Attacks on shop workers are on the rise as two out of five employees face abuse from customers every week, new research has revealed.

Shop workers reported being shouted at, spat on, threatened, or hit on a weekly basis in a survey of more than 1,600 staff from 200 companies by the Retail Trust charity.

Employees said confronting a shoplifter or the cost of living crisis are some of the reasons behind the abuse.

The incidents have left 66% feeling stressed or anxious about going to work, while 42% are considering quitting their jobs or leaving retail work altogether.

Rates of abuse have risen by 7% from last year, though nearly a quarter of workers do not report their mistreatment at work.

Dubbed an “intolerance epidemic” by the Retail Trust, the charity found that nearly seven out of ten customers got annoyed with a shop worker, delivery driver or customer services employee, with 20% of these admitting to raising their voice or tempers flaring.

The research comes as a group of more than 55 leading businesses, including Sainsbury’s and Boots, have signed an open letter to Minister for Policing Chris Philp calling for more police action over high levels of abuse.

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Separately, the Co-op said it recorded 300,000 incidents of shoplifting, abuse, violence and anti-social behaviour so far this year – an increase of more than 40% on last year.

The retailer noted more than 1,100 physical assaults on its store workers and more than 36,000 instances of anti-social behaviour and abuse, as it called for police to do more to tackle violence in shops.

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‘A shoplifter attacked me’

Moses is a department store manager from Essex who faces physical altercations weekly “over absolutely nothing”.

The 42-year-old said: “I made the decision to move to a department store from a supermarket because I read that it had more security guards.

“It was a decision I made while sitting in A&E, waiting for stitches in my forehead after a banned shoplifter attacked me. I’ve been physically attacked 20 or 30 times in the last two decades.”

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‘I will flob down your throat then kill you’

Another store manager from Hampshire told the charity how she had “never known it so bad”.

Julie, 61, said: “In town, there are groups of teens who come in every day and cause havoc. They run through stores, pushing over floor stands and hitting passers-by or store workers with sticks.

“I was threatened by a guy five months ago who said, ‘I will flob down your throat then kill you.’ That was because he was trying to return an item that he had stolen 15 minutes previously for cash.

“We have incidents like this two to five times every day. I’m quite thick-skinned, I’ve been around a long time, and I go home and my other half says you shouldn’t have to put up with that, but it’s become part of my job.”

Chris Brook Carter, the Retail Trust’s chief executive, said it was “simply unacceptable” that thousands of shop workers were contacting the charity as they feared for their safety.

He said: “One person told us they were hit around the head by a shoplifter with a metal basket, another was knocked out cold by an angry customer, and this is on top of the vile insults and threats handed out on an all too regular basis.”

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Read more:
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Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, has urged the government to introduce measures to tackle such behaviour and to help police allocate resources to “challenge and deter potential offenders”.

She also called on customers to show workers more respect, saying: “We must all work together to stamp out this scourge of crime.”

The Retail Trust runs a wellbeing helpline and offers counselling for shop workers in need.

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