Retail - Boom!
There was a news article today which estimated that 767 Mn GBPs worth of shoplifting took place last year in the UK (there are many reports that mention a much higher number, and this seems to be the smallest number floating around).

To comprehend what this means, I tried the following:

If I ask you, how many people do you know that have a serious shoplifting problem, what would your guess be? And I am asking you about a serious problem, not a one off picked-a-chewing-gum-without-paying kind of incident. I am talking about someone who routinely shoplifts.

Well, if you assume that an average shoplift is worth GBP 50 (an incredibly high number, for surely no one shoplifts a refrigerator, or does one?), you are talking about 15.3 million incidents of shoplifting a year.

Now if you assume that a routine shoplifter shoplifts worth the above amount once a week, you are looking at 295000 incidents of shoplifting everyweek.

Given that the population of UK is 60 Mn, you are talking about 1 in every 203 people that have a shoplifting problem - guys who shoplift worth 50 GBP every single week of the year.

Which would imply that, in If I were to extrapolate that to the population of an organisation the size of Infosys, i.e. 60000 people, you have roughly 300 shoplifters that shoplift worth 50 GBP every single week!!! Compare that to our weekly grocery bill which is typically 35 pounds (and we think we are extravagant).

Who on Earth are these people and where are they???

And this seems to be the smallest number I have come across..

Hmmm try doing the same math with the number of retail outlet in UK... Say 1 outlet for every 50 people...
- posted by Rallix @ 2:32 PM