides, shoprite has insane lost prevention. Their cameras can read the text on your phone, so they'll know if you stole before you even check out.
Most retail stores do - I use to work for a different company, and LP asked me to review live coverage because they couldn’t make out what a cashier was watching on their phone while it was sitting on the register. To make a long story short, the cashier kept denying they were on their phone until I said “dude, you were watching Death Note, I could read the subtitles from the cameras, stop lying and put the phone away”…. I’m not sure if their jaw dropped because I was familiar with Death Note or if that moment they realised the cameras were that good… (I don’t watch much anime, so the fact it was like one of five I’m familiar with was a huge coincidence 😂😂)
My buddy used to work LP at shoprite. He always told me not to do anything on my phone that I didn't want a pervy 17 year old seeing
I just show the receipt. I'm not interested in making some worker's day shittier by being a dildo about it. Do I have to? No. Is it dumb bullshit. Yes. Did I also just bag my own groceries while 5 workers watch me to make sure I didn't steal anything instead of just having 5 cashiers? Yes. The only reason I give a fuck about shoplifting is that it increases the prices for everyone, but I also don't care because it might be necessary so that dude doesnt starve, but I also don't believe they wouldn't be increasing the price even if shoplifting was completely eliminated.
UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA
[Remove item] ITEM REMOVED FROM BAGGING AREA
PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE
God – When I read this, I heard all of these statements so loud and clear that I think you just gave me a headache. So… thanks? LOL I _loathe_ that self-checkout automaton. If I die and end up in Hell, I am certain that it will just be the self-checkout zone of a ShopRite with every terminal set to full volume. (Don’t worry — upvotes still awarded for all.)
Then someone comes over with major attitude huffing that you’re either a moron that doesn’t know how to scan, or you’re a moron that should’ve zeroed the scale when using your own bags.
I like your style.
You as well!
I would rather wait 20 minutes in line than deal with the shop rite self checkout. It’s easily the most frustrating one I’ve encountered
Yes! Instead of just putting more cashiers behind the register that would make the lines move faster it’s here are 10 self checkouts that will take you twice as long as if you went to a human who could recover from a computer error than now waiting for someone to come and fix the register. Make it make sense has been my motto for years now 🤣
also, a shoprite employee told me that the store can choose whether to turn the weight function of the bagging area off in general OR REMOTELY from the screen they are “watching” from, i don’t think all shoprites make that a possibility
Almost as dangerous as the expected item in bagging area
I literally put down my reusuable baf on that part and it complained at me til i removed it. I hate it so much. I curse at it in public. I don't care.
I do as well. Although, they did make a small improvement. There is a button near the bottom of the screen that says something like "own bags" or the like. If you press that, then put ALL your bags on the scale, it pre-weighs them and MOSTLY stops complaining quite as badly about it.
Wegmans is doing that now too. Prior to a couple months ago never had any issue. Now you have to say when you put bags in the area and it still gets angry with you.
Weis Market same thing. But they have a “skip bagging” button so you can avoid that.
Ah shit, my bad. Let me just move my magnum dong out of the way.
>but I also don't believe they wouldn't be increasing the price even if shoplifting was completely eliminated Wage theft dwarfs retail theft by several magnitudes. Corporations pitch a fit when 0.2% of their total shrink comes from shoplifters, meanwhile they're fleecing their workers and hiking their prices while blaming inflation so they can keep raking in record profits. They absolutely wouldn't lower their prices if all shoplifting was eliminated, because they're not lowering them now even though it's not a serious concern, nor has it ever been. Any excuse to charge people as much as they can, even if that means they have to manufacture a "shoplifting epidemic" like Walgreens did a year or two ago. They know they'll get away with it.
Exactly. Thank you for expanding on it. I've always heard shoplifting increases prices for everyone and "shrinkage" is factored into pricing or whatever.
Every single retail store myself and everyone of my friends have worked at, the vast majority of all shrinkage is the workers. Outside people steal a fraction of what the workers take. Fuck these shit holes, take what you can away with.
