This doesn’t seem like enough of a grump to put in the Pit, so here I am.
The last three times I’ve gone to Walgreens – and a different Walgreens each time – I’ve been accosted by a salesperson as I go wandering. Usually when I get there it’s late evening, between eight and ten, and though I tend to wear good black slacks and a work-casual shirt, I seem to get picked out by the salespeople. Once, I actually heard over the intercom: "Loss Management in Aisle (whatever aisle I was in). Five seconds later, a keen-eyed young lady asked if I was looking for anything in particular. I was, but she seemed confused as to where I could find it. :smack:
Is this common practice? I’m not a shoplifter, I don’t think I give off a skeezy vibe, but three times in a row now I’ve been trailed by a salesperson when all I want is a lightbulb. It’s rather turning me off going there. If I want help I’ll ask; it’s not like I’m coming here to get something complicated. I just want to browse the shampoo, pick up a nasal irrigation kit and a box of Ex-Lax, and get out.
The first time I was away from the family for an extended period was a trip to Ireland when I was 15.
There were several stores where, the instant they saw us foreign students, the staff got on us like flies on shit. They were rude, aggresive, and hurt several of us physically; I took a handful of colored bracelets from a display and started ordering them by color (I wanted to make sure I had enough to bring to all the girls to whom I wanted to bring one, but also that there wouldn’t be two with identical ones) and this guy just grabbed me and started dragging me to the manager’s office; I bruise very easily and I did bruise where he grabbed my arm, guess that’s why gorillas like him are sometimes called “bruiser”, huh?
I say “several stores” because there were three in a row; all with open fronts and connected by doorless arches. They were supposed to be different stores but except for days when they knew new foreigns students would be coming to town, there was only one or two people for all three.
Soooooo… yes, we did rob them blind. As vengeance. If they hadn’t “attacked preemptively”, there may have been some shoplifting, but after THAT? Honey, you attack me you better be armed for war!
What can I say, if you don’t do stupid teenage stuff when you’re 15, when are you going to do it.
Other than some stupid anecdote sharing, comfort Ninja
PS: Note that I refrained from any kind of puns on your username I’ll let the natives do that
I set off the alarm at the local Food Lion whenever I go there. See, I don’t have a car, so I have to walk. It’s not a bad walk or anything, about fifteen to twenty minutes with sidewalks to walk the whole way. My arms get a bit tired carrying my groceries on the walk back to my apartment, so I started to bring an empty backpack with me to carry my stuff in on the walk back. I’ve never stolen anything, but whenever I walk through the sensors on the way out, the alarm goes off. I calmly look towards the closest cashier, looking for some sort of direction. Without fail, they wave for me to go on my way. It’s rather embarrassing though.
Curiously enough, I can do this at my local grocery store. I hate using plastic bags – I have so many of them stuffed in my pantry to use for cleaning out the cat box, but I always seem to get more than I can use. So I take a big canvas bag with me to go shopping in. I’ve gotten a few odd looks from customers, but considering my bag has a big Wheatsville logo on it, nobody troubles me. Even when I’m not at Wheatsville.
Granted, now, if I did that at Walgreens, I might get football tackled.
And that’s just dreadful, Nava. I can’t imagine getting manhandled like that in a store. Especially because here in the States you could probably bring them up on assault charges, native or no…
It seems to be a Walgreens thing. It happens to me all the time, especially if I try to browse in the cosmetics aisle. If I pick up an item to look at, or just stand in front of a makeup display for more than 30 seconds, there is a store employee at my side, asking “May I help you?” in a tone of voice that seems much more suspicious than genuinely helpful. And this happens all times of day. Though I’m usually casually dressed when I shop (jeans and a nice shirt or sweater) I’m a respectable looking woman over forty. And even though I don’t like to think this way, I was starting to wonder if it was a racial thing, as I am a black person in a town with a rather small minority population.
I know cosmetics (and vitamins, another area where I am often accosted by “helpful” staff) are commonly shoplifted items. But their subtle-as-a-sledgehammer security methods have caused me to avoid shopping there, so their attempt to prevent losses have actually cost them business.
It hasn’t happened to me at Walgreen’s (I don’t like Walgreen’s, but my pharmacy is there), but that has happened to me in a (of all places) a beauty supply store.
I was with a girlfriend who wanted some kind of special conditioner. Funnily enough, we had our babies, both in strollers, with us. I dont’ know if the clerk saw the umbrella strollers and thought–aha! obvious shampoo thieves running amuck! But we were followed, not discretely, through the whole store.
I’m not the patient sort, if that happened to me consistently, I’d start saving my store receipts. I would then go in when I knew the manager would be on duty, and after being followed (again) ask to speak with them. I’d put all the items I had been going to buy in front of him, and show him the receipts, tell them they just lost a regular customer due to their policies. Then I would walk out the door, leaving the items on the counter, receipts in hand. Maybe you who have experienced this should speak out and write to the companies or speak to the store managers and tell them what they are actually doing is losing business instead of preventing loss?
Adding, during my talk with the store manager I’d point out that I lived in the community, and how regularly I (once) shopped in their store. I would also probably write to their head office, giving them a similar message with copies of my receipts as well. Let them do the math, because if one person is fed up enough to leave, how many others are also doing so? (I’d probably pose that question to the head office as well.)
They do put the cosmetics next to the shampoos. I always browse the shampoos because I’m often on the lookout for something that will help me take care of curly hair without having to spend a mint on it.
I’m a fairly brown person – my parents are white as Wonder Bread, but somehow I got the golden skinned genes of… what. My mother’s Polish heritage? My father’s intensely blonde East Texans/Louisianans? If I didn’t have my mother’s voice and my father’s hair and nose I’d be wondering. But regardless, I look alternately half-black or Chicana, depending on who’s doing the looking. So it COULD be a race thing, but I strongly doubt it – people tend to identify me as whatever’s closest to their own race. (It’s rather nice, really. Everyone wants me! ;))
But yes – it makes me quite uncomfortable, and I think I’ll take that tack next time, Zabali. And take my custom to CVS, and see if I get treated better. If not, I’ll drive the extra few minutes to HEB, a store that is proof that Texas is the Promised Land.
My brother used to work at Wal-Greens for a bit back a few years ago, and perhaps part of their aggressive/overbearing seeming security procedures stem from the fact that Wal-Greens has a strict corporate “Do Not Chase” policy. If you (as a shoplifter, not you in general) make it through the front door with some swag, they let you go. They had an incident a few years ago where an associate chasing a shoplifter was killed in the parking lot during the pursuit, which probably resulted in a massive lawsuit. That was the end of that idea, so the only loss prevention procedures they can enforce are the ones inside the store.
I always want to laugh when I’m looking at cosmetics in London Drugs and an employee will hover around me, all “Can I help you with anything?” and then not be able to answer any questions. C’mon now. If you’re going to offer to help me, at least make something up when I ask which shade of foundation would look good on light-to-medium skin with olive-y undertones, or what aisle toothbrushes are in, or if you’ve got this new moisturizer in yet. If you can’t manage that, why not just invade my space while asking if I’ve stolen anything yet? It would probably be far less annoying.
My girlfriend has mentioned this a few times. I don’t think it’s a racial thing - she’s as white as they come. She’s in her late twenties and professionally dressed, and she’s usually on her way home from work when she stops there. I think it’s more based on the fact that she’s wandering around leisurely rather than making a beeline to whatever it is she’s going to buy and then leaving.
But what do they expect her to do while she’s waiting for a prescription?
I’ll let the natives do that