"In a recent study, a team of marketing professors looked at how service employees perceive 'customer deviant behaviors,' which include minor infractions like incivility and aggression..."

"... as well as more serious offenses like shoplifting and fraudulent returns. The researchers found that shoplifting was 'by far' the most prevalent and detrimental form of deviant behavior. According to the study, in the presence of a suspected thief the burden of policing often falls to frontline employees, who, depending on company policy, may be expected to guard the store, stand by passively or even assist the thieves as if they were paying customers. These behaviors leave employees feeling frustrated, angry, helpless, targeted, unmotivated and uncomfortable. Allowing shoplifting to continue unimpeded, the authors found, undermines the sense of pride they might otherwise find in their work and the workplace.... Because retailers continue to struggle with underemployment and employee retention, stores are often more sparsely staffed than they once were, and all the more grim. On a recent shopping excursion in Manhattan, I saw something I’d never seen before: a handwritten sign in the window of a major clothing chain, apologizing for closing for an hour midday because of understaffing...."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "What We Lose to Shoplifting" (NYT).

It's amazing that stores — the kind you can physically enter and shop in — still exist.