Walgreens CEO says loss prevention caused theft

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We’ve all been there. We walk into a drug store to get a high fructose corn syrup beverage and few personal items and end up in the store for an hour waiting for an overworked, underpaid, and highly unmotivated employee to unlock the plastic prison where the razors, deodorant, and laundry detergent are incarcerated. It’s annoying, unnecessary, and kind of makes you feel like, “Do they think I’M a shoplifter?”

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Well, the CEO of Walgreens recently admitted that this desperate and dastardly corporate attempt to safeguard inventory has backfired on them so badly that 1,200 stores will have to close their doors for good by 2027. According to DailyMail, Tim Wentworth shocked shareholders when he told them that their security attempt lead to a 52% increase in theft. Wentworth added that not only is theft up but sales are down. Way down.

“When you lock things up … you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively,” Wentworth admitted.

Several stores in the Bay Area, Oakland, San Francisco, and Richmond, are all set to close at the end of the month. Pretty shi**y that such a bad policy decision is going to cost employees their paychecks.