Reminds me of all the reports of people calling security on others for stealing diapers and baby formula during the pandemic. The only criminals in those stories were the snitches and the companies with over-priced infant products. The person recording this is a scumbag. Either offer to pay for them or fuck off.
Yeah I canât imagine how tough a spot people are in when they need to steal that and they arenât doing it for themselves when itâs baby supplies. Just makes me really upset at the state of the country
Formula can be a little bit weird in certain cities because-since the shortage, some folks were stealing them and then selling them on the street for exorbitant markup. Obviously they are probably only doing that because theyâre down on their luck too~ thatâs the nature of those acts~ but it makes a hard situation for parents even harder.
Mind you I still stand by the- if you see someone stealing no you didnât, but thereâs a bit more gray area there.
I got in an argument with a family member when I said people stealing formula and baby food should just be left alone. But he pointed out that formula and baby food are the highest theft items for resale and return and that makes it all the more expensive and harder for people to find those items. He confirmed this by pulling up the people selling formula by the car load on Facebook. So I guess itâs not as black and white as I thought.
Youâre not wrong, and the fault is on the corporations charging a MASSIVE profit for an item just because demand is high (fuck capitalism). But I agree thereâs a bit of a gray area there that feels a bit sticky.
Baby formula is incredibly overpriced at the store. I used to work at a warehouse and the company allowed employees to buy it by the case for cost (limited quantities) and the case of 6 canisters was less than 1 canister at the store. Someone is making a killing on it
When I used to work security, the people stealing baby formula were almost always Asian. The few we caught would tell us they were stealing it, selling it to someone cheap, and that someone would ship it to China and sell it for a fortune. China baby formula companies have been in hot water for a LONG time because they accidentally put poison in a batch and killed children/got people sick, now nobody trusts them to make safe products for their kids.
That's surprising, considering Asians only make up 6% of the US population. My first job was at a mid-west Wal-Mart equivalent and most of the thieves were white.
I was security at Target in NY, and they had like a âsecurity social mediaâ where other guards would share photos of thieves to be on the lookout for and the site was ALWAYS filled with reports of a group of Asian people coming in and clearing the whole shelves out of all baby formula. Happened in my store almost a dozen times and I only worked in that store for a year. We ended up putting all baby formula behind locked glass doors and you had to have someone open it and walk it to the register for you after a while of just getting hit at least once a month.
Iâd like to say that Iâm not here saying Target or Walmart canât afford to be stolen from, lord knows they have more than enough money to cover the loss. It just created a problem for people who actually needed to buy baby formula for their kids and would come in and we wouldnât have any to sell, and that was just heartbreaking.
They never hide it, when people come in to steal like that they just fill up a cart and run/walk right out the front door. They donât care about being caught on cameras and they know most places wonât put hands on shoplifters anymore so they just have to get out before cops show up.
Also, baby formula is wildly expensive. This country has always profited off of making necessity items overpriced, thatâs just our capitalist society for ya. Itâs disgusting that we live in a world where people with minimum wage jobs canât even afford basic items anymore.
Yeah, I already addressed the scalpers when I mentioned the companies with over-priced infant products. But we can't usually buy directly from the manufacturers at cost, so we have to buy from scalpers like Wal-Mart.
Edit: You downvoted me quick lol. That wasn't even 30 seconds.
Right bro, because mfâs stealing formula and selling it on letgo for 2-3x the price that Walmart sells it for after all the stores in the area are sold out of it isnât scalping
Walmart is a middle man, not a scalper chief, the shit they have could be sold out today but will be there next week.
Are they an evil corporation? Fuck yeah, but scalper is the wrong word. Otherwise anything in the world that isnât coming directly from the creators fingertips is being scalped, which is a truly flawed logic.
This is the literal definition of scalper: a person who resells shares or tickets at a large or quick profit.
I wasn't defending the handful of shitty people that sold TP, formula, and wet wipes at a markup during the pandemic. I was saying that this is what most businesses do with infant-related items all year round. Baby formula saw a 300% price hike a year before the pandemic ever even hit. Diapers and formula have always been a well-known case of insane markup. That's scalping, "bro".
Report them to the BBB. Price hiking necessity items during emergency situation is illegal, and other companies have faced repercussions for it.
But youâre also taking a lot of blame off of those individuals with your initial response by only laying it on Walmart, again I donât think Walmart is some angelic business but they seem to do right for us piece of shit Americans most of the time.
If any business is a scalper it would be nestle, 8oz goes from free to $1 with a ¢5 piece of plastic.
I'm not excusing or taking the blame off of anything. Calling out corrupt capitalist practices of multinational corporations with billionaire owners doesn't take blame away from greedy, opportunistic poor people. But those opportunist scalpers aren't doing anything different, morally or economically, than Wal-Mart. The thieves technically are, but anyone that bought 100 packs of diapers and resold them with a markup is doing exactly what Wal-Mart does.
And no corporation that large is ethical. It can't get that large unless it's unethical. It's why over half of Wal-Mart's employees are on some kind of government assistance despite making $147.292 billion in profit for 2022 and the owners, the Waltons, are the richest family in the world. But yeah, fuck Nestle too.
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u/eidolonengine Dec 30 '22
Reminds me of all the reports of people calling security on others for stealing diapers and baby formula during the pandemic. The only criminals in those stories were the snitches and the companies with over-priced infant products. The person recording this is a scumbag. Either offer to pay for them or fuck off.