I was at Wal-Mart earlier today and picked out a few goldfish for a 35 gallon aquarium I’ve got. After paying, the checkout girl told me to be sure and hold the fish above the anti-theft panels as I left the store. You know, those things they have on either side of the door which sound an alarm if you pass through with something you shouldn’t?
According to her, it will kill the fish, or at least harm them. “Fry their brains” or something. I thought the girl might have been joshing me, but the little old lady “say goodbye-er” reminded me again to hold the bag above the anti-theft system while leaving.
Were they playing with me? Will those anti-theft devices really kill or harm fish? If so, how? And why doesn’t it fry my brain?
Wow. Imagine the fun you could have with these people! I would love to see the look on their faces if you were to threaten swinging the bag of fish near the alarms. “Don’t make me do it!”
It occurs to me that if the anti-theft gate were really capable of frying a fish brain, it would also be capable of harming some humans, e.g. giving an old person a stroke.
If that were the case, nobody would use the things for fear of lawsuits when granny has a stroke after coming home from Walmart. Since the gates are in wide use, I infer that they are probably safe for fish.
And maybe the customers aren’t the target. A better source of amusement would be telling this to the little-old-lady greeter, because then it’s funny over and over and over again; customers are all one-shot gags, without much payoff, but if the target is the elderly greeter, the repetition of foolishness could increase the (ostensible) hilarity. Many cynically snarky teenagers would happily cope with boredom by secretly mocking the helpfulness of a technologically ignorant grayhair.
I thought of this. It’s hilarious they got me to hold the bag up and over the security system, but I suspect there’s a bored kid working there who thinks it’s even more hilarious he’s got half the employees believing this, and repeating it to customers.
My guess is some serious sounding dude returned some dead fish there claiming knoweldge of the techology and citing that as the reason, and now the employees think its fact.
Well if RFID systems harm fish brains, I certainly plan on filing a lawsuit against the FCC for endangering my own brain with all these damn radio waves floating around the air! I knew they were a menace! Invisible floating song waves == the devil!!
Holding it over the gates doesn’t do much good. The keys for various departments at our store have those ridiculous gator tags (think the old rectangle ink tags) on them, and if we walk out of the store to go to break or something with them in our pocket then DING we’ve stolen something. :smack:
There is a way to get them to not go off, but I don’t know if board rules would allow me to mention it. And you wouldn’t want to do it with fishies anyway.
Actually, holding them over the gates would prevent the alarm from going off, but think how silly a thief would look trying to nonchalantly hold their stolen goods over their head.
