Lululemon, The Face Of Disorderly Society By Nurit Greenger
Allegory: A burglar breaks into your home to steal your property. You try to stop him. You get arrested for disturbing the act of burglary.
Lawlessness and Crime Rule
This is what we are witnessing in the United States of America. Lawlessness rules.
A Lululemon store is like your home. Two store employees tried to stop shoplifters who were shoplifting in their store. They two were fired. The shoplifters are roving free with the stolen merchandise.
The Lululemon Athletica Inc., commonly known as Lululemon, is a Canadian multinational athletic apparel retailer headquartered in British Columbia, Canada, and incorporated in Delaware, United States.
Many people living in the United States of America have lost all sense of reality and genuine social justice and have turned the world upside down which is encouraging bad behavior and criminality with impunity.
Shoplifting Episode at ’99 Cent’ store*, Los Angeles
During the week of August 20th 2023, I went shopping at a 99 Cent store, its name tells the reader the value of the items the store offers for sale.
*99 Cents Only Stores is an American price-point retailer chain based in Commerce, California. It offers “a combination of closeout branded merchandise, general merchandise and fresh foods.” The store initially offered all products at 99¢ or less. Today, thanks to inflation, the items sold are at $1.26 and up.
As I was moving around the store doing my shopping, I saw a black man moving fast from aisle to aisle, without a shopping cart, picking up merchandise and collecting them on one of the store’s shelves. I got his drift. He was planning to bag all the merchandise in the black bag he carried and then run out of the store with his loot.
I called the store manager to alert him. He did not bother to step out of his office.
At the cashier, on my way out, I brought up my suspicion. I told her to call for help to stop the shoplifter in his tracks. Here is what she told me almost verbatim: “these shoplifters come here, sometimes even several times a day; they pick up merchandise and leave. The store management and owner don’t care. No one stops them. I see it every day and I am sick of this lawlessness but there is nothing I can do.”
Here Is Some of the Almost Daily News in California
A group of up to 50 people shoplift about $100K worth of luxury items from a Los Angeles mall, using bear spray against the guards; some 30-to-50 people swarmed the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga Mall, in Woodland Hills, Southern California, making off with thousands’ of dollars’ worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing.
A Gucci store in South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, Southern California, was targeted by a group of 5-to-10 thieves wearing hooded sweatshirts and masks, and stealing an estimated $100,000 worth of merchandise, mostly handbags.
Nordstrom Rack and Macy’s stores, in Southern California, were ransacked by groups of thieves who made off with thousands of dollars’ worth of designer purses. Nordstrom Rack in Riverside, Southern California, has become another victim in the battle with ‘flash robberies.’ The incidents involve a group of thieves who overwhelm a store’s employees and security before making off with as many items as possible. Macy’s, YSL and Gucci have all been recent targets as law enforcement fails to crack down on the deteriorating lawlessness.
Why Shoplifting Is Now De Facto Legal in California
Google “Shoplifting in San Francisco” and you will find more than 100,000 hits.
Why is shoplifting so rampant? Because a state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let the thieves go.
You may ask: “Why won’t store employees do anything about this theft?”
It is because they don’t want to take the risk.
Remember the Rite-Aid employee who was murdered after trying to stop two thieves who each took a case of beer? Moreover, a confrontation within the store risks harming not only store staff but also customers, so employees are almost certainly instructed by their managers to do nothing.
Because of this upside down law, California has extended an open invitation to anyone to walk in and simply take anything. Just like that – since they know that police or prosecutors won’t bother with a misdemeanor complaint and that store personnel won’t stop them.
As for Governor Newsom, California’s ineffective governor, he remains defensive and reactive and fails to provide a vision that Californians can buy into. Despite being the bluest state in the country, only 48 percent of Californians want to retain Newsom as governor. Less than half the state supports him.
And what about those hundreds of thousands of dollars ransacking cases? Well, go find the thieves who wear hoodies, masks, gloves and after they complete their thievery act they disappear into thin air to never be found again.
