In the last year or so, grocery stores like Target and Walmart have taken to locking up more products and everyday items than they have in the past, frustrating and confusing customers.
Tide laundry pods and shaving cream in some Target stores are now kept behind acrylic or plastic anti-theft barriers and in theft deterrent boxes that require an employee to trek all the way to that particular aisle and unlock them.
Customers have called out the retailer for this practice, saying that locking up products, often in the personal care aisle, “kills the vibe” of making a Target run and deters them from shopping there.
Now, another customer is calling out her local Target for the way they have locked up a Cetaphil product she was trying to purchase—but only on one end of the aisle.
In the video posted to TikTok by @mimi.08_31, the customer points out that the same Cetaphil lotion she saw locked up behind an anti-theft barrier was also stocked out in the open further down on the same shelf.
“Oh my gosh, I need some of this but it’s locked up, what am I going to do?” she says in the video. “I don’t know, let me just walk right over here and grab it.”
She captioned her video asking what the point of locking up this product is only to stock it as usual with no barrier on the same shelf.
The Daily Dot has reached out to @mimi.08_31 via TikTok direct message as well as to Target via email regarding the video.
@mimi.08_31 🤦♀️🙄What is the point really?? @target #target ♬ original sound – Mimi.0831
More and more stores are locking up products
The Minnesota-based company may be locking up certain items, keeping products behind plastic, and using anti-theft devices due to higher rates of organized retail theft. In some reports, Target and competitor Walmart have even begun putting essentials like socks and underwear in anti-theft boxes that must be unlocked by an employee.
Some viewers who had noticed similar chinks in the methods used by stores trying to deter customers from stealing shared their observations.
“I was at a CVS the other day and realized I could reach into the back of the locked shelf because it was just open,” one commenter wrote.
“We waited 5min for them to open and saw item on open shelf on way to register,” another said.
“The dollar store did that with laundry soap but the sides were wide open,” one user said. “Ok I’ll just reach through this opening & get one.”
Others took a more defensive approach to the poster’s insinuation that the grocery store needed to do anything differently in its theft prevention efforts.
“They wouldn’t lock it up in your location if it didn’t have precedent,” one commenter wrote.
“They have to so losers don’t steal it,” another commented. “You need to tell people to do better not Target.”
“You mean do better people since they are the ones stealing product which then causes it to be locked up,” a commenter said.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
