View from the Hill, Troth Yeddha’ - Ageism, It’s Not Only for the Old
By Kathy Kitts
This article is part one in an occasional series about biases, what they do to us as a culture and as individuals.
A couple of months ago, a student of mine complained about being treated poorly in a store because he is a young male. Ageism runs against both the old and the young. Either you are a young thief who can’t possibly afford the item you wish to purchase, or if you are older, you can’t possibly understand that technology. “Dearie? Who do you think invented it?” Snark and ageism against our elders aside, today, I want to talk about ageism in retail against young adults.
How many of you have been saving up for a special outfit or the latest tech? You are nervous because the coveted object is expensive and represents hours and hours of mind-numbing or backbreaking work to get the cash. You are checking out that jacket or those shoes, and you aren’t even sure you can pull off such an outfit, when you notice, you are being followed. Some mall cop wannabe assumes you don’t have the means and is sure you are going to five-finger discount something out the backdoor, as if the thing you want to buy isn’t already locked in a cabinet or chained to the rack.
That is straight up bias, and it isn’t even an accurate one. According to the 2022 Retail Security Survey produced by The National Retail Federation (NRF), most shoplifters are now organized into groups of resellers who feed into the Facebook marketplaces, Craig’s list, and eBays of cyberspace. Thirty-seven percent of all “Inventory Shrink,” the code word for theft in retail parlance, is due to organized retail crime (ORC). The other two major sources of theft are internal or employee at 28.5% and delivery chain theft at 25.7%.
ORC works like this. Shoplifters are recruited by these organizations to steal items. A different group of people returns the items for store credit or gift cards. (To combat this type of crime, most retailers will not allow returns for cash without receipts.) These cards are then sold to third parties who might or might not know they are participating in a crime. According to the NRF 2022 survey, 74.1% of retailers have experienced instances where individuals returned merchandise for store credit and then sold the credit on secondary markets.
How bad is ORC? According to the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP), shoplifting costs around $33.21 billion yearly or roughly $75,000 per minute. ORC is also widespread as 91.6% of companies surveyed by the National Retail Federation reported ORC incidents while 71.3% noted an increase in ORC year-over-year.
So what do these organized shoplifters actually look like? According to a 2004 study by the University of Florida, middle-aged adults age 35-54 shoplift more than any other demographic. One would think shoplifters would be poor and uneducated, right? No, that is another unsupported bias. A 2008 study by Columbia University concluded that shoplifting was actually more prevalent among people with higher education and income. Why? There are many theories, but one that is frequently discussed at conferences in the loss prevention business is that ORC has become a career.
Given all this information, why are retailers harassing my poor student? Certainly, the big chains are aware of these studies as they participate in them. More is going out the door via shippers and employees combined than via shoplifting even considering this new wrinkle of ORC. So why do they go after their very own customers, the young adult? My theory is because retailers are frustrated and trying to show they are doing something. It just happens to be the wrong thing.
How can we fix this? What I can do is educate people, get these statistics out there. And maybe suggest you don’t buy a used store credit card or purchase that coat with the tags still on it unless you know where it came from. I feel for my student and wish for a better world for him. And I wish the same for myself, say when a Mac store “genius” attempts to explain to me how to use my computer when I’ve been using Macs longer than he’s been alive. Know better; do better.
National Retail Federation: https://nrf.com/research/national-retail-security-survey-2022
Loss Prevention Research Council https://lpresearch.org/