Former bigbox manager here. The garden section is throwaway, no one gives a shit about plants. Come to me when garden tools and lawnmowers are missing.
Bad inventory practices are the leading causes of shrink. Any actual theft is securities problem.
Why? It's not like you're costing the shop money by taking trash off the floor. If anything you're more likely to spend money at the shop you do it at for supplies and such.
The boots-on-the-ground staff absolutely does not give af. It's definitely middle management that's being bitched at by higher-ups that are scared of losing a fraction of a penny.
Source: middle management that gets bitched at by higher-ups that never set foot on the property.
That's not the future, man, that's the farms of today. Monsanto literally searches farms for seeds and will issue huge fines or cancel contracts if they find that farmers are harvesting seeds from their plants. Monsanto owns the rights to seeds.
Not only that, monsanto goes after neighboring farms if their neighbors use "patented" plants and claims they cannot harvest seeds because that would include the seeds that originate from the plants grown from the seeds blown by wind from their already fucked neighbors.
Most plant varieties are copywrited, or somwthing similar. It's not actually as crazy as it sounds but it's definitely abused, just like all copyright law.
You joke, but this is very much a real thing. Even if you buy certain hybrids, it can be technically illegal to propagate from them. The plant will have a little note attached to it saying so.
My father enjoys grafting plants, he has an apple tree with 15 types of apples on it. Come to find out he's been snipping tiny branches off apple trees at Home Depot....
I honestly wonder if I went to an orchard if they would be able to give me a price to let me just graft their different trees. I don't want to wait 7+ years for many fruit trees. Grafted trees from what I've seen can often produce fruit in 2-3 years
I recently moved and plan to buy a bunch of cheap apple plants from a big store and get them rooted this year. Then next spring take all the choice varieties from my father/childhood and graft them into the plants for my kids :)
They might sell you something, but those branches took a lot of time and care to grow and mean profit for the farmer. You may be able to find an abandoned farm or a group of people who are preserving apple varieties to go branches from.
Maybe it is illegal in the sense that some succulents ARE invasive species
I do know that people go to garden shops looking for free material for growth lying on the ground, which id argue is unnecessary. Most people who own plants or a garden will happily share with you the fact if you show the ittyest bittiest piece of interest in them, and also share plants as well.
Hell I regularly give out succulent saplings for free or as a gift to friends and people I meet.
Someone in my town has a big clump of some kind of tall ruffly flower that stands on a stalk amidst tall upwards-sticking blade leaves. Very neat and it seems to grow quickly to fill the area every spring. I've been too nervous to ask for a bit of it, but maybe I can buck up some courage and ask.
Yeah, this is 100% plant people, my wife is a regular dispenser of spider plants, there are upwards of 10 jade plants in the house, snake plant and money plant are mid propagation and I strongly suspect we'll have multiple pink princesses by the end of next year and maybe a few new Swiss cheese plants - given the room we have remaining these will largely be distributed.
I usually take the floor leaves and tuck them into a plant or two I actually buy. That way I'm still paying for something and I might get some freebies if I can get the extra leaves to grow but it's not guaranteed. I probably wouldn't do this at a local store tho, just the big box stores.
I don't think it works like that. It's like taking something that's dropped but usable from the shop floor. They might just sweep it to garbage but they probably aren't allowing you to take it anyway.
If you clip a healthy plant without asking the owner first, you're a dick. But if I see you do it at a store, no I didn't. Cause the store made $2,550,000 while I was typing this.
Are we talking about the 450 square meter store that looks like an industrial warehouse, or the 12 square meter handcrafted-everything boutique?
Cause if it's the former, I didn't see you shoplift a whole ass plant and if it's the latter and I see you clip the tiniest part of a plant, I'm calling you out loudly.
It's a dick move to pinch leaves if for no other reason that someone else may want to buy that plant, and you're damaging it. Enough people do it, it's a dead plant.
Leaves fallen to the floor? Boutique or not, fair game. If you're willing to propagate from a leaf, you're probably not going to be buying whole plants anyway, and it doesn't hurt the store.
Imagine going to the hardware store and someone calls it a fucking "boutique". It's just Ace Hardware, calm down. Robert, the guy with the nose ring over there, didn't really craft that screwdriver by hand, either. Fuckin' liar. Yeah I'm talking about you, the fuck you gonna do about it? Next time I see you explaining how you 'create lightbulbs with love', I'm lighting your car on fire. Don't think I won't!
Anyway, what were we - oh yeah. Ace Hardware. Now impeccably posh, I guess.
I mean if you're pinching a leaf then that's not in the dubious territory, that's just straight up stealing. And it's not like someone is stealing fucking plant leaves to stave off starvation lol
In all likelihood the business is just going to throw away the plant props and they were going to be wasted anyways. So I don't see the problem with taking them
It's not theft, it's basically dumpster diving for living things. Living things that can grow in dirt with some water.
They just see lost profit not an actual product loss.
Depends. If you weren't going to buy it anyway, it doesn't cost them anything. And if you're grabbing a fallen leaf hoping for something, it seems like you aren't all that interested anyway.
I only know about Menards because of random factoids, references, and memes. Frankly speaking I have just found out they have plants and are maybe a hardware store.
I'll give you my entire carbon stick up the ass....its fun, hold on...no, that's my ass. Hold on, I know this one. Oh man! I need some help. Could you please? With your lips is better, no teeth. Hey! I'm in charge! That's my ass again! Fine! Have it your way!
I grew professionally for many years. That's exactly how it works lol. Consistency is key and cloning is the way. I've sold single clones for thousands of dollars but the 2nd one was always for maybe a hundred bucks.