The Link - Aggressive Customers to Robbery

There is a more common link to retail robbery - It’s the link between aggressive customers, shoplifting and robbery

Headlines would indicate that the occurrence of aggressive customers situations with a propensity for violence is increasing. It’s only natural then, that we will see that aggression alongside shoplifting & robbery

When we speak to staff around robbery in our training sessions, the image and scenario they conjure up, is mostly that of the shotgun toting, balaclava wearing bad guy storming in and demanding the money. Of course, that scenario is real and plays out in hospitality, service stations, banking and retail businesses up and down the country. Any business that has something of value is a likelihood for this type of pre planned serious criminal offending.

What is more likely however, and is playing out in those same businesses is the frequency of an aggressive customer, opportunistic in their thieving and they get caught in a moment of anger, likely fuelled by meth and they become violent before taking off with the goods or in an attempt to flee from staff or security.

The Scenario - it’s a reality

Robbery is simply theft accompanied by violence or threats of violence. This more frequent type of offending as outlined requires only three ingredients to come together, which when mixed, provide a volatile and dangerous situation for staff.

The customer enters the store, he may have an intent to buy something, but he has no intent on paying for the bottle of vodka that he slips inside his jacket. At the best of times, he’s an angry young man, recently unemployed through a covid lay off and now he has returned to substance abuse. Making his way towards the door, he’s confronted by a worker.

The employee may not have chosen the best words, but she’s trying to do the right thing. The confrontation lights a spark inside the guy, verbal expletives fly, followed by an aggressive shove, she stumbles falling into a display stand causing a cut to her head. He’s desperate, he doesn’t want to get caught, and he wants the vodka. He shows the wooden handle of the knife inside his jacket as some kind of veiled threat then runs off - gone.

The cocktail of ingredients

For that scenario to be true it only needs three ingredients which are way too easy to find.

Firstly, people who are or can have a propensity for aggression or violence enter a business.

Then, it needs that person to be inclined to shoplift or steal. And we know that shoplifting is a multi million dollar growing business. Professional and opportunistic shoplifting is absolutely a thing, occurring in some places every single day. Your local supermarket or hardware store is losing product every single day.

Then, it only needs that person to be violent, or to throw down threats of violence to any staff member or fellow customer intervening, trying to do the right thing.

Now you have a robbery - a much more frequent robbery. And a workplace incident that requires management intervention in terms of training.

What to do

The risk is real and caring people leaders who know this risk exists need to provide a safe working environment for their people, but the thinking and caring should extend beyond that.

Training should extend to staff understanding the risk of robbery beyond the normal thinking of what a robbery is. They should have training in engaging the right level of situational awareness to understand the environmental risk flags when they show themselves. Support this training with “good actions on” in dealing with shoplifting situations and on how to keep yourself if caught up in a robbery.

Support this training with little and often leadership driven conversations around these risk. Have it current in peoples thinking and throw down the occasional “what if conversation” in team meetings.

So it’s not just a legal obligation, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to create safer and more resilient and risk aware staff through having an engaged and appropriate level of situational awareness. For all workplace risks, include those associated with aggressive customers, shoplifting and robbery.

QRisk Situational Awareness Online Training

Situational Awareness Training  is  a QRisk foundation module. It is central to many of our courses.  It underpins our strong belief and power statement that “Situational Awareness  is the greatest skill you can acquire for your personal safety and security. Both at work and beyond.

How to stay safe in dealing with aggressive customer situations, shoplifting, and robbery situations are additional modules that support the situational awareness in our online and onsite training presentations.

If you are one of those caring people leaders, or health & safety champions that aligns to the thinking in this article then lets chat.

We can discuss the uniqueness of your organisation, your environment, and your people and look to an off the shelf situational awareness training session, or by design we can align it to your world. Our online course maybe exactly what you need and is good to go.

Either way, there are real training objectives, but more importantly your people will pick up real life skills, that when adopted beyond the training they will be better, safer and more resilient for it.

See more about our online course

Situational Awareness - It’s a thing

We’ve been facilitating, speaking and training around situational awareness for over 10 years, both in NZ and abroad. It’s the client feedback that lifts us and the why, is because it sits at the heart of our vision “a safer world one client at a time”.

“The content is brilliant, such wonderful life skills and advice for everyone to incorporate into their everyday lives. Our team found the material so benecial are still discussing it regularly

“Wow, the credibility of the course leaders can’t be denied. The day was empowering and invigorating and denitely made me feel condent that I could handle myself in an adverse situation. I came away from the day feeling very passionate about what Q has to offer and I will be sharing my newfound knowledge with those around me.

-Joanne ASB