Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Co-op cop

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 04-18-2018, 06:37 PM:

There's a guy who works at the grocery store who's been there for about 20 years and is kind of the go-to guy to do pretty much everything. He doesn't have anything to do with the tills or the money but he stocks shelves, helps bring the incoming merchandise in off of the trucks, shovels the snow, changes the light bulbs, and helps old ladies carry their groceries. I usually hunt him down to get me a case of butter out of the stock room when I need to restock that.

I went to the grocery store this afternoon and he said, "Have you ever met a Co-op cop?" I of course said I'd never heard of a Co-op cop. He told me that he's now the Co-op cop.

The powers-that-be just sent him on a course for the detection and apprehension of shoplifters.

There's that much stuff that gets stolen out of here, I asked. He said that it's really getting out of hand. He said that the most stolen items by number of them taken is underarm stick deodorant, tampons and pre-mixed Kool Aid in cans. By value, it's meat.

He said that he can put a full case of deodorant on the shelf in the morning and by afternoon it's all gone, but if they check the till records they've only sold three.

Amazing.

So he now has an additional job, watching for shoplifters. He said he caught one guy yesterday stealing a can of ham so I guess it was worth their while to send him on that course.

Really, though.... I was quite shocked. I guess I've always looked at that kind of thing as a big city problem and never thought that folks would be stealing stuff that way around here.

Posted by Alexandre Pereira (Member # 9295) on 04-18-2018, 08:52 PM:

No surprise. I get the entitled granny types stealing cans of perrier out of the candy bar front display case. Of course we keep the beer locked up and have cameras everywhere but they still try.
The shoppers drug mart next door has continuous problems. They keep folders of photographs of all the shoplifters. It is all kinds - grannies to kids stealing everything from razor blades to cosmetics.
Our main problem here at the theatre is nitwits trying to run into the show for free. Not kids - usually middle aged tools.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 04-19-2018, 04:46 PM:

quote: Frank Cox
I guess I've always looked at that kind of thing as a big city problem and never thought that folks would be stealing stuff that way around here.

In the U.S., there are shoplifters everywhere, even (or especially) in richer suburban communities where spoiled kids feel "entitled" to whatever they want and they know that Daddy won't let anything bad happen to them.

When I was a kid, most stores didn't have visible security cops and there were no security tags or anything of the sort. I don't know whether there was less shoplifting or whether store owners put up with it because there weren't good solutions.

I once walked past a Tower Records where plainclothes security personnel stopped a guy who had just left the store and who had a large number of stolen DVD's (back when DVD's weren't cheap) in all the pockets of his long coat, in his waistband, etc. They removed all the DVD's and were looking for more and the guy screamed, "I don't have any more!" When they continued to frisk him, he (actually) said, "What's the matter? Don't you trust me?"

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-20-2018, 11:46 PM:

Several years ago when I was in the music business, a guy came in and said "When I was in high school, I used to steal stuff from this store and now I feel bad about it, so I wanted to give you this" and he handed me a $50 bill. I said, "Did you really steal this much?" He just said "I hope this makes up for it."

I found out later from a friend that the same guy went into the gas station where he used to work, and gave the station owner $100 and told him the same thing. The owner said, "Can I expect another payment next month?"

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 04-21-2018, 05:06 AM:

There's another advantage Amazon has over brick and mortar retail. There are no members of the public with access to shoplift.

I'm sure there are issues with warehouse workers, however, they are allowed to set up security checkpoints and inspect workers leaving the facility. Although a private business can check people on the way IN for security, I can't imagine they'd be allowed to check people on the way out.

Sure, places like Costco and Best Buy will check your cart/bags and compare to the receipt but they don't check your clothing for small items.

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 04-23-2018, 08:16 AM:

Our family ran grocery stores/supermarkets for generations. The current laws for prosecution of shoplifting are pretty ridiculous (ie: if you don't have your eyes on them 100% of the time, or video, both of which are tricky, it gets thrown out). As far as confronting the shoplifter, that's about all you can do and that is legal (most stores are "private" property), that's something we usually did so long as we outnumbered the person....there might be more worries now on that.

