Stealing from work. Is it ever justified?

Irish shop workers are the worst shoplifters. Light-fingered retail staff are helping themselves to €167m in goods and cash a year, the worst rate in Europe, a global survey has found.

While Ireland ranked 11th out of 22 countries in Europe for shoplifting, it was worst for employee theft, according to the research by the UK’s Centre for Retail Research.

Its report surveyed 21 retailers in Ireland with a total of 358 stores, and estimates that all Irish shops lost €453m, or 1.38% of annual sales, from what the industry describes as “shrinkage” — stock losses from crime or waste expressed as a percentage of retail sales.

Employee theft accounted for 36.8% of shrinkage in Ireland, the highest rate in Europe. While retailers estimated that shoplifters were responsible for 40.6% of their losses and stole €183.9m worth of items, thefts by shop workers cost €166.7m. Across Europe, the average amount stolen by dishonest employees was 19.8 times higher than that snatched by shoplifters.

“It’s a sector where people can be unhappy because it’s hard and thankless work with low pay,” said Rowan Manahan, managing director of Fortify Services, a human-resources consultancy. “People in Ireland are not always particularly pleasant to shop assistants.

“But it’s also been said that the Irish have a delinquent gene and there could be the feeling that if solicitors and politicians are on the make, then why not.”

The proportion of Irish retailers experiencing shoplifting over the 12-month period increased by 39%. The recession is causing more crime in a sector already suffering from a slump in consumer demand, with Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures indicating that retailers experienced a 10% slump in sales in September from a year earlier.

Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research and author of the study, said: “People are stealing more household items, such as bread and cheese, and retailers caught all sorts of people who’d never shoplifted before and were older and better dressed. Shoplifters looking to sell on goods take what’s in demand, of high value and easily sold on, such as razor blades, electronic books, perfume, cosmetics and Satnavs.

“Because music is relatively cheap now, they are concentrating on Blu-ray DVDs and DVD box sets of television series. This is even truer in the run-up to Christmas.”

Torlach Denihan, director of Retail Ireland, believes the increase in shoplifting is part of a wider trend of petty crime spurred by the recession. The gardai recorded 5,083 incidents of theft from shops during the third quarter of this year, up 13% from the first quarter of 2006, the peak of the boom.

The losses incurred by shops as a result of theft is equivalent to a tax on every Irish household of €348.91 a year, Bamfield said. “I don’t think our moral compass is any weaker than anyone else’s and the vast majority of employees are as honest as the day is long,” Denihan said. “Offences involving dishonesty are up and that’s a response to the recession. There are organised shoplifting gangs. But because of cumbersome rules of evidence, it’s challenging for the gardai to secure convictions. If there was greater willingness to convict, we could start to tackle it.”

Tesco Ireland is protecting foodstuffs such as packaged meat and cheese by attaching anti-theft security tags similar to those used for clothing and alcohol on a trial basis in its express outlets in Dolphin’s Barn, Talbot Street and Parnell Street in Dublin.

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No because they would then have lost the gold and couldn't sell it to someone else. For an mp3 file, it can just be copied at no extra cost to the producer, so if someone takes a copy without paying the producer is only losing profit if that person would have bought the item before stealing it.

raah! wrote: »

People steal music and tv from the internet all the time. Everytime they do that someone loses money.

So, apparently, for your common man. The justification for stealing something is "I can get away with it". So, those people who steal from the internet, and then go into work and everyday and do not steal, are none but the most base of cowards.

raah! wrote: »

So, say for example, I thought spending 2000 euros on some gold is a complete waste of money. But if I were to surreptitiously snatch said gold, reasoning that they would not have made any money from me anyway, then it's not stealing? Or not bad, or not whatever it needs to not be to make my statement untrue?

I don't think you understand the basics of economics here. Can I suggest you study concepts such as fixed, step, variable * marginal costs as well as "cost of opportunity" etc before repeating what some muppet forces you to watch at the start of every dvd?

Downloading copyright material for personal consumption is not stealing.

Well, riddle me this, and don't be upset;

What do you call getting for free something which you are supposed to, by law, pay for? You are breaking the law by getting those things for free, the person is supposed to profit from your downloading of their things.

If it's not stealing then that's only a pedantic matter, we can call it anything and the argument still stands.

raah! wrote: »

Well, riddle me this, and don't be upset;

Take a lot more than this to upset me:D

raah! wrote: »

What do you call getting for free something which you are supposed to, by law, pay for? You are breaking the law by getting those things for free,

I call it a law that needs changing (and an entire sector that needs to re-adjust to modern life). For the vast majority of human existence, the human race managed just fine without record companies and their cartels.

raah! wrote: »

the person is supposed to profit from your downloading of their things.

What person? What exactly is their thing?

raah! wrote: »

If it's not stealing then that's only a pedantic matter, we can call it anything and the argument still stands.

It's not just pedantic. Stealing insinuates that you are taking something away from somebody and they no longer have it. Copying it doesn't impact what that person still has.