Back to Lululemon Case
But it is not only in California that lawlessness trumps law and order.
Here is the NewsNation “Lululemon fires workers for ‘engaging’ with shoplifters” video:
Lululemon’s (LULU) CEO Calvin McDonald said that the retailer stands by its decision to fire the two employees who tried to intervene during a theft that took place in late April 2023 at the Lululemon store, in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, where they worked.
The two men, wearing hoodies and face masks rushed into the store and grabbed armloads of merchandise from areas closest to the entrance of the store and then rushed out. The two female employees did not use physical force only uselessly and repeatedly yelled “get out.”
According to Lululemon’s policy, in such a case they have a zero-tolerance policy. They train their store employees how to engage during a theft. They put the safety of the company’s team and its shoppers, front and center. No one must be in harm’s way, the merchandise is only of monetary value.
And so, the two Lululemon employees, who somewhat engaged with the thieves, broke the company’s policy and that policy let the thieves rule the day. The thieves’ behavior set the standard, controlled the situation in the store.
Lululemon came under fire for what appeared to be penalizing staffers who attempted to stop a robbery. On the other hand, the thieves who are committing these crimes are potentially very aggressive and violent people, which could lead to employees losing their lives if they try to intervene.
What we are witnessing is organized retail crime by opportunistic squads stealing specific items from a specific place or one item from many places to resell them, most often online or to neighborhood mom and pop shops or at street fairs.
And what about a security guard allowed to take the right action and shoot the looters without getting into legal squabble? Will it not be a deterrent rather than following an upside down and adverse social behavior?
But Lululemon behavior outraged the public
The calls for Lululemon to reinstate the two Atlanta area employees – Jennifer Ferguson and Rachel Rogers – fired for trying to stop a brazen act of theft are growing.
Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire host accused the Canadian multinational retailer, with more than 500 company-operated stores in 17 countries, of being deeply fearful that the woke-ists are going to come after them if they actually start prosecuting shoplifters. That they are afraid of going to be accused of racial profiling, since most of these shoplifting cases are pulled off by dark skin thugs.
It is worth noting here that the Lululemon stores’ walls are plastered with slogans about kindness. Conversely, their policy is by far not kind when the two employees are without a job. After all, they reacted to:
- protect the store from theft
- defended Lululemon by attempting to stop a wrong action
- defended their customers by trying to stop violent shoplifters
While Calvin McDonald, Lululemon CEO has been superficially sticking to his company’s wrong side up policy, this policy also raises questions about why Lululemon does not have more in-store security personnel. It only makes sense if the company is going to hold to its strict policy with respect to ordering employees not to intervene if a bunch of thieves enter the store in order to ransack it.
These store polices combined with democrat soft-on-crime policies encourage the breakdown of society and purposely put everyone at risk.
What the Future May Hold
The increase in thefts is for real. A host of factors may be leading to more unabashed thefts, including loosening of social ethics and the police and the courts are handcuffed to take the appropriate actions. More so, the greater availability and ease of access to resale channels, mainly the online platforms where thieves can monetize stolen goods.
We can call it for what it is, an organized retail crime with the intent to resell the items for financial gain. It is difficult for law abiding citizens to see the law and law abiding society torn apart.
As economic fears grow amid inflation and rising costs, incidents of retail crime are mounting. Retailers, large and small, are struggling to contain the escalation of in-store crime, ranging from petty shoplifting to organized sprees of large-scale theft that clear entire store’s shelves of products.
According to the National Retail Federation total annual shrink report, the retail metric that tracks inventory losses caused by external theft, including mismarked items, reached $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020. Nearly half was attributed to large-scale theft of products. The group said that on average, organized retail crime, employee theft, human errors, and vendor fraud, saw a 26.5% increase in this type of theft over the previous year.
If this lawlessness continues, many stores will close their doors. Many people will lose their job and income and in all likelihood there will be no other job available to hire them.
Americans, look in the mirror. Have you lost your mind all together?
Comments are closed.
