Washington Examiner: "Best Buy reveals how it has bucked the retail theft trend blighting competitors"

I worked at Target. While I like many things about the store, their policies and procedures regarding theft are part of the reason they have that problem. They have limited security team members and at times, none on duty. There is lots of theft at the self-checkout, which they could alleviate by putting limits on self-checkout vs a cashier. And when someone is caught, Target does nothing. And their return policy w/o a receipt makes it easy to steal then return for store credit, though I’m not sure that’s a huge issue.

Target doesn’t want team members to confront a person over shoplifting, and I get that – you don’t want to endanger an employee. But in general, Target is very blase about theft, in my experience. So they are part of the problem because they do little to prevent or punish it.

Best Buy is quite different. There is always a security person at the door, and they probably monitor their cameras. They have a number of employees visible and a more open floor plan (visibility). No self checkout. And that’s just what I see from shopping there – they may do more behind the scenes.