Shetland shop staff say they are dealing with a growing problem of bairns tearing open toys, leaving empty wrappers behind and, in some cases, walking out with items that were meant to stay on the shelf. Sound Service Station said yesterday it was finding the damage every second day, and later said it would not ban children even as other shops considered tighter limits.
The shop’s post struck a nerve because it put a number on the losses. Staff said they were finding lots of empty wrappers and that some of the toys had been stolen, with the damage adding up to £10 at a time. The message was blunt: “Please tell your children not to destroy the toys,” the shop wrote, adding, “That’s £10 worth right there and it’s every second day we find this.”
Other retailers in town said the same thing was happening to them. Ghufar Razaq said staff at Home Furnishing in town faced similar trouble, while Magnus Sinclair said he had the same experience at Scalloway Meat Company. The complaints were not limited to one shop or one street; customers also said they had seen similar behaviour elsewhere in town, turning a local nuisance into a wider talking point.
Vaila Knight described seeing it herself recently in the Cancer Research UK shop. She said a child picked a costume from a basket, took it out of its packet and threw the items on the floor when told he could not have them. Knight said she was “very saddened” by what she saw and said it “won’t make a blind bit of difference” if the behaviour is not challenged. She added: “What did mum do? I looked to her … nothing,” arguing that “kids need to be taught, parents need to lead by example and learning needs to be reinforced.” She said that, unfortunately, “this appears to have become an archaic concept.”
The debate has also exposed a divide in how shops want to respond. Some have already banned children or limited how many can come in at once, but Sound Service Station said it would not go that far and said it loves its “wir peerie customers” and that they are generally all brilliant. That leaves the underlying question unresolved: whether the problem is widespread enough across Shetland to prompt more shops to follow suit, or whether the pressure will instead fall back on parents to stop the damage before more retailers decide they have no choice.
