Target Claims To Have Lost $400 MILLION Dollars To Shoplifting So Far This Year

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SOURCE - Target said it has lost a whopping $400 million in profits this year thanks to organized gangs of shoplifters who have been systematically stealing merchandise from its discount stores.

“At Target, year-to-date, incremental shortage has already reduced our gross margin by more than $400 million vs. last year,” Target CFO Michael Fiddelke said on an earnings call earlier this week, which was cited by Yahoo! Finance.

Fiddelke added that “we expect it will reduce our gross margin by more than $600 million for the full year.”

A $400 million dollar increase in shoplifting sounds like a lot of money. I guess with so many more people shopping this year as opposed to staying home because of COVID, some increase had to be expected but it sounds like no one was expecting a figure that high. Target has around 1,938 stores nationally so you're looking at each store losing over $200,000 each. 

Every with increased cameras I'm sure with self-checkout, shoplifting is easier than ever. I used to shoplift a bit in my Jr. High days. There was a Kmart that I would regularly steal boxes of baseball cards from. This was the early 90's so I'd go in the store, grab a sealed box of 1992 Donruss, stuff it under my coat and would walk out of the store flush with Diamond Kings. I did this about a dozen times I guess and never got caught. 

I also stole a Hustler magazine from the neighborhood convenience store when I was in 8th grade as well. Luckily, I soon realized that the risk wasn't worth the reward and stopped once I got to high school. Jokes on me, I guess. The Donruss cards were worthless and the Hustler mag was useless a month later when I lent it to a friend and the pages came back stuck together. Crime doesn't pay.

This isn't the issue I stole (mine would have been in early 1993) but in the days before the internet was prevalent, we'd all pass around any porn we had. The highest value item any of us had was a Jenny McCarthy Playboy video because you could barely see her vagina a few times. Now kids can access the hardest core videos you can imagine right on their phone. What a world.

When I was 18, I served jury duty for the only time in my life (so far). I was assigned to a shoplifting case that happened coincidentally in a Kmart. The man arrested was in his late 60's at least and was a war veteran who said he opened a box he was carrying, put a drill inside because it was easier to carry that way, then closed up the box. When he checked out, he claimed he forgot about the drill and the security guard nabbed him in the parking lot.

I was leaning towards saying he was guilty but the other jurors really believed the old man and everyone hated the security guard who came off as an asshole on the stand. I thought the story sounded preposterous but after a couple hours of arguing, I stopped being the lone holdout and went along with every to find him innocent. 12 Angry Men, this was not. The older I get, the more I believe the old man. It would have been easy for him just to pay a fine but he went through all the trouble of a hearing just to clear his name. 

Even though it's a rite of passage of sorts, shoplifting still makes you a giant asshole (myself included). It just makes the price of everything go up. It still is pretty cool to know that one you get really old, you can do pretty much anything you want and say it was because you forgot.