Shop lifting is a disease that's rife in this country. There is no justification for it - not even for the NIMBYs who claim that the homeless have a right to steal - no they don't! No one does!

In 2006 the security company ADT produced figures showing that the average shoplifting incident costs the retailer £149, producing a total shop crime of £2.1 BILLION for 2005.

Now whilst this was down on the year before, speaking to some ex-colleagues their view is that this isn't because the crime has got any less but more that the companies are finding the cost of pursuing the thieving scum through the courts combined with possible counter actions against security staff should they try to detain aforementioned scum means they're better off losing the stock than trying to retain it.

However another thing which doesn't help is what caused me to be stopped at a security 'gateway' in a store yesterday. I won't mention the store because.... well it could give some a licence to nick!

I was shopping in a large multiple retailer and, when I went to check out I had 3 pairs of trousers as part of my purchases (Actually 2 pairs of trousers and a pair of shorts so garishly hideous that, in retrospect I must have taken leave of my senses to buy them in the first place.).
At the checkout, the operative looked through them checking for the anti theft tags. Only one item, (The shorts - should have been a warning!) had one which she removed. I duly paid and, with the stuff back in the trolley, headed to the car park through the RF-EAS security gate. ( RF-EAS = Radio Frequency Electronic Article Surveillance.)
All hell broke out; flashing lights and sirens; like a low rate rave event.
I automatically backed into the store and awaited the attention of the fast approaching 'security' (and I use the word advisedly) person. She took my receipt and checked through the trolley, removing the 3 pairs of trousers (wincing at the shorts as she did so.) and checking for security tags. She found none. At least none of the normal ones we've all seen punching bloody great holes through the material. So then she started turning them inside out and checking all the seams. It was here that she found an innocuous little tag, looking suspiciously like a garment care label. "Oh" she said "These damn things", unhooked a thing looking like a Wii tennis racket and started waving it over the tag. She then swung the trousers around the security gate and.... the alarms went off again.
Four times she tried this; four times with each pair of trousers, and every time the alarm went off again.
Eventually she shrugged, rehung the scanner doodad on her belt like John Wayne would his gun, and told me that this was always happening and when they were busy they just ignored the alarm. And the reason they ignored it? Because these tags are seemingly indestructible by even the disabling scanner. Her recommendation was that I cut the tags out when I get home so I don't trip any other alarms when I'm wearing the trousers.
In fact when I got home and checked through all the labels on the things they do actually tell you to do just that. Of course they're sewn into the garment in such a way that cutting them out without destroying the goods takes the skill of a Savile row tailor.

So here we have a potentially good system of stock control which is reduced to near uselessness by the staff on the checkouts not checking for the tags and, even if they did, the store not having the wherewithal to disable them as required.
And their answer - to ignore the alarms when the stores busy. Rather defeats the object of stock control I'd say.
Having opened one of these tags up, I would say that they're virtually indestructible in the normal course of affairs and so you and I, good old Joe Public are going to get home, forget about the tags and wear our new item with pride - right up until the moment we re-enter the store and the alarm goes off and we're left trying to explain why.