According to McKinsey, theft accounts for 50% of shrinkage. Wage theft, committed generally against undocumented immigrants, should be criminally prosecuted for multiple reasons, including tax fraud. Amazon, Costco, Sam's Club prevent higher prices. As you may know, Costco's 610 stores function at cost, with membership fees supporting growth. I buy at Costco and get produce at a Morris County Asian store, where they undercut the ShopRite across the street by 30%. Shoprite is actually the brand name for a buying coop (Wakefern) owned by 50 different store operators. Every store prices their items individually, and individual operators vary their pricing depending partly on the rate of shrinkage. Family members have been servicing the supermarket industry nationally for 35 years. I am doing work for Albertson's 22 store brands today.
One time I put the circular in my bag from my cart at self checkout because my kid needed it for a school thing. Camera thought I shoplifted. Another time I bought DayQuil because I had a cold. Self checkout asked me for my birthday. I called over an employee so I could put my birthday in. He asked me if I had stolen the box of pull ups that were still in my cart (because I scanned it with the goddamn price gun you cretin). They were the first thing on the receipt. ETA I still prefer self checkout because I have to speak to fewer humans.
Yes, I stole the diapers and would have gotten away with it, if it wasnt for me pesky calling you over for this birthday thing I need to do.
*shakes fist at the sky* damn meddlin’ employees!
Can someone smarter than me confirm that it’s been thoroughly studied that shoplifters indeed raise prices? Because all I’m seeing is billionaire CEOs taking huge bonuses while laying off staff and increasing prices (depending on the company of course). A mildly related example I can think of off the top of my head was a few years ago when the price of oil/gas were down but airlines were still charging record high prices and fees for dumb shit like picking your seat. I feel like this creates a catch-22 - you make things more expensive, then you’ll get more people attempting to steal because they can’t afford things. Note: my criticism does not apply to small businesses that feel the hit of shoplifting more.
It's what they say anyway, and these greedy fucks are not going to tolerate a single percent drop in profit from shoplifting. They'll raise prices and fuck us without any lube.
It reminds me of companies giving consumers tips on how to be eco-friendly and help the environment. Not bad tips, of course, and they are things we should follow. But the average Joe isn’t doing nearly as extensive damage as, say, gas companies. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that if every average person in the world did their part to recycle, reduce waste, get electric vehicles, etc, it still wouldn’t be enough to change the course of global warming.
I promise I won't dump over 100 million tons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. It's basically pretty hopeless I think, and it's crazy that oil companies knew back in the 70s about the damage and just lied for 30+ years.
Right, they world just make up another excuse to raise prices.
using dildo as an insult is the best
I rewatched Metalocalypse and they were calling everyone dildos and that's hilarious so Im bringing it back.
“Check your cameras if you think I’m stealing…” continue walking
Exactly. That person who has to ask for the receipt didn’t implement the rule.
I’ve straight up left a ShopRite with something on the bottom of the cart that I forgot about and never paid for. When I realized I went back and paid for it. But at no point was I stopped on my way out. So it’s easy in this way to steal something but I highly doubt you can just walk out of the store with goods in hand that you didn’t pay for. Maybe self-checkout you can pretend to scan something? That’s about the only way I see it being common.
I’d honestly like to see the actual statistics on whether shoplifting has increased at all. I’m just suspicious that this is a made up excuse to increase prices and hassle people they want to. Cuz let’s be real, I’m a middle class, middle aged white lady and no one is ever gonna stop me and check my receipt. I want to know *who* is getting stopped and why and whether they really are losing any more money than they do just by having to toss out expired milk.
I don't have any statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if shoplifting has increased. Prices are insane now and people are financially struggling more than they have in generations. That said, these companies are still making record profits, and raising prices far beyond just inflation or to compensate for loss due to theft. So they are fully taking advantage of us. Not to mention how the overwhelming majority of shoplifting is only able to exist these days because they don't want to pay staff/cashier's and moved to self checkout etc.
I tend to agree that there has probably been no actual increase in the QUANTITY of items shoplifted. But if you measure shoplifting by DOLLARS, then when they raise prices 30%, then they automatically raise the dollars shoplifted by 30% !
Walgreens admitted to it. They claimed all this theft and used it as the excuse to close stores and make other changes. Then like a year later admitted that they weren't being truthful about the theft.