Meat was the big-ticket item for pure shoplifting. Canned goods sometimes for the homeless types. Used to get broken into for cigarettes mostly. Employee theft is usually done at the cash register, though there's much less cash handled now, so that would be harder to do. Employees also sometimes will "wholesale" product to family, friends (or themselves) by taking product out the back door in the "garbage" and either selling it or keeping it for themselves. None of this happened much in our stores, they were small, but over 6 decades or so, you ran across most of it at least once.

There were also cases of delivery driver shenanigans shorting product or falsifying "damaged" goods on their own and selling it to other places. I'm sure there's a million more. The consumer pays for it all. The problem of deodorant is a new one for me. I'd bet money it's staff mostly on that, needing it and just grabbing it....

Now that I think of it Martin, talking about daddies protecting kids bad behavior, the very first "professional" thing I did was as a "grocery store cop". My dad had just opened a new store in our tiny little hometown of 1,400. I wasn't more than 6 or 7 and I remember tugging on dad's pantleg as he talked with his manager before he walked me to school. He brushed me off a couple times, but I had just seen a little girl grab a chocolate bar and leave the store. Dad, Dad, DAD! (Just a second.....). DAD, that girl just took a chocolate bar! The three of us ran out and dad grabbed that girl by the arm, got the chocolate bar AND the girl's name, her parents name and phone number. I can see it like it was yesterday. I'm almost certain he never called, but it was the mid 70's, and adults were in charge.

I've heard it said that kids haven't changed, adults have. Kids don't know anything about anything, never have, but the adults now protect them over everything. May be some truth to that.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-23-2018, 09:17 AM:

Shoplifting is a real problem. I was on a grand jury last fall and we saw several such cases. We also saw an employee theft scam. I am not allowed to talk or post about these cases in detail, but I will say that all of the retailers involved have employees and even whole departments devoted to reducing losses from shoplifting. The people that we saw were all repeat offenders. Some stores were very on top of this, while others were less so, but all were very concerned about the problem and were working hard to reduce it.

I will add here that modern security cameras produce very high-quality footage. This is not the grainy, smeary security camera footage from the '80s and '90s, but rather it is almost HD quality. It is now easy to identify people and what they are taking from the stores. I have no idea if this has actually reduced the amount of shoplifting that takes place, but it definitely makes it easier to prosecute these cases after the fact.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-23-2018, 10:28 AM:

This had to be about 15 years ago, but one afternoon I was driving on the street that borders the South side of Central Mall here in Lawton. This lady, probably in her 20's, was frantically running up to my pickup as I was stopped at the intersection. I didn't know if she was trying to get away from someone wanting to do something violent to her. I didn't let her in my vehicle though. Out of nowhere these security guards from the mall showed up to apprehend her. I guess she was caught trying to steal something from Dillards and tried to escape. Pretty freaky scene though.

Retail stores (and convenience stores in particular) have been upgrading camera systems. Newer systems are commonly HD quality. Multiple camera systems are increasingly affordable. The stores are recording a lot more footage from more angles inside and outside the store. Many have loss prevention teams who patrol the stores. When they catch a shoplifter they'll often have the thief dead to rights.

Unfortunately prisons are filled beyond capacity in most states. It also costs a fortune to keep someone in prison. Shoplifting is obviously a lower priority than drug crimes or violent crimes. So even if a shoplifter is convicted he/she probably won't get more than a fine and suspended sentence. It's going to take a fairly high value theft to land a shoplifter in the Gray Bar Hotel. The convicted thief can suffer other consequences though. Many employers do background checks. A conviction for shoplifting, be it a felony or just a misdemeanor, will be a permanent mark on his/her record and screw that person out of many opportunities. Impulsive criminals don't seem to think about how the choices they make now can affect their lives 10 or 20 years from now.

quote: Lyle Romer
There's another advantage Amazon has over brick and mortar retail. There are no members of the public with access to shoplift.

That's all fine and good at the warehouse filled with robots and low wage employees. It's another story once the package leaves the warehouse. Deliveries aren't quite so safe once they're getting plopped on residential door steps without so much as a door knock. Thieves make out pretty well following package delivery routes.

IMHO, it's pretty stupid for anyone to have mail orders delivered to their homes. Our own neighborhood watch group hears sob stories all the time from people whose Amazon orders were stolen off the porch. Have the package delivered to the office where a human being can take delivery of it. Or just tell the post office, FedEX, etc to hold packages at their office for customer pickup.

