I'm angry with Waitrose

DD2 worked for Budgen's as a student and the staff were given strict instructions not to apprehend any shoplifters. This was about 2000.

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Waitrose is getting a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to staff issues.

Just six months ago they sacked a autistic young man you had worked as a shelf stacker at Waitrose (Cheadle Hulme) for four years with his hours totalling more than 600.

He loved working there and his Mother said it gave him a sense of purpose and community. She had asked the Store to consider paying him a nominal wage to further boost his morale and to help him feel needed and appreciated.

Instead they asked him not to return!!

ASDA heard and offered him two paid 5-hour shifts a week. Waitrose did attempt to back down but too late as the young man (Tom Boyd) was already settled at ASDA.

I've never been particularly impressed by Waitrose produce (M&S is much better - always has been) and my local store was one of the first they'd opened and on my doorstep. I only shopped there for emergency items over the decades but since reading about Tom I've avoided it totally.

Would suggest others do likewise.
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No, I am adding another layer to shoplifting

make.

Hithere

You also know theft can also happen internally in the company right?

The customer pays a fake lower price and gets a receipt and looks legit

There are employees conspiring to steal from their own employers too.

Are you trying to mitigate shoplifting?
Neither is right, both are criminal offences.

Two wrongs do not a right mame.

You also know theft can also happen internally in the company right?

The customer pays a fake lower price and gets a receipt and looks legit

There are employees conspiring to steal from their own employers too.

....dish out more higher fines.....🫣

I watched someone stealing several toiletry items on a local shop. Told the manager who said oh "ok I'll call it in warn others"!!! So I asked if he was going to stop him and he said no. I put my shopping down and left. Why should we pay for those that steal. After many years in retail and several follows and arrests I hate letting them get away with it. We really need to go back to stopping the so called "petty crimes" and dishonest our more discovered fines etc to stop them escalating to bigger crimes. Maybe we should adopt the chopping off a hand deterrent, that might make a difference 🤔

All this is doing is making the thieves more brazen. They already get away with it too easily.

A friend of mine has a brother who is a prolific shoplifter, he travels to other cities and comes back with a car boot overflowing and sells it all from his boot on his street.
Shop staff see him and so nothing, most shops either don't have a security guard but if they do he says they often wouldn't dare to say anything nevermind stop him. He's a big bloke and he says most SG are young kids with little experience. One stopped him recently, he told him to f off and he literally walked away from a man with a bag full of stolen stuff.

Now the one's that weren't so brazen? After reading this they will be and won't have any fear.

How can Waitrose NOT see his side? one side in particular concerns all staff watching these little tow rags paying nothing
for goods that Waitrose staff have to pay for, minus their discount. I’m not surprised there are staff in all the stores who see ‘red’ at these excuses for human beings.

Up until fairly recently I worked for M & S as a ‘Safety & Service’ assistant. My role was to act as a ‘visible deterrent’ to shoplifters. Whether/how we should challenge them was a grey area with Head Office saying no but local managers clearly wanting us to. If we had plain clothes store detectives working with us, they had much greater powers but had they still had to stick to the ‘rules’ that RosiesMawagain mentioned. We could ask someone who looked like they were leaving with items they hadn’t paid for if we could see their receipt but if they ignored us and continued walking, we really weren’t supposed to go after them.
The three main things I’d say about shoplifting/ retail crime are:
1) it’s rife! Although unions, retailers, politicians all talk about organising gangs, and this is definitely part of it, these are not the only people stealing by any means. We had everyone from junkies, housewives, respectable businessmen to staff from the travel agency across from us in the shopping centre, all thinking it was perfectly acceptable to be light fingers. No-one stole for need, imo. It was all greed.
2) The police weren’t interested. At all. They didn’t even come when a store detective was threatened with a knife.
3) Marks & Spencer didn’t take shoplifting seriously either. It makes me laugh when I hear their senior management protesting otherwise. We were very (dangerously) understaffed in my role and my manager arranged a recruitment day, which was cancelled at the last minute because of budget cuts. A colleague and I were called the ‘c-word’ by a particularly delightful South African man after I asked to see what bottles of wine he had put through self scan. He was so vile that a shocked elderly couple offered to be witnesses if we called the police. We told him he wasn’t welcome to return but he complained to Head Office and the next week he was back again chatting with the store manager

Supermarkets have fraud budgets built in for this purpose

I think Waitrose manager, given that the employee had a previous warning for disregarding policy and the employee was aware of the policy as well, did what he had to do, dictated by management.

