At least once a week, staff arrive at work in Anstruther St to find their skip bin ransacked, rubbish strewn all over the ground and offensive graffiti everywhere.
Store manager Jenn Ritchie said the mindless damage had been occurring for months.
‘‘One Sunday morning I arrived at work to find about a dozen eggs smashed against the back door and, with no hose, and it being summer time it took sometime to clean,’’ she said.
‘‘Last week, one of those colour bombs was thrown under the back door of Best and Less and destroyed quite a number of clothing.
‘‘I am usually the one who cleans up the mess which can take up to an hour.
‘‘To have things like ‘f you’ and ‘don’t mess with me’ written everywhere was very confronting. People going to the gym in the morning saw me crying outside the shop.’’
Ms Ritchie said she had had enough.
‘‘I just get so annoyed at this stuff. We put our damaged and out-of-date stock in the bin and and these guys come along and cut the lock off and leave a mess like this,’’ she said.
‘‘We are required to destroy goods that go into our bin including the out-of-date food or opened food and this is when they appear to get angry and just throw the rubbish everywhere and write obscenities over the rubbish and on the wall.
‘‘It’s just frustrating that you come to work and be confronted with this sort of stuff.
‘‘For a month, we repeatedly locked the bin and they would cut it. It was happening every second day at one point.
‘‘Eventually, we gave up on getting the lock fixed.’’
Ms Ritchie said she had informed the police in December, but nothing had been done until this week.
‘‘It makes me wonder whether it’s the same people involved in all this vandalism going on at the moment,’’ she said.
‘‘I think this sort of thing is happening all over town, not just our shop. There seems to be no end to it.’’
Echuca police are now investigating and urge anyone with information to contact them on 54831500 or Crime Stoppers on 1800333000.
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