2021 😳

Shrink Departments (aka do not lift in these):

Men’s Accessories/Gift

Fragrance

Beauty and Hair Care

Handbags and Accessories

Men’s Furnishings

General policy is to greet all customers within 10 feet individually and within 10 seconds, so expect a bit of employee interaction. Employees DO notice items that don’t have price tickets, and that don’t have hard tags/spider wraps when they regularly would. If an area is messy, employees are required to clean it up, organize it, or call it in. Employees will routinely walk through the top shrink areas looking for disorganization, suspicious activity, etc.

Employees get a $25 cash reward for tipping off LP on customer theft, and up to $350 for internal theft that leads to termination. If an employee finds an incorrect or missing ticket, and corrects it, they can win a $20 gift card.

Tip: You can unlock the wire that holds all the purses to the display by holding a magnet to the flat round part of the black plastic piece (“lock”) holding the wire together. You could hide a magnet in your fist and make a little opening for it to touch the piece, and discreetly move the wire so that the “lock” can’t be seen by cameras. The wire won’t make a noise when unlocked, but remember that the purse will have another hard tag on it. Associates are not allowed to let a customer walk around with a purse so make sure to conceal it (unless you can pull off acting like you own it!). You could walk in with a jacket over your arm and after you get the purse, you can simply put it under the jacket on your arm!

Employees will look for these signs (alert signals):

Looking for cameras.

Group of 2+ entering together then splitting up, or one of them distracting an SA and the rest stealing.

Lingering.

Quickly grabbing items, not looking at size or price.

Empty bag, backpack, stroller, purse, etc.

Tugging or looking at hard tags/security devices.

Being overly friendly or avoiding associates.

Looking nervous.

Full carts (walk out).

CSing techniques:

Asking to hold your items at the fitting room/front desk.

Eye contact.

Commenting on merchandise that you’ve selected.

Offering a cart.

Checking back in with you.

ONLY LP CAN STOP YOU. Associates/managers are NOT allowed to hint that they know you’re shoplifting, or stop you. All they can do is deter.

EDIT:

first of all, i understand the “beginner” excitement. 

it like suddenly you walk into a store & you think “i can have this. i like this and i CAN have this. right now. no saving up. no waiting for sales. no finding dupes. it can be mine right now“ it’s a feeling that someone who hasn’t grown with money (why would someone who has the money shoplift?) has NEVER felt before. 

BUT you mentioned you have been lifting for ONE week & your total is already in a few hundreds. that’s what you should get to in your first YEAR, if you’re lucky.

why? it’s not that i dont want you to have nice things. it’s because you know NOTHING about lifting yet.  you could have read every single post in this community top to bottom but it won’t actually make you a good lifter. at all. 

imagine this: if you read books on painting scenery, can you suddenly make the most breathtaking lanscape? hell no. it’s gonna be horrible, even if you read/researched everything about it. with TIME & practice you get better at it. those books will guide you & make you have a better understanding of what/how to do so you can learn much faster, but they won’t teach you how to paint. they can’t. 

when you begin, no matter how good you want it to turn out, or how much you know how it should turn out, you will make mistakes that will make you cringe in a year & wonder how the fuck you weren’t caught/arrested (IF YOU WEREN’T. IF) 

what i am trying to say: slow down. slow down right now. you are new, you have literally just begun. you should still be doing pens & gum & chapstick.  it’s a crime. think of the possible effects. 

if even thinking about  getting caught makes you scared, think about it actually happening. 

think about losing your caregivers/parents trust for years. 

thinking about paying 200€ for a 15€ necklace. 

think about being in court because of it. 

the mere fact that you have been lifting for a week & already begin to feel “addicted” is by itself the indication of a huge problem. think about this. stop & think on this implication. 

 please, for yourself, please i am begging you, slow down, go smaller, don’t even think of doing hauls yet

this is not the same advice i would give to someone who has been lifting for years on how to deal with this, but i feel like this is the advice that can help you.

also, i want to add, these posts you see here- the big hauls, most of these people are not minors. most have been doing it for years. most have been caught several times. some are even faking it.

The drop technique and my quick concealing method shown.

Drop technique notes: 1. Use a bag with a shoulder strap so you don’t have to think about where the handles are. You do not want to worry about getting your product tangled up in them. Another benefit of a shoulder strap bag is that there is no gap between the bag and your body (that the product could fall through). 2. Use a structured bag, so that if your product hits one of the sides (as my peanut butter & honey palette did!!), it falls inside anyway! Floppy purses are bad for this because your product can become unbalanced on the cloth if it hits the side, and end up on the floor. Cloth is just one more thing for the product to become tangled in. 3. See how the inside-tops of each side of my purse are angled slightly inward (toward the zipper)? These are your bumpers, babes. Like rails in Mario kart, these guide your product into the bag, so you don’t have to think about it at all. 4. I usually do something with my hand while doing this, as an excuse to move my arm and drop the product. Because I don’t touch my purse, it was clearly “just an accident” if I were to be caught. 5. Once this is done, immediately zip up your purse. Preferably do the concealment and zipping in a blindspot, or the closest thing to a blindspot as you can find. Also a great tip: walk into the store with your phone in a pocket. After dropping, place your phone into your purse and zip it up *without looking* at it.

Hey guys, I thought I'd share a technique that is nearly foolproof when it comes to thrift stores, especially the Goodwill. Some may say it's wrong to lift from Goodwill, but there are many reasons why some do so. Maybe it's the only store in their area that they can frequent without looking sus. Maybe the lifter is a minor and their parents know that shopping at Goodwill is easy to do with limited allowance/money. Maybe they're comfortable with the lack of towers and security tags. Maybe they just like the vintage stuff! At any rate, this is my foolproof Goodwill method.

What you're going to do is go when the store is crowded - half-off sales are the best time. Goodwill is big enough that the employees don't pay attention to the stuff you grab, or when you come and go. Usually, the cashiers are stationed across the store from the fitting rooms. Some locations do have cameras, so this method is a good way to feel a little safer if you're camera shy. I've never known a Goodwill to have anyone actively monitoring the cameras, especially during the hell of a half-price sale.

You're gonna want to come in to the store with some clothing from home you want to give away, tucked into your bag. Select the items you want and head to the fitting room. Swap out the clothing you brought from home, for what you want from Goodwill - no empty hangers!

But wait - what about the price tags?

Ah, yes. Those little tags - or 'barbs' are your friend. With the exception of tough materials like jeans, these are actually very easy to take off/put on clothing. What you're going to do is take the end of the barb that's stuck into the clothing and very, very carefully wiggle it out of the hole that it made when it was tagged into the fabric. Then, you take the tag you just removed and carefully wiggle it into the seam on the (usually right-hand) shoulder area of tops and right hip of bottoms. And that's how you "tag" the clothing you brought, to go back onto the sales floor! Since Goodwill is self-serve, you can go slip your "unwanted" items back into the rack in the appropriate sections. You now have the clothing you came for, and donated something in the process!

If switching tags seems like too much of a hassle, then you don't have to do it. It just makes the entire lifting process more legit and unnoticeable.

Update 7/24/19: This got more notes than I though it would get. Thanks to me being a dumb hoe I didn’t realize that you can’t just edit a tumblr post (?) The newer and updated version will always be reblogged onto my blog. This edit was inspired by @smalltownlift, since hers was ACTUALLY good. lmfao. Updated/more links and better layout :) Please let me know if links are broken.