Stopping off in a local shop at lunchtime, I saw a young woman with two good sized shopping bags, no trolley, working her way carefully around the chiller shelves. Where she saw reduction labels on items with a short shelf life, she was peeling them off and reassigning the reduction stickers on other containers of the same product, but with longer shelf lives. The woman then put the items into one of her two bags. She was very methodical.
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Naughty woman..that constitutes theft!
It sure does. My guess is, from her methods, that this woman has got away with it many times.
A Chilling experience….:> xx
I can imagine she has as the staff won’t really be looking out for that..
YUP
I think that is her gamble, Isadora. Usually, cameras are focussed on the wrong area, or the wrong angle or something else.
hmmmmm that is a new one on me
I haven’t witnessed this before, either. Someone always finds a devious loophole in systems, don’t they. The cameras in store, need to be deployed a little more widely.
yes, and with eht economy I think it is going to get worse. I have seen people change tags for a lower price. dont approve but at least you think that on food there might be something going on but to change for an expirationd date now that is weird. But, I dont think people realize the far reaching effect this has let alone the moral ane etical issues
Or it is really they dont care about that
People who behave as this tidily dressed young woman did, have no scruples. As another commentator said, what she did, was theft. I would add to that, fraud.
The food product was probably within three to five days of expiry with this company. To shift it, the product was marked down in price by quite a large percentage. If a product is closer to sell by date with this store, the percentage would have been even bigger. The woman, by reassigning the reduction label to an in-date item, was therefore, fraudulently reducing the price of a product as well as taking cash benefit in kind. That, in my book, equals theft and fraud.
You are right, the ethics have not even crossed her mind, the act was a totally selfish one, one for which, the woman intended to take maximum personal gain and everyone else be damned.
If you or I choose to buy a product that is close to sell by date, for full up price, that is our choice. We would not have been given the benefit of choice in this instance. I do check dates as a rule, but if and when in a hurry, you sometimes don’t. From now on, I shall check everything, carefully.
I will be looking at the dates too. Just never thought about prices being changed. Maybe that is why some items I have bought in the last few months turned so quickly. Never thought about it. Just another thing I have to worry about because of someone elses actions
Don’t look on checking dates as a negative thing for you and me; it just is something we should be doing to keep ourselves healthy and to obtain a fair deal. Some shops don’t discount till the last minute, say a day or maybe two before. You can’t do much about that, apart from comment on it, or seek out longer dated items on the same shelf. I do that with a particular brand of yoghurt I buy in another store. There’s almost as much as a week’s difference in dates, depending on when the deliveries were taken in store. I usually find the longer dated, (that is, the more recent delivered) yoghurt at the very back or on the bottom of the stack.
You have to learn store tricks and be watchful for some customers’ nonsense too. The way I see it, it empowers you to look after yourself.
I do it but not to change it. I havent bought a lot of groceries of late and what I get doesnt last long enough to go bad:))
That sounds really good to me. 🙂
Definitely theft, but I’m confused by the shopping bags rather than trolly or basket.
Hi Suzee,
Long time no hear.
I have taken in bags into the shop when I haven’t huge amounts of shopping to do, and, I have wanted to avoid the possibility of jammed up £1 coins to recover from a trolley mechanism.
The bags were a point I pondered on. It was easy for the shopper to lower herself to the bottom shelf of chiller fridges, on her haunches, to where some of the reduced goods were, bags either side, providing a little cover for her operation, then pop her items in to the bags. Also, if she were to meddle in the same way with labels in the closed top fridges, the fridges would hide her activity, the bags could be either side allowing her to drop her items, again, into them. However, the main benefit of this form of shopping is, when you come to the checkout, you decant your shopping on to the belt, and it is just possible, an item or two might get forgotten in the bottom of the bags. During the time the bags are packed again, the ‘forgotten’ goods would be well covered.
I did hear of one or two other tricks tried with spirits.
Hi Menhir,
Got out of blogging habit, but thought I’d see what my friends were up to…
I did wonder about using own bags as way of more straight-forward thieving opportunity. As well as being dishonest and wrong, tere is something quite shameless in the premediation isn’t there?
The pre-meditation was certainly obvious. It was likely that this woman had got away with the trick a few times already…..all for 30% the manager said. However, that sort of discount builds up, one or two items lying in the dark recesses of shopping bags, not paid for becomes a nice little reduction in the food bill and an added expense on us, the other customers.
She knew I had seen her and hung around till she thought I had cleared the premises. however, I did see hubby had entered the shop, so, returned to have a quick word with him. By that time the woman was going through the checkout and …………was checked. :>>