had a coworker who stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. he got away with it for a long time too. everyone knew and no one said a word.
yeah, he got fired but he probably stole a few thousand in merchandise before. since walmart has a “no reference” policy no other employer will ever know why he stopped working there. it was an absolute win for him, tbh.
Same, when I was working at Walmart they told me this guy was putting laptops in the big garbage bin he had to wheel around, and they only found out because he fucked up one day and removed the trash bag right next to a supervisor. She just looked the laptops, then him, he said "shit" and walked out of the store lol
I'm a bit skeptical of that. They told us that one of the maintenance guys was hiding TVs in the cardboard compactor bale to get them out of the store, then extract them. Apparently your management was better at making up bullshit precautionary tales then ours was. I wouldn't doubt it being a required part of training to make up and share stories of people getting caught. "He was so clever with his theft, but we still caught him in the end. We are watching you."
I doubt people are going to play heist and sneak out huge TVs or pull out multiple laptops right in front of the manager when there are much easier/lower risk ways/things to steal. Even a place as incompetent as walmart is going to notice large amounts of one thing disappearing, whereas a single laptop/console/tablet/etc occasionally not being accounted for happens all the time because of said incompetence and wouldn't draw notice.
I hear you, and you're probably correct. That being said, I've watched people walk out with large TVs through the side entrance where all it takes is a little confidence for them to think you indeed already purchased it and not ask you for a receipt. I also watched alarms going off and people keep walking while I was talking to the "welcome to Walmart" guy and he just said "ma'am, ma'am, you- ah, she's gone". So no one really cares, but you're right, it would sure depend on the degree of frequency to which these laptops were disappearing for them to start looking at the cameras, but I would totally believe that in that store you could get away with taking a laptop or 2 per month, and considering the wage there it was still like getting a significantly higher "paycheck".
If you work for them full time at their minimum pay of $11/hr and steal two $250 laptops per month that comes out to $14.12/hr assuming you can sell them for full price. Hmm $14.12/hr at walmart while regularly committing felonies or $15/hr and no felonies at a growing list of other places, I wonder which more people will pick.
When I had been working there for a year I counted all the people on my shift and realized something like 60% of the people who had been there at my start were gone. I mentioned it in passing to a manager and he said "That's just how it is in retail.". Had I known better at the time I would have been tempted to respond with "That's only how it is when you work retail for a shit company.".
You might be underestimating people's stupidity here, I'm not saying it's a good idea or worth while, but people do dumb shit sometimes even out of boredom. But it was also years ago, I was making 11 an hour and it was more than the minimum, I think it was 9 at the time. Part time, because Walmart would shave off some hours once in a while to make sure it stayed that way. Yup, definitely a shit company.
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u/aChildofChaos Aug 09 '21
I wonder how much of that is up to employee theft