A couple years ago I saw a (non-food) shoplifter in a Lidl store in Europe. Lidl is not a large exploitational chain like Wal·Mart or Amazon AFAICT, and Europe has a bit more control over capitalism than the rest of the world. So it seems like an unlikely target for anti-capitalist action. I spotted a shoplift in progress as I was exiting. I went to the Lidl website and tried to use the feedback mechanism to report the shoplifter. The website tried to force me to execute non-free Google JavaScript in order to solve a fucking #CAPTCHA. Fuck CAPTCHAs and fuck all those who would force me to solve a CAPTCHA esp. when forcing me to feed a surveillance capitalist like Google at the same time. I’m not going to use phone credit to call it in. And even if I could have called for free, CAPTCHAs need some negative consequences on the CAPTCHA pushers.
So I did not report it. Call it poetic justice.
Just a week ago I saw a comical shoplifting attempt. A guy had a bottle of spirits of some kind with the neck of it sticking out of his jacket. He just walked through the line parallel to the person being rung up. The cashier said “mister!” and he started jogging out. Two cashiers left their registers and bolted out the door after him. They caught up with him down the street. One of them collected the items he tried to jack, and the other cashier grabbed him by the collar and marched him back into the store and left my view… probably took him to a back room for some kind of processing.
I was surprised by a few things. I would not think cashiers would have the authority to search and detain someone. But I was more surprised by their energy and motivation. If they were overworked and underpaid, and did not give a shit about their employer, why the motivation to spot a shoplifter and chase them down the street, get physical, and perhaps even take some legal risk not having the power of the police?
Big business often implies unethical conduct. But not necessarily. If a business is big, it’s wise to look for unethical conduct and if something is found, then boycott. But being big in itself is insufficient for boycotts and theft. There are actually quite big competitors of Lidl which have significant ethical problems (Carrefour and Delhaize).