You’ve read the stories of flash mobs invading stores, stripping the shelves and escaping unscathed. You’ve seen the pictures of shoplifters casually walking down a row of goods stealing them.
You’ve thought, ‘my God, what is this country coming to.’ I know you have because I have too, as has my wife, and our friends. The world is going to Hell in a handbasket.
Well, now I have some news for you that will put all this into perspective. I have news that will make you feel better about humanity because you will stop thinking your 20th Century thoughts.
First, some background. In the past, stores kept all the goods behind the counter. This was true of corner stores, butcher shops, millinery stores, jewelry stores (most especially) and no one thought anything about it. I’m talking about the standard display system from at least 1800 or even before.
This began to change at the turn of the last century when Harrods and Selfridges in London began displaying goods in front of counters. Gradually these were opened up so that customers could actually touch and feel products without a clerk as an intermediary. By the Thirties this was well advanced and by the 1960s products were displayed in rows and customers checked out purchases at check-out counters.
The great advantage for retailers; fewer employees.
These enterprising entrepreneurs then went the whole hogg and began removing the clerks and replacing them with self check-out posts. Even fewer employees, what a concept!
Meanwhile, the hold of the Christian church, pervasive in the Victorian era, began to gradually erode, beset by WWI, the Depression, WWII, the Bomb, and, finally, the Pill, Women’s Rights and the Woke. With the diminution of the Devine, so too died the Jewish morality of the Ten Commandments, most especially, thou shalt not steal, the eighth Commandment.
Let me get back to today. The tipping point has now arrived: the self-checkout counters had proved so tempting for thieves, they are being replaced with clerks, as reported by CBC a year ago November:
“Theft is a big, big issue,” said Gray with Vancouver-based DIG360 Consulting. “At the self-checkout area … you don’t have the eyes on you like you would with the cashier.”
Now, in my own little IGA in Penticton, roasts and steaks have been put behind the counter. With the shocking rise in beef prices, customers who want to continue to be carnivores are resorting to stealing the Sunday joint.
All of which takes me back to 1960s Ontario where liquor purchases had to be made by filling out slips of paper, paying for the beer or liquor and then waiting for a clerk to bring the booze from the back. Do you see a trend here? I certainly do; it’s a winding back of the trust society of the mid 20th Century to the mistrust Society of the 1800s, and before.
How untrustworthy? You’ll hardly believe it.
I’m a Georgette Heyer fan and love reading her Regency romances, social situations that occurred in the period in England between 1811 and 1820. Then it was not unusual for a someone travelling “Post” (with hired teams and postilions from posting houses), to also hire armed outriders to protect themselves from highwaymen.
Indeed, it was normal for the mail to have an armed guard for every coach on every trip.
Now, think about this for a moment. This is before the first Bobby arrived (named after Sir Robert Peel) in 1829, when the Metropolitan Police first took to the streets of London. To be safe in the city, or on the highway, you needed to carry a lethal weapon. We see stage coaches being held up in the American west in movies and think this is an American thing, but no, stage coaches were held up in England at the same time, and for the same reason; only the rich could afford to travel.
So, what was normal two hundred and 25 years ago is what’s going to be normal here today, and tomorrow, and far into the future. Justin Trudeau may think he’s done away with pistols in Canada, but they are about to make a sensational comeback as people scramble to protect themselves in our dystopian future.
Worried about store “shrinkage,” that’s nothing. You’re going to have to start worrying about your personal safety, and that of your wife and children. You’re going to have to give security a top priority in your planning. You’re going to need more bodies, more relatives, more kids, more weapons, more people living together.
Have a look at farm homes and village life in the 1700s, that’s where we’re going. We’re all going to have to huddle together for protection.
Meat behind the counter is just the beginning, a social avalanche is coming, believe me.
