This was something that happened back when I was in my early college student days, or possibly in my last days of high school.
My friend “M” and I had gone to a Good Friday evening church activity (back in the days when I used to go to such things) that was like a scavenger hunt. We had a few members on our team, and the only task I remember doing was the one I’m about to describe.
We took off in a car to a Winchell’s donut shop. The task called for us to get a photo of someone on our team begging an employee for a donut. Sounds simple, right? Riiiiiiight.
Immediately, we got into an argument with the manager/owner (?). She was absolutely dead-set against our taking this photo. Maybe she thought we were trying to case the place; I don’t know. The argument went on and we were losing time in this timed game.
The one thing that stands out vividly in my mind and M’s is the woman saying angrily, with the following accent: “Eet eez against thee law of Winchell’s!” (What this law was, I have no idea to this day.)
“M” finally got fed up and snapped a photo of the owner and another team member arguing. That’s all he got: an argument–no donut in the shot.
The owner tried to make us feel bad about it. “To think that you would do this–on THIS night!” she said.
Fast-forward, back to the church. Everyone on the other competing teams had snapped Polaroids of people in various donut shops begging for donuts, with the employees obviously having cooperated. People on their knees begging, people leaning on counters begging. Apparently, the mysterious law" did not seem to be in effect anywhere except at the shop my team had gone to.
I recently asked M via email if he remembered “eet eez against the law…” now, 25 years later. His reply: “I think of that every time I walk into a Winchell’s.”
The donut shop is still there, right where we left it. But it has a different name now.
So, how bad do you think we were? We broke The Law of Winchell’s on Good Friday night.
There used to be at least one Winchell’s in AZ. The location in Mesa was reopened under new ownership as a Vinchell’s (they just chopped half the W off the sign), and then under legal threats from the orginal chain -they replaced the 'i" with an 'e" (of a different size and font) to become Venchell’s. The place looks pretty cruddy and you have to figure if they can’t afford to change the sign -they gotta be cutting corners on the donuts.
There’s another one like that near downtown Phoenix, across from the fairgrounds, I think.
It’s a Wishell’s, now. No-‘n’ changed the sign. I guess it just happened that way. The donuts were decent, and the east european accents made me feel better about my poor dental condition.
It may not have been a law, but it could have been a policy of the store. I know that I was chastised once for photographing a stuffed caribou once at Caribou Coffee. Apparently, it was the chain’s policy not to allow photography in the store. The manager was unable to bend the rules because it wasn’t something she had control over. She said I could have contacted the corporate headquarters to get permission, but I really didn’t care that much. I just thought it was an interesting stuffed caribou. If Winchell’s is a chain, could it have been a similar thing?
It’s not uncommon for retail chains to forbid photography inside the store, actually. Most aren’t as rabid as to claim “it’s the law”… but such a policy has been in place in every single retail store I’ve worked in over the years.
The idea behind the policy is that photos could be used for the equivalent of industrial espionage - a competitor duplicating their designs, signage, merchandising displays, fixtures and/or store layout. Considering some of these companies work very hard to establish a unique “look and feel” and often spend big bucks creating store concepts, they’re willing to piss off a few church groups if it means protecting the sanctity of their branding.
…and in case anyone thinks of this as unjustified paranoia, I can also confirm that one friend who worked in marketing for a major multi-national corporation has been known to sneak photos of competitors’ displays using a camera phone whilst pretending to send a text message.
I was part of a sound scavenger hunt for a church activity once–they gave everyone tape recorders and a list of sounds to collect. One of them was “the theft alarm at the library, or at a video rental place.” We went to the campus library first and their alarm wasn’t working. Then we stopped by a nearby video rental, but they didn’t have an alarm, so we got the lady behind the counter to say, “Hey, don’t take that video!” I think we got partial credit for it.