Lots of petty crime is enabled out of negligence and stupidity. The vast majority of car break-ins happen because the vehicle doors were left unlocked. Lots of home break-ins are able to happen because of the very same thing. Some people insist on leaving doors unlocked "because that's what we did in the good ole days." It happens a lot in the rural towns around here. Never mind the fact most of our rural towns have very little law enforcement coverage. Some towns no longer have their own police departments. The county sheriff's office and highway patrol can pick up only so much of the slack. Again, shoplifting or package theft isn't going to be a top priority. There's plenty of more serious crimes happening out in the country.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-09-2018, 09:46 PM:

My li'l buddy at the grocery store ran right over as soon as he saw me come in this afternoon.

"Hey Frank, I got one! I caught a shoplifter yesterday! I arrested him right there on the sidewalk!"

Apparently he was stealing a cheesecake and some pepperoni sticks.

I guess the problem is real, even in a little town like this one.

The "Co-op cop" is pretty proud. He told me all about how he wrote notes and gave them to the police and so on.

Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 08-09-2018, 10:59 PM:

We get people trying to snag stuff out of the restaurant all the time. Salt and pepper shakers seem to be a go to item.

Really? You can get a whole set at the dollar store for.....a dollar...

I remember once someone trying to steal one of our beer glasses that has our logo on it. Started walking out and everyone hears a loud *THUD* and turns to see a glass rolling along the floor. Fell outta his shirt. Whole dining room staring at him, he just picks it up and places it on a table and quietly walks out. Ha!

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 08-12-2018, 11:06 PM:

If your customers love your beer mugs that much, sell them. Great marketing opportunity. Or, 'spend X and get a free mug".

Posted by James Wyrembelski (Member # 9037) on 08-13-2018, 05:25 PM:

Lol, we do sell them. But why pay us when you can just take it?

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-14-2018, 12:58 AM:

It's interesting that while shoplifting is an ever-present problem, the number of self-checkout grocery and convenience stores around here is on the rise. I also don't see an increased amount of security guards, most shops are entirely devoid of it. I guess they hope to conquer the problem with increased camera surveillance. Nowadays, even face recognition isn't something that's very special anymore...

But somehow I like the Japanese solution. First off all, it's a cultural thing, but the amount of shoplifting in Japan is pretty minimal. Usually, there are no security guards and you'll never see somebody suspecting you from stealing anything. You'll also practically never see anti-theft devices at the entrances and exits. But what they do have is those orange balls and the staff is trained at throwing them. So if they detect a shoplifter, they'll throw an orange ball at him, which will cover him in orange goo. Then they call the police who often have an easy time detecting and apprehending the shoplifter.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-14-2018, 05:24 AM:

quote:
he's the go-to guy to do pretty much everything:

-- stocks shelves
-- unloads incoming merchandise in off of the trucks
-- shovels the snow
-- changes the light bulbs
-- helps old ladies carry their groceries
and I bet sweeps and mops too...maybe even cleans the restrooms? And now this poor unionless schlub who's been there for 20 years also now is expected to double as a freakin Co-op Cop and even had to go to special training for this august responsibility.

I sure hope they gave him a hefty pay increase with this new hat he has to wear or as somehow my gut is telling me, they still paying him what he's always been paid...you know, not much above minimum wage. He needs to find a union.

Maybe the retail stores should take a page from the MPAA and on every isle, maybe on every product, put big stickers that say Shoplifting IS NOT a victimless crime! The (enter the city name) Police Department investigates and prosecutes shoplifting misdemeanor and felony crimes which can carry sentences from 6 months to 10 years in jail and fines of up to $ (give some really scary big number) or both. Make sure the signs have a big, official police department insignia above it just like the FBI logo that the studios use...you know, that same FBI that the studios use as their own private police force.

The movie industry doesn't seem to be embarrassed that they slap that FBI warning on EVERY product they sell, putting it before every movie and make it so you can't jump past it on a product that you already PAID for; maybe retail should start doing the same thing.

Stores could also produce a series of "informational videos" like the MPAA did awhile back. They could be run on monitors at various locations throughout the store -- maybe at each isle. Each video would identify one type of store worker -- a Sales Manager, a Stock Person, a Custodian, a Cashier, etc., showing them happily at home with their families sitting around the table eating a family meal, then the image tears in half to show a shoplifter pilfering an item. Back to the family again where we see sad faces as all the food disappears from the table. Last scene -- handcuffs being put on the perpetrator by police -- image freezes with superimposed text: Shoplifting is a PUNISHABLE crime.

