General Chat

Do you have to sink to steal items from a charity shop?????? I was waiting for the bus after work tonight beside The British Heart Foundation shop and caught the manager helping a man who looked to be mid 20s firmly out the door. The manager said to him “No, no, you’ve been in here a while now trying to steal things and you’ve just threatened me. Now out!”

Disgusting isn't it!

Glad he didn't get anything, that is dispicable.

Happened every day in the one I worked at , got to know the faces quite well. The worse ones were the women with the massive long skirts that had a bag sewn inside for them to drop items in. Then we had a couple of men who would just walk in steal stuff then go to the nearest pub to sell it.
It all goes on in a charity shop you know.

We had some lovely customers as well thank goodness.

That’s sad JustGinnie. One would hope that charity shops would be immune but human nature again shows how low people can sink.

Not new. It's always happening ........... including stealing poppy boxes from near cash registers in shops, to stealing from the Sallie Ann Christmas collections.

How about stealing newspapers from coffee shops?? I don't whether your coffee shops do this, but almost every one over here, before covid, would take out subscriptions to several newspapers and put them out for people to read while drinking and/or eating inside.

Grocery stores, etc etc.

It's always happened ............. my mother used to work in a high class ladies and childrens' shop in my home town, which also had a dressmaking section, from about 1945/6 to when she died in 1961. Many of the town's "society" like the Mayor's wife and so on would go there to buy their outfit for some special event, such as the Mayor's Dinner.

Mum gave up counting the number of such "ladies" who would come in, cause great commotion for help in choosing a suitable outfit from the "ready made" collection.

A couple of days AFTER the event they would return the outfit, saying their husband had not liked it or it didn't fit when they put it on so they'd had to find something else to wear, "never wore this".

When examined, sweat stains under the arms or grease/food marks.

Of course, the store HAD to refund the cost to maintain their good name, or lose customers!

Good job that I don't think anything made in the work shop was returned!!

Unfortunately stealing form anywhere is become common, causes concern as with Tawny and others ( and me!), but nothing really stops it!

It is not new, Tawny, as other posters have written.

My oldest sister got off the bus from work one day (decades ago - we are ancient) and bumped into someone the same age from along our street who asked whether sis would go into the shop with her as she was afraid of the manager there. Sis agreed. In they went and the ‘young lady’ asked for something which meant the guy had to go to the storeroom. As soon as he disappeared from view the girl went on the rampage, stuffing all sorts of bits and pieces inside her many pockets. Sis walked straight out and told us about it when she got home.

You never view people you know in the same light after that and, as the thief had a couple of sisters, sadly, they got tarred with the same brush - even though we knew nothing much about them.

The only time I worked in a shop was in a nearby department store as a young Saturday girl when I was still at school. I was placed in the men’s department and got some good-hearted ribbing while I was there, along the lines of, ‘You have to learn how to take a man’s inside leg measurement etc.’ (The men in the department did that, by the way.). At Christmas I was switched to the busy toy department which always had one or two people wandering around the floor specifically to catch thieves.