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I’m surprised he admitted it at all. They’re gonna boot him out of the club if he keeps this up.

Give that man more millions. Failing upward as performance art.

Lock him up and save our democracy and let ceo billionaires run the country America Inc.

The other brilliant revelation ought to be: “Wait, it seems that when we fire 90% of our employees, there’s no one there to catch shoplifters!”

Ooo, him sales boss good.

Judd Legum’s @juddlegum.bsky.social Popular Information newsletter has been covering this story for years. He’s well worth the read.

And gouged customers the whole time.

No, not satire. If you need to flag down a rep with a bunch of keys to buy a roll of toilet paper, you're more likely to give up and shop elsewhere.

I would rather die than ask a staff member to unlock a cabinet so I can buy toothpaste, do Americans really live like this?

well I can certainly see how HE became CEO! 🤦‍♀️

My nearest chain grocery store had zero (0) employees actually working the checkouts at 3 pm on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It’s just asinine.

I think satire has been on life support for some years now. Nowadays I regularly look at headlines and then check to see if it’s an Onion article. It be cray-cray out there.

If I walk into a store and they got shit locked up, I’m just going somewhere else. I’m not gonna ring a doorbell for some underpaid Target employee to come watch me compare the feel of undies fabric.

im so so so so so glad this actually hurt them

Also no admission that the shoplifting claims were always overblown.

Seems like the MBA are just getting the message that people would prefer to be treated like...humans.

except animals, you can only sell those if you lock them up

These are the people ruling us

They inflated theft numbers to do this and didn’t realize it could have a negative impact??

After ringing a bell and waiting in an aisle with several other sad shoppers, I say to my mother, “I’ll order it for you. You’ll get it tomorrow, and these poor suckers will still be waiting for the nonexistent employee to open the case.” Of course, always order from a competitor.

We have a fucking felon becoming “President” in a few days. Our life is satire.

Yeah I've said "nevermind" so may times to locked up items. Just went to competing online stores

You could also hire enough help to keep eyes on shoplifters. But my 2000 square foot Walgreens seems to think two employees is enough. (It is not and hence sales suffer as their rebranding to inconvenience store failed.)

This shit is why I hardly buy any games at big retail chains like Walmart or target and such. It’s annoying to haggle an employee to unlock a cabinet every time I even think about getting anything in them.

Who'd thunk it...

Both them and Walmart are finding out.

Turns out people don't buy things if you have to call someone to turn on the buy button for you

True for me. Went to walmart to buy condoms and they were locked up. Left and went elsewhere to buy them.

Unfortunately, it's not from my marketing days.. people with multiple choices want to feel each and every item within the choices..

Now that's a guy who knows retail 🤦‍♂️

If I have to wait for someone to unlock it, why wouldn't I just order it online and get it shipped instead or go to a store with abundant employees?

It was collusion! They’ve been playing a long game to convince enough people that people are walking out the front door with razors and pampers by the truckload - meanwhile wage theft and poor innovation on their part killed torpedoed their business!

And comically, they’ve also admitted that there was no uptick in shoplifting either. Their ceo was huffing Donald trump’s gold spray paint and injecting fox news and bit so hard the company went bankrupt What absolute trash people

@nytpitchbot.bsky.social I feel like you have been summoned.

Normally I'm so easily guilted that I would correct even a mistake in my favor, but I figured they owed me for my time.

Cause of death - died while searching for an associate to unlock the Walgreens poison antidote display -

lmao

For me, the real *chef's kiss* moment was doing this at the same time they got rid of cashiers, and many self-scanning customers (ahem) just didn't scan like one out of every five items. So you're firing people/increasing theft while also taking measures to cause the opposite on both.

Ngl, if things were locked up here as they are in US, I'd probably stop going outside to shop AT ALL.

Yeah, they just get it online.

It's impossible to tell this days.

#nottheonion

Retail Genius Discovers Customers Human, Have Feelings

When I saw the way things are locked up in some stores I was like this makes me want to shop elsewhere. Stores like this make $$ on the +1 items we add onto what we really wanted. Like, I need Advil but hey look at that new lip balm and I ought to get some hand cream while I’m here plus tissues.

They are apparently that dumb. Omg making stuff hard to buy...is stopping people from buying the stuff???😱😱😱 At least in person. You know damn well online shopping is going strong. If anything, it's just pushing more to shop on Amazon and such.

damn, mine have only 1 person (employee or manager) whenever I go in. and ever since they put in self checkout, sometimes there's straight up nobody except the pharmacist.

