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By Martha McHardy
US News Reporter
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Walmart shoppers have been left scratching their heads after discovering that basic T-shirts were being locked up in select stores.
In several videos posted to social media, products including T-shirts are seen locked in cabinets behind glass.
"Tell me why this s*** is locked up?" one customer says in a video as she tries to buy two packs of T-shirts.
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In another video, one customer is forced to ask a shop assistant to unlock a pack of T-shirts for him, only to be told he must carry it around in a locked clear glass box until he has paid for it. "What if I wanted string underwear. My business just out here like this," he said.
Meanwhile, a third video sees a customer explain that she went to a Walmart in a "fairly decent area that normally doesn't lock anything up" to buy men's Hanes V-neck T-shirts, only to find that they were the only item locked up. "I need to know, is there like a run on T-shirts? Like thieves are going into Walmart specifically to the aisle with Hanes T-shirts and they're just cleaning you guys out, to the point where you need to lock away just the one singular item?" the shopper said.
It is not the first time that Walmart has locked up its products on the shop floor. In February, one customer uploaded a video from his local Walmart in Oakland, California, where T-shirts were locked up. "It's getting so bad here," the TikToker said in the video. "As you can see, shirts are locked up."
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Meanwhile, posts on Reddit from 2023 show T-shirts locked behind glass. Customers have also reported seeing baby formula and video games locked up, as well as pregnancy tests, shaving cream and nail polish, among other things.
A spokesperson for Walmart told Newsweek that some products are subject to "additional security."
"Those determinations are made on a store-by-store basis. Walmart continues to explore additional ways to protect its merchandise, keep prices low and keep product in stock for the millions of customers it serves each week," the spokesperson said.
It comes as retail theft has emerged as one of the leading problems in the United States, with more than 70 percent of retailers reporting increases in theft over the last five years, according to RetailEconomics. In 2022, retailers lost $112 billion in "shrink," which includes damage, theft, and calculation errors, according to America First Policy Institute.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has also previously warned about rising thefts in stores, which partly resulted in the shutdown of 23 stores across 12 states in 2024. "Theft is an issue. It's higher than what it has historically been," he told CNBC's Squawk Box in 2022.
To deal with the problem, businesses have adopted a number of different strategies, including installing AI-powered surveillance cameras, training employees, removing self-checkouts, and locking products behind glass doors.
But locking away products has proven to not sit particularly well with customers, who have complained that staff are not available to unlock the products, while others have complained that it ruins the in-store experience.
"It's gonna all be locked up eventually," one TikToker said. "They won't sell any of it because no one's ever gonna come open it for them." Retailers typically will see a 15 percent to 25 percent drop in sales when they put products under lock and key, a security device executive told Forbes in April.
"This is no way to shop," another person said in a separate video. "This actually declines shopper experience."
Meanwhile, Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, director of the Kilts Center for Marketing, warned that with theft causing products to be locked away, this may actually drive up prices and disproportionately impact poorer communities.
"Theft is one of the leading explanations for why 'the poor pay more'—the phenomenon where retail prices for the same goods are higher in lower-income areas," he told Newsweek.
"The underlying explanation being that theft increases the effective cost of selling the same item in theft-prone areas. But even when items are locked securely, there is still a 'selling cost' to the retailer as they now require a sales attendant to open the locked case manually each time someone purchases a secured item," he added.
Dubé also warned that the cost to the customer may not just be financial.
"It creates a "hassle cost" to the consumer who needs to find a sales rep and wait to have the item unlocked for them. It may even create a 'social cost' if consumers find it humiliating or frustrating to go through this process," he said. "I think the biggest threat to physical retailers is that the hassle to the consumer creates one more reason to purchase online. It's still a major problem for the in-store experience."
Ultimately for Dubé, measures like locking away items "are more like bandaids than solutions" when it comes to tackling thefts in stores.
"Eventually, if theft continues to grow, retailers will be driven out of neighborhoods, most likely neighborhoods already strained by the lack of local amenities," he said.
Brands like CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid have also resorted to locking up products as a security measure, while Target reported that shoplifting had jumped about 50 percent year over year in 2022, leading to more than $400 million in losses in this fiscal year alone.
Meanwhile, Walmart removed self checkout machines in select stores earlier this year amid a rise in shoplifting.
"We've decided to remove self-checkout lanes and replace them with staffed lanes at select locations," a spokesperson for Walmart said at the time.
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