For years, Southern California stores have been locking up high-priced items to deter thieves.
But the Rite Aid supermarket at the corner of Long Beach and Compton boulevards takes this approach to security to a new extreme. There, customers are greeted by rows and rows of items on shelves — makeup, chips, baby formula, paper towels, lotions and juices — that are enclosed behind Plexiglas.
Most items in the store are accessible only after clicking a button that will call an employee to come over, open the register, and retrieve whatever the customer is interested in (and return it if interest wanes).
The community is divided over the store's move, and employees are speaking out about how disruptive the change has been to their workday.
At 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Kimiko Jones, 43, of Compton, said she reluctantly visited this Rite Aid location because she needed cough medicine for a family member. Jones said she prefers to go to other locations in neighboring cities, where she can pull items off the shelves herself, but Thursday was early enough that she knew she wouldn’t have to wait long for help.
“It's disappointing because if people in the community didn't come here to steal and rob, or bring their big duffel bags to fill with merchandise, we wouldn't have to go through this,” Jones said.
It's unclear when the store put so many of its products under lock and key and whether more Rite Aid locations will follow suit.
“Like many in the industry, we are seeing an increased level of blatant shoplifting and organized retail crime,” the company said in a statement. “We are taking an active role in assisting law enforcement in pursuing shoplifters, in addition to continuing our efforts to educate community leaders about the impact of retail theft and advocate for solutions.”
The statement goes on to say that the company is implementing “multi-layered product protection solutions that are regularly evaluated.”
Rite Aid has closed hundreds of stores in California since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023 as it struggles to deal with creditors and lawsuits over opioid prescriptions.
In 2022, the National Retail Federation identified Los Angeles as having the worst organized retail crime problem, ahead of the San Francisco/Oakland region, New York City and Houston.
Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills to address the rise of organized retail theft by making it easier for police to apprehend shoplifters and dismantle larger retail crime networks.
During the few visits Jones made to the Compton Rite Aid, he said, the thefts had become so severe that the shelves were virtually empty.
This has been a stressful transition, said pharmacy technician Julissa Blackburn.
Since the products were closed, Blackburn said, fewer customers have come in. And people who do visit the store have been complaining about the change and the wait time that comes with it.
“It’s exhausting,” Blackburn said. “At the end of the day my feet hurt and I can’t do anything.” [feel] “I am so stressed that I get a lot of headaches.”
He said on a typical day, there are about two to three employees in the store and about six employees in the pharmacy, which he said is not enough.
“Please be a little more patient with us and try to understand that we are trying to do everything we can for everyone here,” Blackburn said.
Mauro Villalba, 60, welcomed the store's new policy because he said he's seen people steal from this Rite Aid location and the cashiers can't do anything about it.
Placing more items behind plexiglass, he said, was a logical next step for the pharmacy as he saw several other stores in the area begin shielding their products.
Pharmacy technician Cynthia Ayala, who has worked at another Rite Aid location for 15 years, said the company may be boasting about security with the newly closed items, but “it's frustrating because you can still be pushed around if someone wants to steal something, it makes it a more unsafe situation.”
Employees were already feeling the stress of not being able to stop shoplifters and hearing complaints from customers when shelves were empty, she said. The new security measures, she added, were just another layer of tension.
“If you have a customer waiting 15 or 20 minutes, they’re going to be angry when we get there and the customer experience is over,” Ayala said.
Ayala and Blackburn are members of Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is currently negotiating with Rite Aid over wages, hours and benefits.
Eva Guzman, 76, was taken to the Rite Aid pharmacy by her daughter, Eva Martinez, 54, to get her shots. Gomez said she first heard about the store's change on the news.
She said it was shocking to see this happen at her local Rite Aid, where she frequently goes to buy medicine, food and other items, “all because of the criminal behavior that has been happening around here.”
