Good. If they want security, hire security. No store clerk should be expected to intervene. Most they should be responsible for is keeping them self safe and and calling a manager/police once its safe for them to do.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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I worked multiple customer facing roles when I was younger. This is the procedure for all of them, in fact it is usually a firable offense to try to stop someone with a weapon or threatened you. It is easy to defend stolen product to an insurance company. If you try to stop someone robbing a store and are injured or killed do to a policy the store had or a manager told you, the insurance isn't going to pay anything. Someone stealing "$30,000" worth of merchandise (which insurance pays you back for) and then being on cameras and not being able to use a lot of it without getting caught is much more preferable than having to pay hundreds of thousands in medical bills or millions in gross negligence if someone dies.
This is actually the legal requirement in my country. Even security is just a deterrent and aren’t legally responsible for actually intercepting physically.
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Security ain't doin shit. "Observe and Report" isnt just a catchy saying, it is literally all corp Security is supposed to do.
Also, jailbreaking stolen tech to sale is more trouble than it's worth. Doubt the smash and dash thefts aren't the ones calling the shots but most modern tech is little better than strapping a GPS to yourself.
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Not sure what kind of jobs you've worked OP, but every job I've ever worked explicitly says in training that if you're being robbed, don't resist at all.
They were trained well, dont get in the way.
Those phones will be bricked when 100 yards away, nbd for a worldwide product that has no working black market for ita products.
Robbers just wasted their time by not researching their crime.
They'll just use them to scan people online.
I worked retail for years. This is every retailer's company policy. Nothing in that store is worth dying for. The only event where you would go hands-on with someone in your store is when you get to the last option of the active shooter response. The best thing you can do is note what they theives take, and call the cops with a description after they have left the store
I was very nearly run over one time because there was a group stealing shit in my store, but I didn't know it at the time. They thew a half empty Gatorade bottle at my storefront and when I went out to pick it up, they ran their car up on the curb at me. I ducked back inside the store, locked the doors, and called the police. Reviewed the security cameras and notices they had lifted a few small items from my endcap displays. I also called the store down the street from me that they went to next.
So yeah, if someone was stealing shit from my store, I'd hold the door open for them.
I worked in a major outdoors chain, and out policy was to prevent most theft with customer service.That is, you see someone stuffing shit in a box for a cheaper product you go over to them and start talking about the products and making sales pitches and either embarras them into "deciding not to buy it", or they go through with it and you let it happen.
The only thing we'd physically intervene on was gun theft, and we had a designated armed employee on every shift (usually a retired cop) that handled that if they tried to leave before the local police arrived. It only came up once when I was there, and the local police did arrive in time, so they followed the thieves out of the lot and pulled them over.
The most dramatic event when I was there was actually kinda fun. We ran a background check on a guy and it got a delay, and the guy said he'd go eat in town and to call him if it came back in the next hour or so so he could save a trip. Turns out he was a fugitive, and the FBI called us to ask about the sale.
We quickly got a bunch of police dropped off in a bus so their cars wouldn't be visible, and they hid in a few offices around the store, and I called the guy back and told him the background check came back with a proceed.
Then when he came in the door I met him at the front and walked him down a pre-arranged route to the gun counter while chatting him up while the police blocked the aisles around us, and then I got "paged" over the intercom to go to the manger's office and pointed to the register where another salesman could check him out.When I was clear the police moved in on him.
It was kinda awesome.
that was a fun story to read thank you
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Everything they stole is literally a tracker. So stupid.
They rip them apart and use the non-serialized components as repair parts. If apple didn't try to overcharge for and restrict repair parts this would be less of a thing.
Aren't a lot of the parts married together though? Like, you can't just replace a fingerprint sensor without throwing errors.
Nah they have a good amount of replaceable parts on the inside. I used to repair iPhones a lot and the worst part was just the tiny components
Activation lock is designed to prevent reuse of stolen parts like this. Don’t know how successful this is, what components it’s tied to, and it doesn’t work on older models.