Thr employee would have probably done it again. What if he had got hurt?

The policy makes sense.
It is up to higher management to solve the shoplifting problem.

Aveline

What are supermarkets actuallydoing to prevent shoplifting in the first place?

Nothing.

I could barely stagger out of Waitrose with the amount of stuff I lifted but they just smiled as I walked past. One even said "Have a nice day".

Rosiesmawagain
“three criteria had to be observed before action could be taken on shoplifting
1 ) opportunity to take without paying
2) intent ( I suppose like not just accidentally dropping into a basket )
3) possession - on leaving the store.”

That’s the point. The man who had the eggs in his bag hadn’t left the store when the employee went for him.
So the employee didn’t know whether he was intending to actually steal them or not.
To all those critical of Waitrose (which is only following standard employment law procedure) how would you feel if you accidentally put something in your own bag instead of the store basket, and felt a heavy hand on your shoulder?
If you feel so strongly about this, why not crowd-fund the man to sue Waitrose for unfair dismissal, and see how far you’d get?
Not very far I suspect.

What are supermarkets actuallydoing to prevent shoplifting in the first place?

If this man had an otherwise unblemished record then yes, I agree, the treatment was very harsh.
From what I read the local mgr didn't take the decision it was passed upwards presumably to head office. The response from Waitrose is all about the care and safety of staff members and customers. They are simply trying to ensure that nobody gets hurt because of tackling a shoplifter and they actually said that no product was worth anybody getting injured over. I think that's the right attitude for them to have.
At the same time I do understand that shoplifting appears to be rife nowadays and many businesses especially smaller ones are losing so much that they even go out of business and something has to be done but if I were a shop worker I would not want to risk my life by challenging someone who could have a knife, could be mentally ill or just desperate.

Iceland are really good at image/brand management, that made me smile.

I despair at this country, unbelievable..is this "WOKE" stuff? I simply do NOT understand.

I have just come back from Morrisons,, they have security tags on WASHING POWDER! and we wonder why this country well so many of the people act the way they do! I give up!

Jaxjacky

Mr Smith, as predicted by an earlier poster, has been offered a job at Iceland.

Oh good!!

I'm off to Waitrose too, jakuss.
Although I vowed to boycott them, if the food is free why stand on principle?

Get yourself a big bag fill it up and walk out, they wont stop you, I'm off there now 🤣🤣

Agree with you wholeheartedly

Mr Smith, as predicted by an earlier poster, has been offered a job at Iceland.

I have to add my name to those who are boycotting Waitrose. I too think it’s appalling that this man has lost his job. That manager needs to put himself in the position that the staff are in - the frustration must be unbearable- shoplifting small items if you are starving might be overlooked- but stealing to feed either greed or a habit should never go unchallenged. Poor show Waitrose.

Granatlast007

butterandjam

Allira

NotSpaghetti

I wouldn't be emailing them!
We don't really know what has happened behind the scenes.

Why not?

It will be interesting to see what Waitroses's reasons are, if they respond of course.

Waitrose are not going to publically discuss or reveal the employment disciplinary history of Smith (or any other employee present or past).

No, but Waitrose are fussy about their image and would be influenced by a good number of customers writing with concern about this case and the treatment of the employee.

I read that the chap had spent years watching people get away with shoplifting and it was a last straw moment. I get that and to start musing about his mental health is dismissive.

You're not a Waitrose store manager by any chance are you butterandjam ?

???? I 've not mentioned his mental health.

Is that a bee in your Easter bonnet?

I too despair at the apparent high rate of shoplifting. However, I don’t think that stores are helping themselves with the proliferation of self service tills and the lack of staff on the shop floor. I see this in M&S, John Lewis, and all the supermarkets. This does not exonerate shoplifters from the retail theft crime that they are committing, but surely it is a factor in the opportunism?