You know, in my life I have been fortunate enough to witness stupidity that really makes me think. Just today I was in Thrifty’s buying some lunch supplies, and while I was paying for my groceries, a scruffy looking gentleman walks out. As he goes through the security device, it beeps, and I realized that he had a large backpack on. He heard the beep, and he kept walking. Someone behid the counter called out “sir. can you come back sir”. The guy kept walking right out the front door.
The security device detectors are pretty much pointless to someone who is intent on stealing from the store. In almost all cases, the checkout counter is a good ten feet away (not talking just Thrifty’s here), so someone who is stealing can walk through it, and get out of the building before any staff member can really do anything about it.
In the case of Thrifty’s the guy walked out the front door, then sprinted away. A couple of Thrifty’s staff members chased after him, but he was gone, gone, gone.
Another time a few months ago I was in Sport Chek in the Bay Centre. I was browsing for some pants, and stumbled across a guy stuffing a shirt up his shirt. He knew he had been caught, and pretended to look at the shirt. He was acting very nervous and jittery. I walked away, pretending not to see anything, then went to find a staff member. In a flash the guy had disappeared, and before I could find someone, I heard the detector at the front of the store go off. What did the staff do? Nothing. They didn’t even notice that it had gone off. In a previous visit, after buying some shoes from them, when I walked out, the detector went off. I turned around, went back to the counter, and got the checout girl to deactivate their security device. Dude stealing a shirt gets away unpunished, yet me, the paying customer gets held up.
Their security system punishes their customers, but does NOTHING to stop or slow down people intent on stealing items.
Another time I walked out of the Bay in Mayfair mall, and again the clerk had forgotten to deactivate the tag. Their sensor went off, but I was already out in the mall. I turned around to go back in and realized that no staff member was even looking in my direction. Why bother wasting my time to go back into the store. I kept walking.
The rant is almost over I promise. One more quick little snippet.
While standing in line at Future Shop one day, someone who had just purchased a couple CDs was walking out of the store talking to a friend. Their security sensor went off, but the guy didn’t notice since he was talking to his friend. One of the clerks called out to him asking him to come back into the store, but he kept walking since he didn’t hear anything. The clerk never went after him, and she kind of just shrugged her shoulders. Good security system.
It all boils down to companies punishing their customers who follow the rules, yet are actualy innefective when it comes to punishing/thwarting those trying to circumvent paying.
I could go on and tie this in to copy controlled cds too. I can’t though. I have to go pick up Sue, then go watch the Canucks. Maybe more later though/