Hell, just print a bunch, and ask the owner/manager if they would hand them out to people who might like them. Otherwise, there is a thing called the Lost and Found. Usually gets emptied into the dumpster when it gets too full.
Fairly simple answer. If a customer brought it up to the register to buy of course there would be no way to ring it up. Then they’d either attempt to look it up (unsuccessfully) in their inventory system, or just bypass the attempt completely and ring it up under a generic SKU and over ride the price to whatever their average CD sells for.
If an employee found it and didn’t recognize it they would also attempt to look it up (unsuccessfully) in the system and end up putting a generic SKU or UPC sticker on it so it could be returned to the shelf and sold as a miscellaneous item.
Or they may just discard it completely.
That wiki page mentions Federal anti-tampering laws. But is it against the law (federally or in any states) to simply put an unauthorized item on the shelf, or to buy and item and return it to the shelf (untampered)?
Perhaps if enough people did stuff like this, they’d pass a law against it. The Dyslexic Shoplifting Act of 2020. Seriously, I’ve thought of doing this with books. Sneak a book on the shelf in the proper place, then ostentatiously pocket it. Just a thought.
Is it wrong that I’ve done this with art galleries? Like prop a tiny sketch behind a door or on a windowsill… I’ve been in some classy venues, man.
I admit I once took a empty frame and put on a fire extinguisher…
I always wonder if people thought it was some sort of Modern art?
There’s an artist in LA, by the name “Obvious Plant”, who’s made a career out of planting fake products on store shelves - mostly blatant knockoffs with names like “Kind of the Hill” or a doll of “NyQuil Jornan of the Choncago Balls”, and showing them off on Facebook. He hasn’t had any legal troubles that I know of, and even had a legitimate exhibition of his work last year.
The Tylenol scare made it illegal to put returned food and medical items back on the shelves. If a food product even looks tampered with, the store I work at has to throw it out (or put it in the break room, eat at your own risk).
If someone brought an item to my register with no bar code, I’d ask the manager if it was from here and what is the price? If it’s not in our inventory, it would not be sold. The manager would probably tell the customer they could just take it, or just throw it away.
I’m not sure about non-edible stuff, but that wouldn’t break any food code that I know of. Federal food code states that you can’t put food back on the shelf unless it’s in an unopened package. So, you can return a can of soup and they can put it back on the shelf, but (technically) they can’t put something from the deli back out for sale.
I don’t know how prevalent this still is, but the Mary Kay/Avon people used to leave little bags of samples (with their contact info) around our store. And not just in a ‘can I leave a few of these at the register’ way, like, I’d find them hidden on the shelves or hanging on racks. Clearly meant for customers to find before employees would spot them. The majority of the time I just threw them out, but once in a while I’d get annoyed enough to call them and tell them to knock it off.
If they pushed back and defended their practice, I’d explain that I spent a lot of time and money to get customers in my door and ask them if they’d be okay if I stood in their house and handed out pamphlets for my business while they’re meeting with customers.
I don’t know that they’d be breaking any laws, at least not without hiring lawyers and filing civil suits, but as I said in the beginning of the thread, if was an ongoing problem, I could certainly report them to the police and have them trespassed.
A somewhat related question: has anyone ever been arrested for hiding books they don’t like in a bookstore?
Recently an Idaho library was the target of somebody who was peeved that they offered anti-Trump books, so (s)he hid them in out-of-the-way places in the library and bragged about it.
A trespassing charge was threatened if library workers ever spotted the offender, but I’m not sure how that one would stick. Maybe they need to pass an anti-dickhead statute in Coeur d’Alene. :dubious:
Assuming we’re not talking about protected classes, you can trespass someone for any reason at all. I’ve had a number of people trespassed from my store over the years. I really don’t even need a reason for it. The cops show up, they ask if the person is still welcome, I say no, and they remove them from the property with the explanation that if they come back, they’ll be arrested.
I think a lot of people don’t understand that a business is private property and if I don’t want someone on my property, they have no legal right to remain on it.
One of the books hidden was the Colbert-published Whose Boat is this Boat? so he sent them a 4x3-foot unhideble copy.
I know someone who used to put religious tracts inside beer cases!
Re: shifting library books.
Years ago I noticed at our library misshelved books. It was clear that someone with a common religious bent was deliberately trying to obscure books that presented alternate views.
I asked a librarian about it and she said just to put any I find on the carts to be reshelved properly. Haven’t noticed anything like that lately.
(And a big shout out to Anne B. if she’s listening. Not that this is the whole reason for this post or anything.)
It may be theft of services. That shelf space cost money and is a limited resource and the owner uses it and the business he established to sell his stuff to people as he sees fit. You put your stuff there, and even though you won’t make any money, you may gain listeners, to which you have deprived the shop owner of charging you for that service and to sell his wares in that spot. As such you are stealing advertising/display space.
Placing foodstuffs on a shelf would get attention very quickly, due to various poisoning episodes over the years. Expect some very pointed questions.
My brother once used wax, paperclips, ink, and a hard-boiled egg to make an amazing “Easter” egg that looked like a tiny dragon was clawing its way out of the egg. He took it to the grocery store and hid it in a carton of eggs.
It probably broke the law, but he never regretted it.
I’ll have to admit that when browsing bookstores, I used to move von Daniken and similar books out of the science section and into the section with Astrology.
Nice one!
I have read the story of an author, traveling the country for his book tour, would go in every book store he found and ask for his book, and place an order for it (probably under an assumed name). Of course, he never returned for it, but his book would be at the store. I’m sure more than one author has done this.
Then there was the book author, again flying the country for his book tour of his new book about the economy or stock market or the like, would never see his book at the airport stores. Until he realized (or someone explained to him) that the title, “THE CRASH”, would not do well at airport stores.