The film department at the college recently installed HD surveillance cameras in all the editing labs, the common areas, the equipment rooms and in the screening cinemas...basically everywhere except the bathrooms. I was amazed at the clarity of the color images these cameras produce (and of course record); when you turn the lights out in the room, they immediately switch to infrared and you get an image that is nearly as clear as with good lighting, only in B&W. It always amazes me how when you see the video from surveillance cameras on the news and the announcer says, "can you help identify this person?" then you see this fuzzy blob moving across a screen with video noise the size of golf balls -- what crap cameras are they using? I don't think I've ever seen any surveillance footage on the news where it wasn't total garbage video and as far as I can tell, totally useless in identifying anything, let alone a person's face. What's that all about?

I wonder how long it will take me to get used to the fact that there is an image of every move I make, no matter where I go throughout the whole building, all day long and it's being recorded and saved for a week. AND that certain people can watch it in real-time from anywhere where they have an internet connection. I can tell you, it makes you think twice before adjusting your crotch or scratching your ass! [uhoh]

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 08-14-2018, 10:10 AM:

Yes Frank,

It's a "Brave New World"!

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-14-2018, 11:33 AM:

quote: Frank Angel
I sure hope they gave him a hefty pay increase with this new hat he has to wear or as somehow my gut is telling me, they still paying him what he's always been paid...you know, not much above minimum wage. He needs to find a union.

I don't think they're unionized, but it's my understanding that working at the local Co-op is one of the most desirable jobs in town for people without higher education. The pay is fair, the hours are reasonable, and there's even a pension plan.

There seem to be two kinds of people working there: school kids and lifers. Most of the people who work at the other local stores and gas stations seem to aspire to work at the Co-op. There's a Co-op lumberyard, grocery store and gas station here and they're all big operations (relative to the size of this town; they would be pretty small in the context of the rest of the world).

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 08-15-2018, 09:03 AM:

As a former owner who dealt with a large food store union in North America in one of our locations, I can tell you it wouldn't do anything for your pal. They're just growing their business, and use shady tactics to do it. In our case, when we said we'd have trouble affording all these new costs in our small, small town location, they flat-out advised us to lay off all the full-time staff we could and replace with part time kids at the lowest pay rate. They promised kids Nike shoes every year if they signed cards just to get certified, meantime never even asked for it at the bargaining table. We had provided the highest retail wages with medical/dental and pension matching plan to EVERY employee prior to unionization. They flat-out refused to include it in our contracts, would never agree that our department managers should be salaried and retain their quarterly performance bonus (so they became hourly "clerks" in their system, imagine, no produce, bakery or deli manager at all). Couldn't give raises to them or performance bonuses (though we often did, in cash, quietly). The big grocery union in North America is a racket, complete and utter joke.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-15-2018, 12:57 PM:

quote: Lyle Romer
There's another advantage Amazon has over brick and mortar retail. There are no members of the public with access to shoplift.

Online retailing has its own set of security issues, fraudulent credit card use and porch piracy being the big ones. I've noticed that Amazon delivery drivers now take a pic of stuff that they've put on your porch and email a link to the photo with the delivery confirmation email. A co-worker told me that when a $300 item was not on his doorstep when he got home after receiving a delivery confirmation email, Amazon would not refund him until he could produce a police report showing that he'd reported the theft. Therefore, I am guessing that people dishonestly claiming that items weren't delivered when they were has gotten to be a big enough problem that Amazon is now taking prevention measures.

My local supermarket took to placing small, light, high value and/or heavily stolen items (e.g. razor blades and baby formula) into a locked cabinet by the checkout. If you want any of these items, you have to ask for them at the checkout, whereupon the clerk goes directly to the cabinet, gets them, and rings them up immediately.

A few weeks later, they were sued by an individual (with the ACLU paying the legal costs) who claimed that because some types of canned food that are bought primarily by African-Americans went in the cabinet, the store was being racist. In response, the store produced very convincing documentary proof that most of the items that left the store could not be accounted for as having been legitimately sold before they went in the locked cabinet (after which the unexplained losses dropped to zero), and therefore their choice of items to put in the locked cabinet was based on actual theft loss figures, not racial profiling.

