I think this hints at who is doing a considerable amount of shoplifting. The press around shoplifting (see as always) is that it’s shadowy organizations paying people to walk in, grab as much expensive stuff as they can, and walk out past employees who are frustrated by how blatant it all is and scared of violence if they interfere.

But no criminal mastermind is organizing this type of granular theft of cheap, heavy, bulky items. The person stealing vegetable oil is someone trying to stretch a food budget by “forgetting” to ring up something like this at self-checkout.

The flashier type of shoplifting does happen (although it’s often people with drug problems acting independently and selling to shady pawn shops), but either the second type happens quite a bit, too, or security like this is cheap enough and companies half want to drive people out of stores anyway.