They factor the cost of theft into their item pricing.

It fully eclipses every other form of theft combined. Wage theft totals over 51% of all theft.

Most grocery store do donate food

been this way for decades or since like ever. I remember working at Best Buy in the early 00s and the primary shrink factor was internal theft not shoplifting. Hell the LP guy that stood in the front of the store with the yellow shirt spent more time watching employees than actual customers.

Like theft from employees "doesn't count" or something?

In the US, wage theft is larger than every other form of theft combined. It’s literally over 51% of all theft. But it’s typically considered a civil issue, not criminal. So cops won’t help, and individual employees need to sue to get anything. And when those employees are being stolen from, they can’t afford a lawyer to sue.

And the current administration has systematically defunded, delegitimized, and dismantled organizations like the National Labor Relations Board, the Department of Labor, etc which actually had the teeth to fight for workers.

When people talk about white collar crime not being prosecuted, this is the kind of shit they’re talking about. You walk into a gas station and blatantly steal a $2 candy bar every day. By the end of the week, they’ll have a cop waiting for you to show up… But that same gas station chain steals $2 from every single employee every single day, by requiring them to show up 15 minutes before their clock-in time, netting them hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen wages every year? That’s a civil issue, and the employees need to take it up with the gas station’s corporate lawyers… Who will drag a court case out until the employees are all broke and have to drop the case.