People that rip off stores cost ME money in higher prices.
I’ll stop and show them my reciept, because it’s a pretty minor inconvenience all things considered.
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to just carry an empty Wal Mart bag into the store with you, load it up, and walk out (no, not me). A variation is to check out a small purchase back at the electronics desk and slide something else into your bag on the way to the front. Having somebody check receipts at the door at least puts some risk into these activities. The normal people who pay for everything at the checkout aren’t the one’s they are worried about.
As for K Mart. Fuck them. I had a guy follow me out of a K Mart once, “Sir, do you have some unfinished business with K Mart?”. No, I didn’t buy anything. I offered to let him search me, I was wearing cut offs and a Tee shirt. Nope, wanted me to follow him back in the store. So I pulled my shirt up, turned my pockets inside out and told him to fuck off. So he tries to follow me to my car to get my license plate number. No, pal, you aren’t taking my tag number down. He left me alone and I never went back to that store.
No, it simply means that their track record is astonishingly good, and in weighing unsupported assertions I am inclined to give their business decisions the presumption of of correctness, since they have shown they know how to run a business.
As a general principle… yes. I am willing to allow that there are exceptions to the general rule, but as a general principle, making money for your stockholders, and outselling your competition, are indicia of good business practices.
Well, for one thing, you can’t walk out of Wal-Mart without going past a cashier; or, to be more precise, all legitimate transactions wil exit from the cashier area. I have no objection to security stopping someone who is attemping to walk out the front door with a load of stuff in her cart. Not quite the same thing as exiting from the cashier area with stuff in a bag.
Maybe I live in a high-crime area, but almost all the stores I go to that are not supermarkets or in a Mall do this. If I may list some where I have seen this: Home Depot, Best Buy, 6th Ave Electronics, CompUSA, Burlington Coat Factory and Staples. (Staples made a half-hearted attempt, but the highschool kid checking really wasn’t into it)
Personally (and I’m not telling anyone else what to do), I just hold up my reciept from the time I get my change until the time I get to the door to the parking lot. I do this because I feel it says that I have nothing to hide and they appreciate it. I don’t feel that this is really an affront to my civil liberties. Now, if they make me hold up my pants with one hand and walk around in my socks saying “Excuse me…Excuse me! May I please have my belt and my shoes back now …!?” just to do business with them, I might be a bit more annoyed.
We have covered this pretty thoroughly in other threads:
Store security is trained to a specific set of circumstances, if all of those are fullfilled, make the bust, if not they may give you a little attitude but probably won’t do anything about it.
If you were witnessed committing a crime holding you for the police is not kidnapping. Remember, store security legally holds powers the police only dream of because they are an extension of the interests of the owner or management of the property they operate on. In some respects its little different from a homeowner detaining a burglar.
Different states vary on their criteria for detaining suspects by citizens but screaming kidnapping as a defense for shoplifters or other petty criminals is not going to win any points with the police, especially if you already have any prior record of such offenses.
Store security types will get more than a sufficent ration of shit from the police if they are calling them out for bullshit busts. Since the last thing they want is a poor relationship with the local police, they don’t call for stupid little shit.
Getting a huge attitude with store security can get you completely and legitimately banned from the store, coming in after that can get you detained and cited for trespass which will stick and then depending on your situation could make your life very inconvenient for years to come.
How is this pertinent to the topic at hand? The OP is complaining about being searched for no other reason than he was leaving the store with a bag in his hand.
No one is complaining about a search conducted under just cause. Those of us who complain are questioning the justification. No bells. No whistles. No beeps.
OK?
If you are buying a few big price items ie TV & DVD i can see where a receipt check would be nice & quick, but usually when i’m leaving Walmart (The UK version) I have 5 - 6 carriers of assorted groceries. Do they check off each individual item? Im guessing not as that wouldn’t be practical. Is it only the non grocery items that get checked?
In the local Wal Mart, it is very easy to exit the store without going past any cashiers. There are wide isles on either end of the row of cashiers stations where you can walk right out. You need these so that people who are just browsing don’t have to go through a checkout line, people who have checked out in other areas of the store such as electronics or sporting goods can exit without having to go through another line, etc. I imagine these are the paths any would-be shop lifters would take.
From Bobotheoptimist:
Bolding mine.
Per a buddy of mine who worked electronics at walmart a few years back, its more about sweethearting and UPC pirating than anything else. They could usually care less about most of it, they are looking for 1 high ticket item, a box that matches it, and a unmarked new looking receipt.
IIRC many big box stores lose as much to employee related theft as shoplifting if not more. Having employees checking other employees makes it more difficult by including more people in the process and making it less likely that everyone will play along. Failure to scan items or having a few non standard upc’s for an expected friend can send hundreds of dollars in unpaid or underpaid merchandise out the door. Deterring a couple of those a week alone could make a door checker worth having, even if they only bust one every few months.
Sometimes all you need is an example, if a cashier and an customer get together on something like this and get busted, the cashier is going to be fired without a second thought and others will end up hearing about it. That threat will deter many exept for the really smart who plan better, and the really stupid who think nobodys looking.
You are stil alking about the cashier area. Anyone walking past the cashiers with a cart full of unbagged items is suspicious, and should be stopped. If I walk out with properly bagged items the better be prepared to accuse me of shoplifting.
If that is the case it is doubly odious. Wal-Mart is essentially saying that they do not trust their employees and the customer must suffer as a result.
No. Because you evidently didn’t read the quotes that I helpfully included in my reply post.
Here, let’s run them again. Look closely this time:
Oops. My bad. Although I do not see how the quote from catsix applies. Her premise was that the detention was unlawful.
My major point still stands. Anyone requesting to search my possessions needs to have more of a reason than simply that I am in possession of them.
As I pointed out earlier in the thread, you can walk into Wal Mart with an empty bag in your pocket, fill it up and walk out. You look just like somebody who has checked out in electronics and paid for their purchase. Which I also mentioned- you can buy a $2 item in electronics (or sporting goods), get a bag and a receipt, and add something else to your bag on the way out. In either of these scenarios, you look identical to someone who has made a purchase and paid in full for every item in the bag. If there was no random checks on the way out, there would be little to dissuade crooks from doing this more often.
The only way you would have stopped us from making note of a vehicle description and plate number would be to assault a security officer, creating a far greater crime than you were accused of and most definitely getting you arrested.
Your licence plate number is not by any stretch of anyones imagination private information. If they want to write it down, short of committing a crime yourself, you cant stop them nor will any law enforcement authority back your POV.
Hell we would do it SOP for us, any many people get even more belligerent and obnoxious when they saw one of us start taking a vehicle description and plate number. In one instance, the ejected individual in an attempt to assert his manhood, smoked his tires and went roaring through the parking lot. He clipped another car doing some trivial cosmetic damage to both his car and another customers. We called it in as a hit and run, police picked him up a couple miles away.
I see no problem with the concept of voting with your wallet, you don’t like that stores policies, don’t go there, they won’t miss you.
I see Bricker has been kind enough to give a legal cite…should read whole thread first.
In a hefty percentage of those scenarios, the customer is just as involved if not more so than the employee.
She did, yes. But the first part of her sentence, read with the second part, and in context with the post she was replying to, suggests that the mere buzzing of an alarm is not enough to be “damned sure that you’re shoplifting” and that detention just because a buzzer went off would be unlawful.
In other words, I think her CONCLUSION was that detention was unlawful, not her premise.
Somehow, driving along after I offered to let the guy search me, having commited no crime, and being pulled over by the police for theft didn’t sound like a lot of fun to me at the time.