'He threatened to headbutt me' - shopworkers under attack

For store manager Nicola Lewis, shoplifting has become part and parcel of her working life.

"It's horrendous. [It happens] at least two, three times a week, you get violence with it," Lewis said.

Lewis - who works at Heron Foods in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and described being verbally abused as "mild" - explained she had been assaulted by a man trying to steal vapes, and has had an offender pull a screwdriver on her in a past job at a different shop.

The store manager's story comes as shop workers' union Usdaw released new figures on Wednesday that show 11% of 8,980 retail workers it surveyed had been assaulted in 2025 while doing their job.

The Usdaw survey also found 78% of respondents had been verbally abused and 54% had been threatened.

Joanne Thomas, Usdaw general secretary, said: "No-one should feel afraid to go to work.

"They [shop workers] provide an essential service and deserve our respect and the protection of the law."

Lewis said she was assaulted by a shoplifter last month.

"A guy actually threatened to headbutt me, literally assaulted me and pushed my shoulder because I asked him to get out the shop because he was trying to pinch vapes," she said.

The manager also said one of her staff members was injured recently after confronting a shoplifter.

She said the worker was forced to the floor and hit her head on the door as she pursued the offender, suffering a "massive gash" that "did really affect her".

However, she added the staff member had now recovered and was back at work.

Lewis said keeping her staff safe was a priority and warned colleagues not to challenge thieves, but admitted it was hard not to.

"If you see it [shoplifting], it makes you mad, you think 'no, I have to pay for mine'," she said.

What Lewis and her staff are seeing daily is backed up by the Office for National Statistics.

Its data shows shoplifting was at a 20-year high in 2025.

Nationally, there were 519,381 offences in 2025, compared to 492,660 during the previous year.

However, Nottinghamshire Police insisted shoplifting was falling in Mansfield town centre, where Lewis's store is based.

At its peak in 2023, there were 805 shoplifting offences in the town centre but this has fallen to 501 in 2025, the force said.

Lewis said she felt supported by her local police beat team - PC Lou Martin and PC Kevin Marshall - who she can contact through the Shop Net radio scheme.

The radio scheme connects the town's shops, bus station, library, licensed premises, a CCTV control room and police.

When she was attacked recently, store staff were able to report the assault straight away through their radio and a suspect was arrested.

"They're absolutely brilliant, they're here straight away," Lewis said.

Marshall said people were often stealing to fuel a drug habit, but added the town had also been targeted by criminal gangs.

He said a prolific gang had been caught recently.

"We looked at CCTV, so we knew where they were parking their car, we knew what times they were coming, what they were stealing, directions they were leaving," Marshall said.

He said police tracked their vehicle using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and were able to arrest them.

He added: "It's our town, we care because we work down here, we've got a passion for it.

"You've got to take every shop theft as if they're stealing from you, which they are. They're stealing from our shops, from our town.

"If you give every shop theft your all, on most occasions you're going to get to the bottom of it. And if they get away with it once, we'll get them on the second time."

Lewis said she did not tell her family about the violence she faced at work but wanted to speak out now to highlight the problem.

"You leave the awful bits out.

"I'm not going to let it affect my home life," she added.

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