I would love for someone to make a video how their purchased crowbar was faster than their detergent, then crowbar open the detergent door and check out as fast Unfortunately, it would involve the police.

That crowbar "key" will open everything. 😂

Looks like one of those Onion man on the street sarcastic quotes.

I'm 100% positive the CEO didn't even "figure this out." He was just told it by someone in accounting.

I chatted about this with a guy at my local CVS a while back. He said, and I quote, "Man, no one was even stealing this shit before we had to lock it up."

Oh wow. What an insane revelation. How could anyone have predicted this. Anyway, I know I have left stores because finding an employee to unlock deodorant seemed like a waste of everyone’s time.

Haha. And so much is locked up.

I went to a CVS for one specific thing. Was going to grab a snack until I realized every single thing in the snack and candy aisle was locked up and required an employee. I decided I didn't need a snack.

Exactly, they just take any high ticket item to the front for you. So I don't have to worry about it and can keep shopping for any other things I need.

Yeah and generally everyone knows what they're talking about or who to ask for specific things.

Micro Center is the gold standard experience for tech shopping. I buy from them whenever I can

Hired in 2023, Wentworth is trying to fix it. The schmucks he replaced definitely made a killing on tanking Walgreens stock.

Yeah, sure. "Lost money" as "didn't get as much as there was on the table".

I bet he did 4 years in business school for that insight.

If what I need is locked up, I go buy it where it isn't locked up.

bsky.app/profile/scoo...

Enshopification

CEOs are all morons and leeches and should be the only thing A.I. is used for

And it’s always targeted stuff that’s locked up too. …yet there’s lots of other, more-expensive stuff sittin on shelves. Make it make sense

Satire doesn't have to be deliberate.

But Amazon does.

I tried to buy a Switch controller from target. I pressed the button, a guy came a few minutes later and realized he didn't have the right key. He went to find someone else. I stood there with my young son for 10 minutes before we finally gave up and bought it somewhere else.

That’s right up there with “doors must remain unlocked during business hours”

I will literately leave the store and go to another than find someone to unlock that shit. Do not have any interest in that.

What a shocker. Who could have foreseen such an outlandish idea. Oh right, everyone but Walgreens.

Tim Onion could not have come up with better.

Satire was killed off by the writers room back in 2018.

We created an extra work load for our event shrinking number of staff. As a result, customers wait for one of the few staff members to find a second to open a display. This means customers don't bother. And staff continue to be over worked and under compensated.

As someone who had to scour Target to find an employee to open the case so I could get deodorant after waiting like ten minutes and pushing the help button multiple times with no response. Nah. It’s definitely true. Self checkout is and has always been the problem. Removing humans. Is. The problem.

If I have to wait on someone to get the product, I'd rather sit on my ass at home and wait until the next day then to walk somewhere just to have to wait for someone to unlock each item.

It’s amazing that businesses have to bribe CEOs in order to get them to stop tanking the brand by working there

You have got to be kidding me. What a terrible rumor

Years of lying to investors, media, and politicians, and he just tweeted it out

It’s true. I will not press a button that says over the speaker system “customer needs assistance in the deodorant aisle”. Or “customer needs assistance in the maxi pad aisle”.

The one time I was curious enough to wait it took 20 min. That confirmed I’d continue to buy toiletries online for pick up.

I've made it a point to never buy anything locked away. I might be smelly but I have principles.

Give that man a raise! Bonuses all around!

They could, of course, hire more staff for their stores, but no.

Nope.

You mean a member of the CEO class?

Unfortunately, it is truth. Numerous corporations were complaining about "Oh, shrinkage has gone up so much!" but comparing to population, i.e. per capita, it is actually much lower than 40 years ago.

It’s like the people who set these dumb policies have never once shopped for themselves and lack even the imagination for what it would be like to be a shopper. Plus no one around them willing or able to tell them how stupid their ideas are. Amazing.

That’s why he gets paid the big bucks.

every time i see that the thing i need is locked up i pull up my phone and order it from somewhere else right there and then. not even gonna push the button i dont even want to risk bothering one of the workers. they deserve as much phone scrolling time as possible

Treat all of your customers like prisoners and see how few return.

😂🤣😂

Yeah - problem is that you can say that about literally every aspect of reality rn

turns out adding barriers to sales hurts sales, more at 11

And if they are things I do not need immediately, I will consider buying them online.

It got five or six likes before I noticed the typo, so I assume you aren’t the only one!

Me, too! Kids these days and their interwebs slang just swingin' on the flippity-flop...

It was always about the appearance so they had a distraction from the wage theft, excuses to suppress wages, and also cut every corner when it came to quality.