I’ve changed out fingerprint scanners and mostly just peripherals like the speakers and jacks and things like that. The board itself is pretty much locked down with nothing you can replace other than maybe a few components like a capacitor or something and even now they’re becoming increasingly just disposable unfortunately
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The key phrase here is “used to”. They’ve locked everything down in the past few years. Even the fucking battery is serialized and paired now.
For sure, someone else linked a more recent ifixit and yeah, right to repair is just getting nonexistent. I embrace the hopeful coming of more and more hardware for Linux
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No, this is a thing because it’s lucrative. It’s also pretty quick and easy to disable a tracker if you have the right equipment.
The devices in the apple store are not retail phones. They have special software that makes them dedicated trackers the second they leave the store’s perimeter.
Do you have a source for that? Is it just an app?
It's not a retail device, and it's loaded with a store version of iOS. It's tracked specifically to that apple store. Here is a recent article. The phones are designed to work while they're connected to the apple store wifi and that's it. You'd get more useful spare parts if you robbed people outside a nightclub.
TIL. That's pretty neat.
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Phones have IMEI numbers
There is also the fact that Apple runs a massive p2p wireless network
Used to work for Apple and may other retail stores. It’s company policy to not get involved.
In apples case they have insurance and the devices can be bricked the moment they leave the store. So they can just use them for parts.
It doesn’t look good to customers if you’re fighting thieves and honestly I’m all for stealing from companies if it means you ain’t breaking into someone’s house.
The cost to replace is less than workplace injury lawsuit.
What would you have them do. This is typical policy of retail. They don't get paid enough to get hurt.
It is also a questionable choice to steal Iphones. Those things are surveillance magnets
We shouldn't have a society where getting hurt was only a matter of getting paid the right amount.
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I was in an Apple Store for a Genius Bar appointment when these two guys with hoodies and COVID masks walked in and started pulling phones off the displays and stuffing them into backpacks.
It took less than a minute and then they ran off. The security guard just stood to the side and recorded a video. Once they were gone, everyone just went back to what they were doing, like nothing had happened.
Afterward, I asked the Genius Bar guy if that happened often. He said the two guys hadn't gotten much because they hadn't refilled the display from a guy coming in and stealing all the phones literally the day before!
The phones were tracked and the cops eventually caught the two dudes as well as the other solo guy.
It's really the fsct they are stealing GPS tracked devices that make it easy to not give a fuck. They're gonna get caught without effort. No point in wasting your energy at that point.
If it were me, I'd come in with a copper box to put the phones in. 😌
I read somewhere it runs custom software so it's not like it's usable tech. Best if you can fence it quickly to someone greedy for low price it'll serve them right for buying obviously stolen goods.
I love that the robbers wore monochrome hoodies appropriate to an Apple Store.
I guess technically holding the door is minimizing the damage. It's not like they're going to try to stop the robbers, but this way, they're preventing the glass door or windows from being damaged.
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Hahahha no one's dying for tim cook. Get farked
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I don't give a shit on company time.
All of those products have been rendered useless before they even got out of the door...
This is so dumb...
Of course they won't do anything because they can brick all those devices...
Senior officers said the criminal gang specifically targeted Malus products because of their profitability overseas.
The Met Police investigation discovered street thieves were being paid up to £300 per handset - and the force said stolen devices are being sold in China for up to £4,000 each, given they are internet-enabled and more attractive for those trying to bypass censorship.
How do they keep the iPhones functional? I thought once they're stolen, they are useless?
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At most retail locations they are literally instructed to not resist. It's a legal and insurance issue.
But also it literally doesn't matter, those are all locked down and tracked, company won't lose a dime (its also insured even if they can't recover it)
(Also: Pretty sure this is an old story, like severals years old lol)
It's very likely company policy for them to do so.
A wrongful death lawsuit is much more expensive than their insurance deductible.
Most retails companies make it a point in training that you are not there to try to physically stop thieves. If you get injured, they don't want to have to pay workers comp for it, or be held liable. All that shit is insured anyway
Sooner they left, the less chance of underpaid employees getting hurt. Of course they held the door.
So many uncles died that night...
It’s about the liability. Lawsuits cost much more than a display of iPhones.
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