Pamela Paul, it's OK to buy lube.

Did NYT editors get lube-otomies? An investigation.

In the latest story about the largely imaginary epidemic of shoplifting in the nation’s stores, New York Times op-ed author Pamela Paul describes a harrowing journey through a store in San Francisco:

But privacy is harder to preserve now that drugstores, to thwart shoplifters, increasingly lock their stock behind cabinet doors, with buttons to push in order to get an employee’s attention. A pimply boy has to hail an employee to free his benzoyl peroxide and a 14-year-old girl needs to be watched as she selects a tampon that suits her cycle. Even for adults, it’s hard not to be self-conscious about having a store employee trail you through the drugstore like a personal shopper as you ponder which dental floss to buy.

I thought about this sad atmosphere of surveillance during one of my recent visits to San Francisco, where the broader downtown retail environment has been left tattered by store closures. Walking from aisle to aisle pushing a series of buttons, I felt like an imposition on a pharmacy’s meager staff. After a string of these requests, I left before securing everything I’d planned to buy. The whole experience felt bad: I was sorry for the shopkeeper, sorry for the employees, sorry for being there, sorry for not buying enough. I made no impulse purchases.

What shameful items does Paul purchase at the pharmacy? Lube? Ultra-ribbed Trojans? Adult diapers? Those little boxed wines clearly designed for secret public day drinking? It’s OK Pamela!

It’s not news that the NYT op-ed page is impervious to facts. But let’s give it a shot anyway. Larceny has been in decline every year, with no exceptions, since 2011 nationally.

National:

What about that city of Hellish chaos, San Francisco?

Paul adds: “For a variety of reasons, police now seem less inclined to arrest shoplifters.” No, it’s one reason, and it’s that cops don’t give a fuck about shoplifting and it’s easier for them if clerks and private security guards risk a shellacking trying to stop shoplifters. Look at that clearance rate for the SFPD. This is considering that larger chains have surveillance cameras everywhere. A recent study by ACLU SoCal found that California police spend 88% of their time on pre-emptive stops.

Retail stores and walk-in pharmacies started complaining, during the pandemic, that shoplifting has forced them to close locations, further contributing to empty downtowns. Yeah, OK, sure. No. It’s bullshit that’s amplified by tough-on-crime ghouls trying to knee-cap reform DAs.

A far more logical explanation for store closures is that there’s clearly been an inflection point—especially during the pandemic—where many people boomer aged and younger started ordering most things online. The last time I was in a brick-and-mortar Old Navy store, I was out of town and literally needed something that afternoon. You can get like 90 percent of things online that you used to have to wait in line to get at brick-and-mortar stores. Whether the convenience is good for humanity or turning us all socially anxious freaks that can’t engage in the third dimension is a matter of debate! But whether Amazon’s growth into a behemoth has had an impact on how people consume? Obviously.

What drives the myth that we’re in the midst of an unprecedented shoplifting crisis? Besides pundits who are too busy loading up on hemorrhoid cream to look up FBI-UCR statistics? Everyone has a fucking camera in their pocket and young people seem singularly devoted to producing viral content. Footage of shoplifters often goes viral because it’s outrage-inducing and fits the current pre-occupation with lawlessness.

So we’re pummeled with videos of brazen thieves walking out with shopping carts full of stolen goods. Pundits wet their Depends in outrage and this absolutely made up thing rockets to the op-ed page of the most prestigious paper in America. Good job everyone.