Self-checkout rage ‘causes rise in middle-class shoplifting’

SELF-SERVICE checkouts at supermarkets are driving the increase in middle-class shoplifting, the boss of one of the UK’s biggest smoked salmon producers has said.

Lance Forman, chief executive of H Forman & Son, believes opportunist thefts, rather than the cost of living crisis, are behind the rise in retail crime, which has reached a record 1,300 offences per day, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

He said: “Self-service really annoys people, especially older customers, and they think that if you are not prepared to protect your goods you can’t care about them too much. If you leave your front door open, people will come in and steal. It’s a sad fact of life.”

Mr Forman, a former Conservative MEP, said that retailers had lost sight of their customers’ desire to be served by people, rather than machines, and that “the idea that everything can be tech driven is wrong”. Retailers are increasingly asking customers to do the work that paid staff once did, by scanning their own items at checkouts that in some stores have completely replaced manned tills.

The number of self-checkout machines in supermarkets has risen from 53,000 to 80,000 in the past five years, and fewer jobs are being advertised for checkout staff.

Tesco faced a backlash from customers in 2022 when it said it was removing the majority of manned checkouts in many of its larger stores. An online petition demanding the major supermarkets “stop replacing people with machines” attracted nearly a quarter of a million signatures.

Archie Norman, the boss of Marks & Spencer, is among those to have attributed the rise in shoplifting to middle-class thieves who have found they can easily slip high-value items into their shopping bags without scanning them at self-service checkouts.

Thefts of expensive foodstuffs including smoked salmon and exotic cheeses are on the rise, and Mr Forman is convinced that resentment over “dehumanising” self-scan checkouts is part of the mix.

Better customer service would reverse the trend, he said.

He added: “Self-service can be so frustrating sometimes when all you want to do is speak to a human. While it’s obviously bad that people are stealing, vendors ought to return to serving their customers with friendly and helpful checkout staff who cheer people up and build a communal spirit.”