Satire

 

San Francisco to Replace Closed Stores with Shoplifting Centers

 

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, the local equivalent of the city council, today voted unanimously to fill now or soon-to-be vacant retail space with city subsidized Shoplifting Centers.

The beleaguered city has recently seen closures of Whole Foods, Office Depot and Walgreen’s stores, and Nordstrom just announced plans to close its two stores in the city. “These departures are leaving the city with no suitable place for residents to shoplift,” said Board spokesperson Peacehaven Williams, whose pronoun is ζ.

The new centers will be stocked with similar items to those that were found in the stores that have left the spaces they will occupy, said Williams, with the most significant difference being that there will not be any cashiers or checkstands. The centers will be staffed by unionized city employees reflecting the rich cultural diversity of the bayside community, though the only jobs to be filled will be stocking shelves.

“The plan is for the shoplifting experience to parallel what was available at the establishments that have cruelly abandoned San Francisco by focusing on their perceived need to remain viable as businesses,” explained Williams. “Members of the public will be able to simply enter the building, take what they want, and leave without paying, without fearing that they will be arrested or pursued. In that way, it will be basically identical to the way it was before the other stores closed.”

It appears that the principal difference between the operation of the retail establishments and the new shoplifting centers will be that the city’s taxpayers will absorb the losses rather than private corporations.

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