Even then, the lawsuit was not dropped. I believe that the case will be coming to court in the next few months. In the meantime, the entire chain has simply stopped carrying the items in question.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-15-2018, 06:08 PM:

I just ordered a vacuum cleaner for my mother from Costco which was to be delivered directly to her house (in a town almost 300 miles from where I live).

She phoned me to say that she had received a mysterious phone call from someone who said that they had found her vacuum on their back step, nowhere near her house.

When I checked the online delivery status page it said that the package had been left on the back step of her house. But it had been left on the back step of a random house in that town, not on the back step of her house.

Luckily the person who found it on their step was honest enough to phone her and say that they had her vacuum cleaner at their house. They could have easily kept it and nobody would have been the wiser.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-16-2018, 05:45 AM:

In many cases, those delivery couriers get paid more for the packets they can deliver than that they cannot. So, there is a perverse incentive to deliver the package to "somewhere", no matter what.

I'm still trying to convince one of those crappy delivery companies that when I'm not home they should not simply dump the box in the garden and be gone, but better deliver it to a local depot instead.

I've actually lost equipment this way, which was delivered while we were a few days away and the stuff was just left there in the freezing cold and rain...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-16-2018, 01:48 PM:

UPS's newest "policy" is, a signature is not required unless the package is insured for over $100. So much for being able to prove who accepted a package that has gone missing.

We used to operate a "customer counter" for people to ship UPS packages out. We used it more as a traffic builder for the store, and it did bring in a lot of people who wouldn't ever come in otherwise.

In recent years, though, two things have happened: First, UPS increased the use of "RS" pre-printed labels, meaning people could print their own labels at home and then just drop the box off, thereby bypassing our service. So we went from shipping dozens of packages a week (or over a thousand during the Christmas rush) to just a handful a week.

Then they started tacking on extra fees, surcharges and such for everything under the sun - box size, delivery area, what the box was made of, one side being too long, etc. In the current UPS manual, there are FOUR PAGES of these extra charges. The fees made more than one person decide "the hell with it" and take their package to the post office to ship. Plus the fees became next to impossible to keep up with.

We finally had our fill with the "Address Correction Charge." That's when an address label has any kind of mistake, they'll attempt to correct it to make the delivery. Which is a reasonable thing to have a fee for, but they take it to extremes: One time we had a guy ship five boxes to an apartment in Seattle...he had the apartment number wrong. The correction fee was $11.50, but UPS charged us $11.50 per box on ALL FIVE boxes, for a total of $57.50, even though they were all delivered by the same guy on the same day.

Finally, we told them to take this job and shove it, since offering the service to the public was not worth the work, confusion, and ever-increasing expense.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 08-17-2018, 05:53 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
UPS's newest "policy" is, a signature is not required unless the package is insured for over $100. So much for being able to prove who accepted a package that has gone missing.

That seems to be a global trend across all shipping companies and I guess the change is simply to save some seconds per delivery and hence some costs.

I don't know when they started to implement those changes, but roughly 5 years ago, anything that came inside a box required a signature for receipt. Usually it was just a "digital" signature, totally unrecognizable on some of their totally worn-out terminals, but at least someone singed for it...

UPS used to be one of the best if not the best shipping company around here, but that time has long been gone. The last time I've tried to use them was when I needed an express shipment from here to Disney in L.A., it was an item for an exhibition, so I was willing to pay premium for it. Since it had to go on another account, I didn't book it under my normal customer number, but I booked it on-line and pre-paid a sum of roughly $450 for "day definitive" shipment.

The on-line booking also confirmed a pickup-window, but just to be sure, I called them on their horrible local customer service, where you talk to a computer who will guide you trough 10 levels of nonsense questions, while not being able to understand you 3 out of 4 times. They confirmed the pickup time...

The end of the pickup window came and went and nobody came... I called them again and I was assured they would still come for pickup before 6pm.

You guessed it, nobody ever came to pick it up. I called again and their contact center was closed...

I ended up spending 750 euros on DHL, for the most expensive express shipment they had, to get the item in L.A. and express-custom-cleared, in time for the exhibition.

The administrative branch of UPS was so incompetent, I gave up after the second try. I eventually managed to get my money back via the credit card company. After that they even sent me angry letters and reminders. The case only got settled after my lawyer dumped a big claim on their desk. I've since vowed to never use their services again, whenever possible,