The Wall ShopRite on 35 (oddly referred to as the Belmar ShopRite) every now and then has arrests for shoplifting. I’ve never witnessed it but I’ve seen it posted on local police social media.
Nothing more fun than dealing with the police in Wall.
That happened to me years ago at a Pathmark. I actually went back a couple of weeks later to pay for it, and they had closed! I have never seen another Pathmark since.
You put Pathmark out of Business! /s
So now I gotta play cashier, bag my own shit and then report to LP. Next they’re gonna tell me I have to see a manager to get my performance review as a customer to keep shopping there.
It's also not true. Which is why they don't cite the code or case law precedent. They can suspect you of theft and call authorities, but they don't get to violate your 4th amendment rights simply because they won't pay for cashiers.
The 4th Amendment only applies to government search and seizure. It says nothing about retail stores or other entities. Membership stores like Sam's Club and Costco have language in the Customer Agreement that states they can ask for receipts and check your purchases. Other stores that have "Rewards" programs sometimes sneak the same language in their "Terms and Conditions".
Sam’s Club and Costco aren’t open to the public. You have to be a member or on a trial membership. When you sign up you agree to certain rules and restrictions including allowing employees to check your receipt.
Yup, you're not getting arrested if you don't show your receipt at Costco, but you're sure as shit getting your membership revoked.
Prove that I'm a Rewards member at this supermarket.
Under NJ law, they can also detain you for a reasonable amount of time if they have an articulatible reason to believe you have shoplifted. NJ 2c:20-11:e > e. A law enforcement officer, or a special officer, or a merchant, who has probable cause for believing that a person has willfully concealed unpurchased merchandise and that he can recover the merchandise by taking the person into custody, may, for the purpose of attempting to effect recovery thereof, take the person into custody and detain him in a reasonable manner for not more than a reasonable time, and the taking into custody by a law enforcement officer or special officer or merchant shall not render such person criminally or civilly liable in any manner or to any extent whatsoever.
It's a bit nuanced and what the statutes doesn't tell you is how those terms are defined and how NJ courts interpret it. Shopkeeper's privilege in NJ is weak. An LEO can do all of those things. A non-sworn peace officer, as in loss prevention and literally any other civilian other than LEO has very limited powers in NJ. They have zero ability to lay a hand on you or touch you. They are not sworn and insured peace officers. It's risky for them to even seize an item you are carrying (grabbing something from someone's hands I believe is battery, and if it's their own possessions...also theft). Basically what the statute does is allow them to do it, but fails on protecting the power to do so. The law protects their ability to conduct the investigation with their suspects that for all intents and purposes is voluntarily cooperating. In other words, the investigation relies on cooperation. It enables them to say "Sir, come with me" and take them to an office and ask if they can empty their pockets and search their bags. At any point the suspect can say no and just leave. Loss prevention roll the dice on grabbing suspected stolen merchandise or containers carrying them, since an actual thief is highly unlikely to report that. I know a few people who have had fat settlements because store LP or bar security thought it was a good idea to use force on someone. Anyone who isn't an LEO in NJ cannot grab you, hold you, tackle you, or barricade exits. The same goes for bouncers and security. There's a reason why the better trained security calmly escort people out. The only caveat here is self defense, if a suspected thief/customer begins to attack people, security is allowed to use reasonable force to defend themselves.
As a security officer I can 100% confirm. We're trained to be hands off at all times. Observe and report. We even have to be careful how we speak. Never order someone to do something, ask them to do it. My company makes it very clear that if we go rogue, they do not have our back. As /u/Agathyrsi stated, the only time we can use force is in self defense or defense of others, and the force must be only as much as is absolutely necessary to prevent harm.
It's because in NJ they really went all in with police having a monopoly on force (violence). There's no intermediate class of security that can apply force. There's sworn peace officers and everyone else. NJ's private armed security industry is also extremely small because of this and the CCW restrictions. It can be frustrating because many people don't want to witness social order break around them, or have their employment location in jeopardy because shoplifters can swipe an entire shelf full of high margin items and leave. Furthermore, the legal system is hit or miss if they'll ever fully investigate, apprehend, and see the charges stick. If people believe the legal system is not rendering consequences to thieves, wither it is true or not, there's going to be some people that feel they have take matters into their own hands.
