A family shopping for appliances were locked inside a Sears store in Maplewood, MN, says the local Fox affiliate. Anthony (who was scheduled to have hip surgery the next day), his wife Kathy and her sister Crystal were just about to buy a stove, a fridge and a dishwasher when they heard an announcement that the store was about to close. They asked an employee if they should just come back another day. He said no.
Fox Twin Cities says:
They asked the clerk if they should they come back the next day, he said no, they made the purchase, and headed for the exit.
They looked around and saw no one. Anthony, already in pain, went upstairs looking for the clerk.
They tried calling out from a store phone, while Anthony tried Sears on his cell phone, but then the lights went out.
Finally, they reached Maplewood police…
Eventually police arrived and sorted everything out.
Police checked the Brown family’s IDs and receipts, and the Sears representative eventually let them out.
Hey, it’s too bad Anthony was scheduled to have hip surgery the next morning — it might have been fun to spend the night inside a Sears.
Customers Accidentally Locked in Maplewood Sears After Hours [MyFox Twin Cities]
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@downwithmonstercable: That’s the one, thanks!
They’re lucky..they actually got to shop in peace without the usual compliment of sleazy salesmen in tow.
Ha, this is not the first time this has happened. I used to work for Sears at store 2180 (Traverse City, MI). It happened at least twice when I was employed there…
Sears is screwed up. I recently bought some clothing items from them. I had a $15 VISA gift card. I asked the cashier to use that and charge the remaining balance to my AMEX. She refused saying that the gift cards do not work in their system. She even swiped the card to prove that it did not work.
They also had a discount sale if I used my Sears MasterCard. I wasn’t carrying the cards with me. I asked the cashier to look up the card and she told me that all I had was Sears store card which was not eligible for discount. Never gave me the discount. I am never ever going to Sears again. They do not have much anyways.
@arungupta: Gift cards screw up due to the card refusing to work for amounts over the value of the card. Most clerks don’t have a clue about this problem. There should be a way to pay just the gift card amount and then the balance, but again, most clerks are clueless per how to even handle mixed transactions of credit and cash.
The trick is to pay for all but the gift card amount and then have the clerk run the gift card.
This problem also limits your use of the gift card to items costing less than the balance. My wife and I have a couple of card we need to flush out by using the grocery store self-serve line to buy the smallest packs of gum…
There was this guy who lived in IKEA for a week. Same guy who went to 171 Starbukses in 24 hours.
[www.marklivesinikea.com]
Ive been in this particular Sears store many times… Given the ‘assistance’ Ive received there, this really doesnt surprise me one bit..
Maplewood seems to be turning into a meth-neighborhood… Maybe the sales associate was in a hurry to get his next fix?
She was trying to get rid of Anthony because
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she liked Ken more.
Any one remember the TV movie “On the Right Track” with Garry Coleman, circa 1981? He played this homless kid that lived INSIDE a few connected rentable storage lockers in Chicago’s Union Staion.
@biswalt: 3 hours? Wow. We were usually out of my store 25-30 minutes after the closing time on the door, including doing “recovery” (making everything look nice).
Another larger store I worked at, (that sponsors a certain big parade this time of year), all the associates made a bee-line for the employee exit the moment the clock struck 9:30 (we were required to stay until then, but we just sat on the counter and goofed around for that half hour).
@aaron8301:
Viola!
I’ve worked for Sears on commission in appliances, and these things do happen when we are trying to finish a sale. Partly to blame is Sears policy that sales staff can’t get a returning customer unless the customer asks for him/her. I’ve lost several high $ sales because of this policy. Also, partly the reps fault for not being more responsible for the customer who just added to his paycheck. Two of my personal stories: I made a big sale off of a tractor (not my sales department) because a customer was stuck at closing time and all of the lawn and garden sales people had left. Also, I had a customer call near closing to say they were on their way to buy something. I waited, and the customer showed up outside the door after everything was closed and locked. We ended up doing the sale by the customer sliding everything through the crack in the door. I was both responsible to the customer and thankful for the addition to my paycheck.
I don’t know why the salesperson left, but when I worked there the second the closing announcement was made, we were gone. The reason being that if we actually told customers we were closed, they would get pissed and ask to be rung up after we closed the registers and we weren’t staying. I know Sears has gotten worse but we did that because if we didn’t we wouldn’t leave until 10:00 PM.
I’m guessing because of the hip surgery it took them 15 minutes to leave? I say this because the higher up personnel are usually there at least 15-30 minutes after the closing announcement.
Someone asked why didn’t their movement in the store set off alarms. Almost all retail stores don’t have motion sensing alarms, just perimeter alarms. Open the door, the alarm goes off; but move around in the store and you are OK. This is because in a large department store there are to many things (rodents, balloons, stacks of items falling over) that can happen in the middle of the night to trip a false alarm.
The Sears near where I live is like this. You can run around inside the store all night long and not trigger any alarms. Yet the moment you open that door you have 20 seconds to enter the code to disarm the system.
It’s a trap!
/ackbar
Sounds like a miscommunication took place. I’m not sure how the clerk couldn’t have anticipated a problem with them exiting the store. But, maybe his mind was elsewhere. I think they’ll be laughing about this one at holiday gatherings.
Its like this, Americans have no manners, they as customers are high maintenance, they don’t take no for an answer and so probably they had been asked to leave but since Americans don’t listen, (they just talk real loud about themselves only) they probably didn’t hear or see the clerk begging them to leave at closing !
It is also a keen illustration of the decline and fall of the American dollar by comparison to their obnoxious manners !
This would not have happened if this Sears followed company policy! I work at a Sears in Indiana, and what SHOULD happen is that if a customer is looking to buy something and the store is closing, the sales associate HAS to call up to the guest services desk and let them know. The store stays open, the customers are allowed to purchase their items, and the store doesn’t close until the customers are gone. It shouldn’t have happened, and it looks badly on the rest of us.
@LucilleIshamael:
…”it looks badly on the rest of us”…
Thanks for the company info but me thinks that this is the least of Sear’s problems there, LucilleIshamael…
i think there is a huge piece of this story missing – as in self check or cashier?