Rights Violation or a Complete Jerk?

[Chesspiece_face]

How is asking to see a recipt any diffrent from a train conductor asking to see a ticket? And refusing to show something simple as a recipt is quite suspicous.

If they were deliberately targeting him then maybe that is a diffrent story.

As far as i'm concerned the issue with asking for a reciept isn't really what is in contention here. The problem is that the act of asking for the receipt is a psychological deterant for shoplifting, the idea is that you will end up stopping more people from attempting to shoplift than you actually catch with erroneous receipts. What this guy has an issue with is that the proccess of checking these receipts creates an atmosphere in which the honest customers are the ones who end up on the recieving end of the suspicion not the shoplifters (like i previously mentioned the policy is designed to stop shoplifting before it even gets to the point of the reciept check, leaving 99% of the people who are being targeted as loyal customers).

An additional issue here is that the policy, in the end, lacks any teeth. It is only a psychological deterant. When any issue of contention over the check arises, as we can see in this example, the policy falls to pieces. Comparisons to airport security in this case (as have been made by previous posters) are not accurate. Failure to comply with an airport check has well defined and carefully crafted consequences. In the case of the reciept check there are no such understood consequences. What options does the circuit city employee have in this case? And which option is the appropriate one from a business standpoint?

Firstly, if they actually felt this individual was a theft risk they should have detained him immediately and called the police (which in his blog he stated he was willing to wait for the authorities if they thought he had shoplifted). What's the worst that could happen? The police show up and he shows that he hasn't shoplifted anything. The problem with this, and why this action was not taken, is that the employees are not trained to actually deal with any loss prevention. These people standing at the podium are not specially trained. they are assinged that position because they look more imposing than any of the other employees there that day, or because they have more seniority/experience. Again: No Teeth.

Secondly, the "security" employee could have just let the guy walk out the door after being rebuked. If the case was as this guy writes and he bought a Wii game for his sister, than he was walking out the door with a bag the size of a DVD. The employee could have walked over to the register after the guy left, checked the copy of the reciept they have on file (which all the stores keep.) and then if things were suspicious alerted his manager and they could have called the police with their evidence and the stores video files. As far as i'm concerened, this particular action wasn't taken because many of these "security" employees get a hard-on for their AuthoriTAH! and just can't stand to let someone past with the last laugh.

In the end the policy just leads to bad business. These reciept checks are a "soft" loss policy which these stores use because they don't want to spend the money to hire or create any more in-depth loss prevention. This creates a bad situation where these employees get a big head over power which they don't actually have and the end result is that instances like this get blown wildly out of preportion. The guy wasn't even detained because he was suspected of shoplifting, he was detained because he refused to comply with their search. "Respect my AUTHORI-TAH!" indeed.

If these stores decide to continue to use these reciept checks the employees should be fully trained in how to handle non-compliance. There should be no gray area of what actions they should take. If the store decides that it is best to wait and alert a manager than they need to accept the fact that detention of the suspect is probably out of the question. If you detain everyone who leaves the store without showing a proper reciept, however, you probably won't end up looking very good to your customers. The best course for business is probably to just monitor what the individual is leaving with and then check the store's copy of the reciept. This would keep as little of the effects as possible off your legit/paying customers while still maintaining the "soft" psychological deterant.

Other ways to deter shoplifting which doesn't involve putting undue pressure on your customers would be issues like store layout/design. A well designed store can end up deterring more shoplifters than anything.

Edit: And if Circuit City was in any way truly interested in quality customer service or loss prevention they probably wouldn't go out and fire all their well paid workers so they could replace them with minimum wagers.