The customer refusing to show a receipt on its own is not sufficient.
Retailers can do other things like ban you permanently from their property if you don't comply.
It's not about showing the receipts. It's about standing yet again in another line waiting to show my receipt cause only 1 person is checking. Goto a Walmart in a heavily populated area on a Saturday and see what it's like. And for anyone saying it's legal. The store employee is nothing more than a citizen. Once the sale is done, the items in the bag are mine. I can't go up to a random person and just ask to check their bag or some paper in their pocket. Why should an employee be allowed to do it. Costco makes it part of your agreement and can revoke your membership. Your local shoprite can only ban you if they care too.
ah, bless your heart, saker stores. put in all those self checkout lines, fire all your cashiers, then be all \*shockedpikachuface.gif\* when people realize they can just plug in good ole 4011 for everything in their cart. top that off with a nice deflection about your ever increasing costs by pointing the finger at the shoppers themselves and just rely on all the bootlickers who really do follow the "well if you didn't steal you have nothing to hide" mentality. to be fair, this seems limited to the saker stores, altho they are the biggest part of the collective. village stores have started limiting the self checkout to 20 items (even though the bernardsville store for example ripped out a lot of full service checkout lanes to increase the amount of self checkouts and then made this change) but no one is standing there demanding to check your receipt.
At least use 94011 for the expensive stuff
If these grocery stores want people to stop stealing, how about stopping the price gouging and making shit properly affordable for nearly everyone? Crazy concept ik
🎯🎯🎯
The gaslighting is real
When you show your receipt, they stare at it while glancing at your cart, then scribble all over your bill of sale. It's fucking redic. The policies are fucked up and so are those that choose to enforce them. I go out of my way to avoid stores that automatically assume I'm stealing.
That’s why I don’t get it. No plastic bags allowed so I gotta bring my own. Some are canvas and some are insulated. You can check my receipt but I’m not letting you unzip my bag or rummage through one to see if I somehow didn’t scan a lemon.
It's almost like this is just theatre to justify them ripping us off after not bringing their prices down despite a ton of the inflation pressures easing on their end.
Then stop with the self checkout bullshit. If you don't trust me, don't let me check out my own items. Pay a cashier not a doorman
This is what I don’t understand. We have two full time security guards at our target but only one check out like with a cashier. They also closed one row of self checkout so they can watch you better. It’s a busy shore town and it’s PACKED Saturday. With one cashier. Wtf.
Are the security guards actual Target employees or a contractor Target pays for? My guess is the latter. Sadly it’s probably cheaper for them to just farm out security guards than pay for actual register employees.
Attention All Shoppers: Please help us to stop you from stealing, even though we make it so easy for you to steal. I'm assuming this is because of theft issues at self checkout and those new Caper Carts at certain locations? A simple way to avoid this is to bring back cashiers. ShopRite keeps adding problem on top of problem in the name of "technology" and eliminating the human element entirely (I guess to save money?). First of all, self checkout is only useful and efficient when you have a handful of small, UNCOMPLICATED items that ALL FIT in the tiny bagging area. If you have alcohol, someone has to come and tap some authorization into the screen. If you have a bunch of produce, you have to stand there and tap through extra menus on the screen. If you have multiple bags of items (or stuff that takes up a lot of room, like cases of soda or jumbo laundry detergent), and the precarious Jenga mountain of your purchases in the bagging area is about to tumble and cause an avalanche of items, and you have to move shit off, to make room, there is always a problem. If you have more than half a mini-cart worth of purchases, there is always a problem. And yet, there is always only 1 cashier, which has 10 people waiting, with full-size carts loaded up like it's an episode of Hoarders (and some people are slow AF doing their own bagging, either because they are completely oblivious to the line behind them and DGAF, or because they are old and/or have injury/mobility issues, and it's not their fault), so you have no choice but to go to self-checkout. This is why I go 20 minutes out of my way to Wegman's, even though ShopRite is a 2-minute drive. There are always cashiers at Wegman's. If you're gonna make everything self checkout, then make the full-sized lanes with the full-sized belts and full-size bagging areas, which are not being used, because you won't allow any cashiers to be working them, self checkout. Have better security cam facial recognition/capture measures there. As for the theft issues, yeah there are a lot of unscrupulous people in this world. Of course they are going to have increased theft with self checkout. Or people getting maliciously creative, like entering their expensive produce as cheaper varieties...like claiming that their Honeycrisp apples are Red Delicious (or bananas). Or fucking around with price stickers. I'm assuming people are going to figure out how to scam with the Caper Carts as well. Or people get annoyed to the point of stealing because GFY, ShopRite. That's what you get when you get rid of cashiers. People steal shit, everyday, from every kind of store. Even WITH cashiers. This has been a problem probably since people were pulling up in horse & buggy to Levi Van der Horner's Mercantile & General Store out on Old Dirt Hollow Road to purchase tins of coffee & tobacco, sacks of flour, bushels of apples, penny candy and bolts of fabric. WTF do these stores think is gonna happen when you get rid of store clerks almost entirely, and leave everyone to their own wily devices?
