A WALMART shopper expressed their anger after realizing the megastore had locked up their Legos.
The anti-theft policy has left many customers fuming due to the amount of time it takes them to track down an employee to open the gate.
The enraged customer took to Facebook to complain that Walmart would lose business with their latest security measure.
“Walmart has locked up the Legos,” Calvin Livingston vented on the social media site in June.
“I think it’s dumb because they’re going to lose business cuz people don’t want to go through the bother of finding somebody to unlock it. And how many people are shoplifting Legos?”
Livingston later commented on his post saying that he had spoken to an employee who told him “that lots of people are stealing Legos. They just walk out with it.”
Many people flocked to the post with their own opinions.
“I read that people are filling up shopping carts with them and going out the door,” commented Donna Thiles.
“Unfortunately these are stolen quite frequently next to baby formula…they are expensive and sell on the internet rapidly” a second person stated.
“Contact lens solution is locked too. So is the $1.97 nail brushes,” a third person said.
Other commenters took the opportunity to slam the Walmart policy.
“Well until stores start stepping up security and prosecution this will continue to grow. Employees just stand and watch. Which I am not blaming,” one user stated.
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“But companies need to use their profits and have armed security at stores that are experiencing these types of mass shoplifting. They just claim the losses under insurance and we pay more.”
One shopper revealed that they left the store after having a horrible experience.
“I walked out of Walmart here in Tucson, Arizona when I saw they had men’s underwear locked up behind glass,” wrote user @ShotokuTech on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“We [went] home and ordered from Amazon instead.”
The user was responding to a video, showing a store aisle that had dozens of cereal boxes locked behind anti-theft glass.
“We should be locking up criminals, not our food,” wrote one person.
Retail theft cost stores more than $121 billion in losses in 2023, according to a study by Capital One.
However, by 2026, that number is expected to jump to about $150 billion.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon revealed in a 2022 interview with CNBC that shoplifting could increase not just security policies at stores but also store prices.
“Theft is an issue. It’s higher than what it historically has been,” he said.
“We’ve got safety measures, security measures that we’ve put in place by store location…if [shoplifting] isn’t corrected over time, prices will be higher and/or stores will close.”