O/T. Waitrose 😡

[ragingpup]

are they not both criminal offences, and a physical assault could just be a push not a punch . It?s bout what is right or wrong , you forgot to mention if you?re still a looney green member , didn?t see you on the stage last week with your party leader.

Do I really need to explain the difference? Really?

In one, an actual person is being physically assaulted. In that situation, I would expect/hope that people would intervene in whatever way they could at the time. In the other, items are being stolen from a commercially huge supermarket chain who can choose, if they so wish, to increase their presence of trained security personnel whose job description and insurance arrangements to do the confronting of the criminal in a way that reduces the risk to innocent staff and shoppers.

They choose not to. I'm assuming for the shop shareholders, it is cheaper all round to keep security arrangements as is, with staff not trained and explicitly briefed not to confront (an insurance requirement), and work with CCTV and police to hook in repeated offenders. You mention that in your local supermarket, thieves are making off with stuff willy nilly and that may be so, but that seems quite off bearing in mind the CCTV they have of the incidents. Maybe things are happening that you don't know about.

Put it another way - would you want your child or grand daughter to work in your local shop and be briefed by managers to intervene? Check out what happened to shop assistant Charlene Cobin who did just that as well as many others badly injured staff/customers who have tried to intervene? Why should we leave it up to staff like that?

So why not increase the presence of trained security who can intervene on the spot? Surely that's what we all want? Isn't it? Quite simply, it's cost to the share holders. They are making the choice to run things as they are with eyes on cost of wages, insurance vs cost of items stolen, and are choosing to keep the arrangements we see. It's a simple commercial choice. I'm not saying that is right or wrong, just explaining why it is happening and who you should express your outrage to if you feel so strongly. Or you could just give brave children a pat on their head for risking their lives in order to keep prices down.

As for the fella who got sacked. Yeah, if he was new to the company, not done it before and had tried to do a good thing, then I would completely agree that sacking would be inappropriate. But as ever, there tends to be more to it than the headlines tell you, especially when manufacturing outrage.

Thanks for asking, yep, still green member as I am now two other parties. Always happy to help fund opposite voices to the Tories and those further right. Not sure who I'd vote for though. As always will want to hear how all parties want to fund their priorities before casting votes and/or renewing/withdrawing memberships. Thanks for your interest though.

[Pocket rocket]

The usual suspects out in force today. No wonder this country has gone to the dogs. Shameful

[Ericsladkilnhurst]

Richard Madeley on ITV yesterday morning with another presenter, on about shoplifting &man getting sack trying to stop them.
RM couldn't wait to get off the subject, after he was once caught shoplifting.

[Stovicmiller]

So it was you on the stage dressed in leather and prancing around Ragging , nice to know you?ve aligned yourself with the lunatic party .

[Stovicmiller]

The usual suspects out in force today. No wonder this country has gone to the dogs. Shameful

please explain.

[KerrAvon]

I think the point is being missed here.

On the 24th of February, I came across a bloke breaking into a car in a railway station car park. I challenged him and he legged it. I didn't try to detain him because I am in my 60s, whereas he looked to be in is his 20s and it was about 23:30 at night with nobody else about. I didn't fancy my chances.

What I did was my choice and the only person potentially placed at risk was me.

Had I been a railway employee, the position might well have been different, particularly if I had previously been instructed not to intervene in such instances. An employer gets to have a say because of their legal obligations to provide safe place of work and their potential liability if someone is injured in the course of employment.

Waitrose is legally obliged to operate a safe system of work. If an employee repeatedly places himself and potentially others in danger at work, then Waitrose have to act. The situation is no different from, say, a maintenance man who decided to work at height without taking proper precautions or to work on electrical equipment without isolating it.

The moral dimension to shoplifting would have no bearing upon the legal position for Waitrose.

Who knows, maybe Waitrose also discourages staff from intervening in shoplifting because they simply don't want to see them get hurt.

[Pocket rocket]

I think the point is being missed here.

On the 24th of February, I came across a bloke breaking into a car in a railway station car park. I challenged him and he legged it. I didn't try to detain him because I am in my 60s, whereas he looked to be in is his 20s and it was about 23:30 at night with nobody else about. I didn't fancy my chances.

What I did was my choice and the only person potentially placed at risk was me.

Had I been a railway employee, the position might well have been different, particularly if I had previously been instructed not to intervene in such instances. An employer gets to have a say because of their legal obligations to provide safe place of work and their potential liability if someone is injured in the course of employment.

Waitrose is legally obliged to operate a safe system of work. If an employee repeatedly places himself and potentially others in danger at work, then Waitrose have to act. The situation is no different from, say, a maintenance man who decided to work at height without taking proper precautions or to work on electrical equipment without isolating it.

The moral dimension to shoplifting would have no bearing upon the legal position for Waitrose.

Who knows, maybe Waitrose also discourages staff from intervening in shoplifting because they simply don't want to see them get hurt.

Or an alternative view is that we need more people like the employee you know like it used to be before ethics and values went Kerr.
That?s why people are fed up with it and questioning sacking him this country is broken now. The guilty get punished less and less every day.
When did it become acceptable to punish people like this more than the perpetrators?

[ragingpup]

Or an alternative view is that we need more people like the employee you know like it used to be before ethics and values went Kerr.
That?s why people are fed up with it and questioning sacking him this country is broken now. The guilty get punished less and less every day.
When did it become acceptable to punish people like this more than the perpetrators?

