It might require the added context of living here.
San Francisco has one of the highest property crime rates in the United States [1], and Walgreens is a popular target of shoplifters, who regularly clear out entire shelves of merchandise. The company hasn't come out and said it, but some believe that rampant shoplifting is a reason why eight Walgreens locations in the city have been permanently closed [2].
I have a family member who works at walgreens. The theft is incredible. In the bay area and particularly SF this is not one or two candy bars a week theft.
In SF, if you stop a shoplifter and they are hurt, if they are in a protected class etc, it's game over for you as an employee and possibly the store. Even if you stop someone, even if police come and arrest, DA is never going to prosecute. If they do prosecute, its a misdemeanor. It's pretty wild the first time you see it.
The clerks know who is coming in to steal. The stats above are from 2016. 2020 is worse, and much / most of the property crime goes unreported. If walgreens reported every shoplifting incident the numbers would be nuts.
For sure. But pharmacy is very competitive and at some point it's a losing game.
For example - Walgreen runs about about a 4% margin and profit runs about $4 billion (all very rough numbers).
The problem with theft is that its a total loss so it can really chop into margins - these are shelves that you build a supply chain and staff to stock and then get zero.
Someone walks in with a backpack and just fills it full (maybe 50 - 100 individual items). Meanwhile you have 20 customers buying a few items (1-5). So you sell 100 items at 104% of all in cost (4% positive margin) and 100 walk out the door (if only the knapsack guy steals) at 0% of cost. Your margin is negative immediately (-40%+).
Walgreens actually has budgets for theft store managers try to work with in (pretty high ones actually). But theft the way it happens in SF - you need to understand there are no consequence, the only folks to get in trouble would be employees trying to stop it.
It also drives away customers you do want (older people filing scrips will go to what are perceived as safer locations) and moves other sales to online / delivery etc.
They are robbed while TV crews are filming about robberies :)
SF talks a lot of crap about Amazon, but if amazon offers a safe / delivery to your garage / car / inside door pharmacy service it could be game over for a lot of players.
Proposition 47 essentially decriminalized shoplifting. Californians literally voted for this petty crime wave. As a Florida resident, all I can say is, y'all have fun with that
When I read about them moving to states like Texas in numbers, all I can think is that they will inevitably try to take these same policies with them when they find out wherever they moved too isn't quite liberal enough
Seems like a large portion of people in this thread at least are more concerned about lowering cost of living while still being in a large active city than about local polotics, even if those things do tie together
take the bay area salary, work remote in texas/arizona/nevada because its cheaper and rationalize it by saying its the politics thats making me move.
i've had this conversation 5 times this week with friends and colleagues, and none of them have actually spent more than a week in texas/arizona/nevada.
anyone that wants to live in one of those states, try it for a couple months if you can before taking the dive.
I think you're totally right in some capacity, but there's also a lot of people who are excited to get away from the hyper-liberal climate of California.
I guess it just depends on California's vs Texans definition of hyper liberal. I don't know what level of liberalism it would take to get dislike from the average Texan but I know it has to be miles away from declaring that arresting shoplifters is racist.
Interesting. Is it possible that this is also due to the policy of many states and cities of sending their homeless and mentally ill citizens to California on on way tickets?
In SF, if you stop a shoplifter and they are hurt, if they are in a protected class etc, it's game over for you as an employee and possibly the store. Even if you stop someone, even if police come and arrest, DA is never going to prosecute. If they do prosecute, its a misdemeanor. It's pretty wild the first time you see it.
The clerks know who is coming in to steal. The stats above are from 2016. 2020 is worse, and much / most of the property crime goes unreported. If walgreens reported every shoplifting incident the numbers would be nuts.