They should put QR codes right there so you can quickly find it in their online store and buy it. Otherwise, unless I need it immediately, I'll just go online to Amazon or Google it and buy it that way.

Yeah these are a sinkhole, making things way worse. Especially since it often takes several minutes for a staff member to show up with a key. Maybe they're on their way, maybe they're not. At least with Uber you know where your driver is.

These locked cases are endemic in Washington, DC where I live. To open them, you'll have to wander the store to find an employee or with some places, hit a button that alerts someone who will slowly make their way over to unlock the case for you. Shoplifting happens in DC, I see it fairly frequently, but I have a hard time believing this is a worthy trade-off for the stores.

I guess you could buy what you wanted online, or pre-buy for pickup at the store. But if you need it right away, just go to the street where it's all being sold by street vendors (16th & Mission in SF).

This has been increasingly common around the Twin Cities, and I just won't buy anything that's locked behind a cabinet like this. Happily there are still many options that don't do this, and many of them are coops or family-run stores, so that makes it even easier to avoid going to Target (as a main example) for toothpaste.

To me, there are two benefits to in-person shopping: instant gratification and the ability to comparison shop. The locked case prevents both of these. Even if I was willing to push the button and wait for someone to show up to unlock (and I'm usually not willing), once the case is open there is the immediate pressure to grab the item so the case can be relocked. I can't pause to read a label for an active ingredient, smell the deodorants, or do any of the other things one might normally do when shopping in person. It takes away the already limited amount of satisfaction that comes with going to a store. Instead, I'll just get it from Amazon or Walmart or Target online.

I have had the feeling that this is a kind of sales tactic. I know I have been in CVS, needed Advil, seen it locked up, and bought the CVS generic, conveniently right next to the Advil and not in a cage. I mean, the retailers MUST know this reluctance. It's practically an intuitive stat.

One of my local grocers is experimenting with having all the stuff they want to put in cages be in a special location in the store where you have to check out those items separately, like a store within the store. It solves the problem of being able to actually look at the items you want to purchase, compare if needed, and then have someone there to check out your purchase without having to wait for someone to open a cage. I'm curious to see how well it works for them.

No sane sales exec would make it harder for customers to buy their products unless they genuinely believed that theft was a serious problem. Whether that belief is actually grounded in truth is another matter entirely.