Juvenile Delinquents in 1953

[Dave W]

If only they could see ahead to 2022

[westen44]

I saw on the news Walmart may have to shut down some stores and also increase prices just because of the massive shoplifting.  This is organized retail theft.  Other stores such as Target are also affected.  I actually caught the figure for target.  They've lost $400 million in 2022 from shoplifting.  Of course Walmart is higher than that although I don't know the amount. 

[uwe]

Alas!, reality shows habe been in existence longer than I thought!

There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
So I might as well begin to put some action in my life

So much for the golden future, I can't even start
I've had every promise broken, there's anger in my heart
You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue
If you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing too

[uwe]

My peer pressure-induced shoplifting career was hastily curtailed by being caught at my first attempt of purloining a Hollies Live cassette from a bargain bin in 1976/77 or so.




The store detective who caught me, heartlessly adding insult to injury, laughed and said he had never seen anybody do a worse job. I was sentenced to a small - about three albums worth - fine (which my dad refused to pay, quite rightly so: "You see how you get out of this, I'm not paying a dime."), so I had to do two weeks of communal work in a kindergarten for challenged children. That wasn't a bad experience at all. I actually liked the work there.

I then decided to study law. If you can't beat'em, join'em. 

Yeah, a few years ago, I bought that (very good, they were an underrated live act and I had seen them around that time as well) Hollies Live album on CD.

[Dave W]

At least you didn't throw a strawman in the path of a moving car... or did you?

[uwe]

I once blew up a mail box with fire crackers (we had put wire around them and they were the notorious Kanonenschläge - soon to be outlawed) on New Year's Eve. The mail box with the lid blown off and all deformed is still there - after more than 50 years - and whenever I visit my home town and drive by, the bile of guilt rises in me: I swear that friggin' mail box looks at me accusingly. It knows it was me ...

One day I will stop the car, get out, ring the bell and give the startled house owner 100 Euros. Out demons, out!

[Dave W]

Kanonenschläge - anything like cherry bombs?

[uwe]

Like large M-80ies perhaps? Like sticks of dynamite, sort of? The largest ones would stick out on both sides if you clenched your fist around them and were thicker than a thumb.



In the 60ies they were really strong, but then laws and regulations weakened their explosive effect. You had to be 18 to even buy them. (But of course there was one shop in our little town that sold them to minors too, you could get anything at Lisa, a small mom and pup store also trading pocket knives and stilettos, the good stuff, with the gullible shop owner always saying: "You boys won't be doing anything silly with this stuff, right?" ) Still, people got hurt all the time with those things, fingers blown off, blinded etc.

[That never happened to me, I was generally careful with this stuff, possibly because I had my Onkel Günther, who had lost his left arm, no, not in the war, but after the war when he and two of his buddies found hidden WW II ammo - grenades - in a forest close by and proceeded to find out whether they still worked. And work they did: Buddy #1 died, buddy #2 became blind, Günther 'just' lost his left arm - "I was the lucky one!" he would always say. He's still with us too and even might make the one hundred.]

[Dave W]

Not the same as what I'm talking about, these are shaped like large large cherries. Outlawed in a lot of places now. We used to punch a hole in the bottom of a coffee can, invert it. stick the wick of a cherry bomb through it. light it and see how high we could blow it.

[slinkp]

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-who-drummer-keith-moon-bathroom-bomber/

My uncle, who lived near a native american reservation where it was easy to buy fireworks, used to supply my family with cherry bombs among other such things. It's a miracle I never did myself harm...

[Psycho Bass Guy]

I saw on the news Walmart may have to shut down some stores and also increase prices just because of the massive shoplifting.  This is organized retail theft.  Other stores such as Target are also affected.  I actually caught the figure for target.  They've lost $400 million in 2022 from shoplifting.  Of course Walmart is higher than that although I don't know the amount.

Don't buy into what is essentially corporate propaganda. Walmart's "theft" problem is their self-checkout, which they intentionally do not maintain in order to report "theft," which they will then use as justification to start closing stores and cutting employees. The profits they made during the pandemic were unsustainable, but their accounting departments attributed it to an increased online/pickup experience despite the fact that in-person shopping was illegal in much of the country, and reason that by expanding online, they can attain those profits again. Target and Best Buy are doing the same, purposefully under-staffing and under-stocking stores to drive more online business. All major national retail chains are undergoing major restructuring to try and maintain Covid-levels of profitability. It's crap and a lie. Best Buy's CEO, my old boss, even went so far as to actively discourage customers from coming into to stores on the Today show this time last year, saying that employees feared for their safety because of theft while never mentioning that she had completely eliminated the loss prevention arm of the company.

[westen44]

Don't buy into what is essentially corporate propaganda. Walmart's "theft" problem is their self-checkout, which they intentionally do not maintain in order to report "theft," which they will then use as justification to start closing stores and cutting employees. The profits they made during the pandemic were unsustainable, but their accounting departments attributed it to an increased online/pickup experience despite the fact that in-person shopping was illegal in much of the country, and reason that by expanding online, they can attain those profits again. Target and Best Buy are doing the same, purposefully under-staffing and under-stocking stores to drive more online business. All major national retail chains are undergoing major restructuring to try and maintain Covid-levels of profitability. It's crap and a lie. Best Buy's CEO, my old boss, even went so far as to actively discourage customers from coming into to stores on the Today show this time last year, saying that employees feared for their safety because of theft while never mentioning that she had completely eliminated the loss prevention arm of the company.

I've heard about their self-checkout problems from a lady not too far away who has her own You Tube channel.  But there are also real problems with groups of people shoplifting on a widespread scale.  This is more isolated, but it happens.  Whatever is happening, I'm sure that corporate propaganda is very much a serious problem.  They're liars, they're greedy and will do absolutely anything to make money. 

[Psycho Bass Guy]

To show just how "serious" Walmart takes its self checkout:

And the organized gangs of thieves are only encouraged by PUBLIC corporate statements that employees who try to stop them will be fired.

[westen44]

To show just how "serious" Walmart takes its self checkout:

And the organized gangs of thieves are only encouraged by PUBLIC corporate statements that employees who try to stop them will be fired.

I can't see the New York Times article without being subscribed.

I don't know the details of the organized shoplifters, but the point being made on the news reports is that they feel free to do whatever they want because they know nothing will happen to them.   

What it seems like is happening with society in general is what I've read about Latin America.  Also, what I've heard personally, too.  Because I've had Latin American friends since I was young.  But essentially a societal breakdown has been occurring in several Latin American countries for years.  It started with the disintegration of the middle class in various countries and went downhill from there.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

If you're using a laptop or PC you can bypass any paywall by right-clicking on the page> left click 'inspect'> left click the 'options' icon in the top right> scroll to the bottom of the options menu and left click 'disable java script'> then refresh the page and close the 'inspect page'...

The right wing propaganda outlets are smart enough to not use paywalls. It's too bad that actual journalists keep shooting themselves in the foot.