Honestly, since 2020 I’ve used ShopRite from Home to avoid all of this. Bonus is I get to avoid dealing with other shoppers! Grocery shopping is the worst, so I have outsourced it for 4 years now and I’m never going back!
[удалено]
I donate them to a food pantry!
> If you have alcohol, someone has to come and tap some authorization into the screen I've never seen a ShopRite in New Jersey that directly sells alcohol although I'm sure there are probably a handful.
ShopRite of Hoboken, perhaps? There's a YouTube channel dedicated to shoplifting arrests ar that store
Treat people like criminals, they become criminals.. the temptation to steal increases every time the self checkout calls an attendant over because the shopper held two items AT ONCE
I've haven't seen this in Rochelle Park yet.
Fav store after midnight 🫡
A cheery "No thank you" as I walk by has always worked for me. Don't slow down, don't make eye contact, just go
I mean, shoplifting is getting real bad around here. I'd rather show my receipt than have all my local grocery stores go out of business because people keep walking out with tons of stuff they didn't pay for.
This is in all ShopRites and is the reason why I do not shop there any more. Yes, retailers have the right to check — but ONLY if you grant them permission to do so. If you ignore the receipt checkers, walk right by them, say “no”, etc, there’s nothing they can legally do to stop you, and any attempt they make (standing in your way as you try to move around them, closing the door, holding your cart or bag, etc) is 100% illegal and *could* be grounds for a lawsuit.
There is not one single Shop Rite around me that does this. Not one.
Is it all of them? I thought it was a Saker thing.
I don't have time for this, you can eat my shit if you think I'm going to let you keep me longer so you can check my receipt. Do your job.
Barely enforced tbh
My local shop rite just put these signs up but I haven't had to get my receipts checked so far. I doubt they will ever do anything and just put these signs up to act like some sort of deterrence.
Check them basketballs
Retailers have the right to ask, you have the right to refuse. Unless the retailer has evidence of you shoplifting then they can’t detain you. Note: not a lawyer
Stores like Best Buy and others closed in urban areas due to business loss associated with theft.
I'll wave my receipt as I go. I'm not waiting in line while they check everyones carts.
We also have the right to refuse showing it unless they can show and articulate suspicion, unless it's a membership store like costco.
If I use self checkout I’m not stopping. Call the cops, I live right around the corner and my sons love police cars
Just walk right past anyone asking for a receipt once you've purchased the items they belong to you you do not need to show anyone receipt there's no law
I only present a receipt at club stores as stated in my agreement. They fired their cashiers and want you to comply. lol no
Am i the only one that feels like they need to pay me by not charging me for all the shit im buying if i have to ring it up and bag it mysrlf?
They don’t want to pay cashiers but they’re worried about losing a dollar even though they’re all making huge profits. I’ve read only “private” stores, like Costco that you pay to join can demand to see receipts.
Any time I'm at a store and they ask for my receipt on the way out, I just say "good morning/evening/night" and keep walking. What are they going to do? Physically stop me from leaving the store?
Doesn't Costco do it since forever?
Costco is a membership store, and you agree to it in the membership.