I think it would be more unethical for a shop to encourage untrained people to throw themselves in harm's way in order to protect their stock.

I think that were all agreed that we shouldn't expect untrained shop staff to be the ones to intervene? Surely you wouldn't ask your young daughter/step daughter to do that would you?

If it is just about the punishment of the shop security person here, I can understand your point but you have to also take it from the point of view of the store - each poorly trained intervention, whether it from shop staff or public member, directly puts other customers around them, innocent people getting some shopping, at risk. That's why the policy is there, to protect innocent people. The fact that this shop worker has done this very thing at least once before, after being directly told not to, is the reason why he was fired. Important to note that he wasn't dismissed after the first (at least one) occasion.

[Pocket rocket]

I think it would be more unethical for a shop to encourage untrained people to throw themselves in harm's way in order to protect their stock.

I think that were all agreed that we shouldn't expect untrained shop staff to be the ones to intervene? Surely you wouldn't ask your young daughter/step daughter to do that would you?

If it is just about the punishment of the shop security person here, I can understand your point but you have to also take it from the point of view of the store - each poorly trained intervention, whether it from shop staff or public member, directly puts other customers around them, innocent people getting some shopping, at risk. That's why the policy is there, to protect innocent people. The fact that this shop worker has done this very thing at least once before, after being directly told not to, is the reason why he was fired. Important to note that he wasn't dismissed after the first (at least one) occasion.

So no answer to why the punishment is worse for the shop staff than the perpetrators?
I’ll ask you when did it become acceptable to punish him more than the perpetrators? And don’t do the what would you tell your daughter to do.
My daughter would do what she thinks Is the right thing to do because that’s how she has been brought up. Shame other parents don’t have the same values system. This country has no values anymore most are driven by political/ ideological views and if it suits both they will accept anything.

[Stansmate]

Give that man an Easter egg -👏

( not from Waitrose )

[sota]

Whatever happened to trained store detectives or loss prevention officers? It can only get worse as more boots on the ground arrive almost every day.

[Townerslovechild]

Must say on the face of it sacking him seems OTT,but we don't know the full story.
I remember, until very recently, every big shop you went in had signs saying 'We always prosecute shop lifters",I'm guessing they don't anymore.
40 years ago we had our own mini market 50 yards from a comp school, first thing in a morning and at kicking out time we always made sure we had extra staff in watching the little moomins, on the odd occasion someone was caught thieving they were banned from the shop,followed by a kick up the arse.

[Stansmate]

Just read the chief exec of Iceland ( not the country ) has offered the ex Waitrose guy a job !!

Good luck to him 👍

[ragingpup]

So no answer to why the punishment is worse for the shop staff than the perpetrators?
I’ll ask you when did it become acceptable to punish him more than the perpetrators? And don’t do the what would you tell your daughter to do.
My daughter would do what she thinks Is the right thing to do because that’s how she has been brought up. Shame other parents don’t have the same values system. This country has no values anymore most are driven by political/ ideological views and if it suits both they will accept anything.

We don't have any information as to whether the shop lifter will or won't be punished. We know he got out of the shop but we also know that it would have been caught on TV. We also know that the way bigger stores work against shoplifting now is to either 1) have trained staff on the floor who are ready to intervene as we would like or 2) (Most common) Have security to spot the offence, alert management and use CCTV to then give to police decide on next steps. I don't know to what extent there are prosecutions in terms of numbers but a basic stat is that convictions for shoplifting have doubled in the last 3 years. I would say that the prosecution to offence rate is still very low though, with offences increasing due to move to self service, lack of investment (from stores and government in police presence.

So bottom line in answer to your question (when it became more acceptable to punish store person more than offender) is we don't know the facts of the offender and what might happen to him. If he's an infrequent offender, there may just be notices not to offend, if he's frequent then the CCTV may be on it's way to police. As for when it bacame more acceptable, it can't be shown either way if it has. We can see that the number of shoplifting offences has shot up and that lack of trained security and police presence not keeping up with offences, and a completely different way of processing prosecutions. It's a commpletely different world, in some ways you could argue better, in some ways you could argue the opposite. But you can be sure people our age were complaining of much the same thing when they were younger and our children will be making the same comments when they reach our age!

So, by saying (with no pomposity at all I stress) that your daughter would 'do the right thing' do you mean that she would intervene by confronting the offender directly, and that you have signalled that it is a positive thing to confront when you see a shoplifting event? Is that how you measure your superior 'values system'? I would consider the right thing to dio in this situation is for my daughter, or anyone to intervene by informing a staff member and offering to be a witness, leave name and address if she witnessed it happen. Is that not good enough? Is that not 'the right thing'? as you see it.

We'll just have to agree to disagree about whether people have morally gone to pot. There are lots of stories of heroes standing up and doing heroic things, even putting their own safety on the line. But these tend to be when someone else is in danger and I hope that I and my daughter would always try and intervene in any way they can when others are in danger. Less so for protecting shop merch when the company themselves are choosing not to supply trained personnel and we as a collective society have chosen through voting for successive governments who have de-prioritised police presence.

[sota]

I would think that losses from theft are built into pricing. So the honest working man has to subsidise the thief?s shopping on top of contributing to his benefits. Wonderful