Irish Examiner view: Retail staff deserve better treatment

Abusive behaviour

A man was abusive to retail staff at the Centra on Oliver Plunkett Street. Picture: Dan Linehan

Readers may have noticed the report of a court case in yesterday’s paper which focused on an incident which occurred at a Centra outlet in Cork City before Christmas. 

The court was told by Sergeant Gearoid Davis that on December 15 a man was in the shop taking food items and verbally abusing staff, adding: “The accused left the shop and continued to verbally abuse shop staff from out on the street, calling one shop assistant a fucking bitch.” 

The man was later arrested by gardaí, but this is the reality of work for retail staff in many outlets — one of abuse and intimidation, sadly. 

RGDATA, which represents independent grocery outlets in Ireland, recently commented that crime against retail workers is “out of control”, a description which does not seem excessive.

As shown on Prime Time on RTÉ recently, that crime takes many different forms, with the abuse and assault staff just one among a variety of offences. Retailers recounted stories not just of people feigning falls and slips to try to secure insurance payouts, but an entirely new scam — people pretending to steal items in order to be accused of shoplifting, so that they can then take an action for defamation.

Those scams suggest a level of deviousness and deliberation as opposed to spontaneous, opportunist crime, targeting hard-pressed businesses in systematic, organised fraud.

This is bad enough in itself, but it is only a couple of short years since we were hailing those on the frontline in retail as heroes of the pandemic, the hard workers at the coalface who were keeping the country going at personal risk to themselves.

Now that we have come through that terrible period it seems that gratitude has been quickly forgotten as criminals seek to make up for lost time. Retail workers deserve better than facing abuse and crime in the workplace.