Maybe the thief left the house needing $70 worth of groceries, and with money in his pocket that he was going to use to buy those groceries anyway, and only decided on the spur of the moment when he saw a cashier with their drawer open and not paying attention to steal the Benjamin. In that case, the store’s outcome with the theft is exactly $100 less than their outcome without the theft, and so their loss is $100.
Another way of looking at it: Over what span of time are we asking about their loss? The problem doesn’t say, so we have to make our own judgements about what span makes sense. Over the whole day? Even with the theft, the store probably still profited, so the answer is “no loss”. Over the time between the thief walking in the store and him leaving? Other people probably checked out in that time, and we have no idea how much they spent, or what the margin was on the items they were buying. For most time spans, we simply can’t answer the question. The only time span for which we can answer is the time from immediately before the theft to immediately after, and so the only meaningful answer we can give is $100.
Somebody else agreed with you, so I’ll unleash the counter I was suppressing.
The store sold $70 in merchandise, and got paid in full for it. The store lost the $100 (of money) which was stolen originally, before the sale, and their register reconciliation will reflect that fact.
It’s called “shrinkage” and it’s built into the store’s operational budget. The store didn’t lose anything.
Aside from that consideration, the store lost the $100 that was stolen. It is immaterial whether the thief bought something with the stolen money from the victim store. That product would have been sold to somebody else, or remaindered for a refund.
I’m pretty sure that shrinkage refers specifically to shoplifted stock; money taken from the till is still called “robbery”. And shrinkage is definitely considered to be a loss - it’s just a loss that they have come to expect because they know people are scumbags.
It’s not robbery in the above math problem. Robbery is the crime of taking anything of value by force, threat of force or by putting the victim in fear. Sounds more like larceny in this case.
Definitions of crimes vary by jurisdiction, according to criminal code language. For example, joyriding may mot be auto theft, if there was no intent to permanently deprive the owner of property. But that has not been upheld in all states
It’s a math problem, so of course it only one answer. The trick is that most would think giving the $70 back would somehow lessen how much he stole. But since he exchanges it for an item valued at $70, there is no net exchange. The store at the end of the day is out $100, while he had $30 + an item he thought was worth $70.
The only way I could see to have it otherwise is if the item would have wound up having its price changed if it was not sold. Then the guy still has $100 worth, but the store could argue $30 plus the new price.
From reading the “original” blog post about this, the confusion has nothing to do with trick wording. Apparently some people struggle with tracking the math. The correct answer is $100, and all of answers on the SDMB so far have been $100 with some nuances and clarifications thrown in.
So apparently this isn’t some sort of trick, it’s just a softball of a problem for us.
The “trick” is a lot of people double count the loss, so they come up with answers like $200. I had this question show up on a feed of mine half a year ago, and only maybe 15-20% of people came up with the correct answer of $100 (or $30 cash, $70 merchandise or whatever more nuanced phrasing.)
Their register reconciliation assumes that they gained additional money; it is the reconciliation that is in error in this case.
Look closely at those bills. I marked them all. There’s a $100 bill–with a winky smiley on it–and three $10 bills–each of which I decorated with tiny pink hearts in the upper left corner.
At noon, when the robber walked in, all four bills were in the till.
At 12:05, when the robber left, only the $100 was in the till.
What did they lose? They lost the three bills with tiny pink hearts in the upper left corner. Those bills add up to a total value of $30, and are the only money that was lost.
Normally we don’t look at the little symbols; we just count the total money. But because people are getting distracted by things like register reconciliation, it’s helpful to ID the specific bills.
Left Hand of Dorkness, would your answer change if the thief had bought the merchandise with a different Benjamin, that he had obtained legally and already had in his pocket when he walked into the store, and still had the stolen Benjamin when he left? How is that situation any different?
I’ll answer. Because in your scenario, the two $100s cancel each other out. The store doesn’t gain an additional $100 that they would have had if the thief hadn’t put the first one in his pocket. The thief walks out with an extra $30 plus the merchandise. He doesn’t walk out $70 poorer and the store doesn’t gain an additional $100 bill.
Or what if the thief didn’t buy anything at the store but someone else bought $70 worth of stuff and paid with a $100 bill? The store’s drawer and inventory would look identical to the problem scenario.
If the thief didn’t buy anything, the store would be out $100 in money. The store’s drawer would be $100 lower but the inventory would be $70 higher.
Speaking in the strict terms of the problem, every time someone buys from a store, the store has less money. That’s what makes (IMO) the question a trick one - just looking at money is misleading, because theft isn’t an exchange of value and selling merchandise is.
If you reverse the order of things, and employ the lost art of exact change, it becomes even more obvious. Guy comes in, buys 70 bucks worth of stuff. Pays with 3 twenties and a ten ( functionally the exact same as paying with a hundred and getting thirty in change)
Goes outside, smokes a cigarette, comes back in, steals a hundred.
I doubt there’s any question the store is out a hundred.
I go to the store intending to buy goods for $50, but once there I decide not to. How much money did the store lose?
In this problem the store lost $30 in cash and merchandise with a sale value of $70. They are in a position exactly equivalent to having had $30 stolen and $70 of merchandise shop-lifted. There are no other equivalent situations unless we go into the rabbit hole of intent, such as “they guy needed $70 worth of goods anyway, so he would have stolen that, so it’s not a loss to the store”.
Like I said before, the “trick” is that people double count the money, or get confused about the $70 and the $30. The way this question is usually presented in the wild, at least how I’ve seen it, is as a multiple choice question.
It’s not meant to hinge on the nuances of what is cash and what is merchandise. It’s a straightforward problem that confuses the bejesus out of people (except here, it seems.) It throws three numbers at you, of which only one is really important, and people think they have to do something with all three numbers to arrive at an answer. That’s the whole “trick.”