Good News from Wal-Mart!
By God, how I love employee pilferage.
I mean . . . um . . . that’s illegal!!!!:
Shoppers at Wal-Mart stores across America are loading carts with merchandise — maybe a flat-screen TV, a few DVDs and a six-pack of beer — and strolling out without paying. Employees also are helping themselves to goods they haven’t paid for.
The world’s largest retailer is saying little about these kinds of thefts, but its recent public disclosures that it is experiencing an increase in so-called shrinkage at its U.S. stores suggests that inventory losses due to shoplifting, employee theft, paperwork errors and supplier fraud could be worsening.
The hit is likely to rise to more than $3 billion this year for Wal-Mart Stores, which generated sales of $348.6 billion last year, according to retail consultant Burt Flickinger III.
OK. But I don’t think “Burt Flickinger III” is his real name. Anyhoo:
Flickinger and other analysts say the increase in theft may be tied to Wal-Mart’s highly publicized decision last year to no longer prosecute minor cases of shoplifting in order to focus on organized shoplifting rings. Former employees also say staffing levels, including security personnel, have been reduced, making it easier for theft to occur. And WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-backed group critical of the retailer’s personnel policies, contends general worker discontent is playing a role.
Wal-Mart declined to offer explanations for the rise in losses, but denied cutting security staff and said employee morale is rising rather than falling.
I think the proper response to that last point is “Bullshit.” If employee wages aren’t rising, employee moral isn’t rising either. It’s a pretty simple equation.
As for the rest of it, it seems clear to me that if Wal-Mart were serious about stopping theft, they’d set their watches to Giuliani Time right quick. As it happens, “loss prevention” employees at a Houston Wal-Mart accidentally suffocated a shoplifter in 2005 while awaiting the arrival of the police. If Rudy were the preznit, hired goons could do this sort of thing all the time. There’d be no broken windows in Sam Walton’s house.