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Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

From what I understand by reading around (I'm not from the US) petty theft in some areas causes already the problem you're mentioning for offline businesses as well.

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It is. I live in NYC and stopped going to CVS late at night because there is such a looter problem in my neighborhood, I can't buy shit at that time. The looters are there with bags ransacking the isles while I wait behind hoping they leave what I came to buy. Sometimes if it's locked then they can't take that but so still have to wait for them being done to go through the isle lol.

I wonder why they keep those stores open sometimes.

Throughout most of the rest of the country CVS and Walgreens are shuttering all over the place and are blaming it on theft. I have my doubts about theft being the culprit, but my nearest CVS is 20 minutes away, and there used to be 3 between here and there (likely the real reason they are closing them).

What neighborhood?

I used to live in SF and would see shoplifting all the time but now live in NYC and haven’t seen it that much.

Not OP, but when I lived at 123rd and Lex, the A&P was looted constantly. Like OP, I just stood back and hoped they didn't go after my staples (beans, rice, spices).

FiDi. Only after dark (never seen it during the day), and not all of the pharmacies get hit as bad. There is like a million pharmacies around and I've only seen one closed so it can't be that bad, but damn it's annoying. Like, can you leave one bottle of shampoo please?

I think historically most of theft was from people working there.

I never worked retail myself, but I've heard plenty of stories from people who do.

One person I knew called it "taking out the trash". They would fill trash bags with cds. He had a room full of unopened ones.

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