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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Horror movie based on this in 3.. 2…
@rdm:
The only horror would have been the SCARY prices they would have paid elsewhere, had Sears not SLASHED their already everyday low pri… yeah ok I’m not doing their commercials for them.
Has Sears become so desperate that they have to trap people in order to stop them from shopping elsewhere?
@rdm: It was a 1991 teen comedy (co-starring a 19- or 20-year-old Jennifer Connelly, yum).
@uncooperative: I was thinking more along the lines of a horror movie because, well, we’re talking about Sears.
@howie_in_az: Bingo
@rdm: Horror movie? I say, quirky comedy!
@rdm: Didn’t they already make a movie something like this with Natalie Portman?
Oh, wait, my bad, that was a Wal-Mart and she lived in it. Oops.
Why didn’t the commissioned sales clerk escort them to the exit?
@spazztastic: lol, because they were shopping at Sears…
@spazztastic: Because he had already made his sale and disavowed all knowledge of the customer.
@spazztastic: He was already halfway to the nearest drinking establishment, basking in the glow of Sears’ only sale in the past 4 months.
@spazztastic:
Exactly my thought.
First of all, if the customer remained in the store after hours the employee was required to notify management (who could monitor the customer’s departure).
Secondly, the employee knew the customer’s were locked in and would assistance to depart.
It is time to blame the employee on this one.
I’ve always had a weird fantasy about living inside a mall.
@downwithmonstercable:
Dawn on the Dead style?
True Story. My wife when she was a kid, stayed a few nights inside a Montgomery Ward riding out a hurricane. she said that they played hide and seek in the entire store and ate all of the cafeteria food up. Sounds like a blast for a 8 yo..
@everclear75: Anyone remember the cute teen film from 1984(?) called NIGHT OF THE COMET? The first thing the girls do after the comet hits is hit the mall!
@syndprod: The “cute teen film” about the people turning into crazed killers and nightmares about homicidal zombie cops?
@syndprod:
OMG I remember that! I loved that movie!
@syndprod: One of my favorite, early 80′s films… The music was horrible, the acting hilted and teh special effects like an episode of teh A-Team, but it was pure gold for the level 80′s cheese it oozed. It actually just came out on DVD a year or two ago.
@syndprod: The fact that someone else out there remembers NIGHT OF THE COMET just made my day.
@everclear75: Yeah! Just like Dawn of the Dead, minus the flesh eating zombies.
@downwithmonstercable: Not this mall, Maplewood Mall is rather… downtrodden.
@ionerox: Any mall with a Sears in it is downtrodden by definition.
@downwithmonstercable: There was a story about some guy that lived in the parking lot of a shopping mall, unnoticed, for months.
@howie_in_az: I think I read a similar story. A guy and his girlfriend shacked up in a maintenance room that was used during the mall’s construction, but was later abandoned. They made an entire apartment inside with stuff they purchased at the mall. I think they lived there off and on for three or four years and blogged about it later. Pretty crazy.
@downwithmonstercable: this is probably what you’re thinking of: [trummerkind.com]
@downwithmonstercable: As Homer would say, for a day or a week, there’s no better place to stay than the mall.
Just watch out for the mountain lion the cops will release in an attempt to catch the giant rat they think is living in the Mall.
@downwithmonstercable: On the NBC cop show Life 2 weeks ago, in a show titled Black Friday, part of the episode revolved around an underage boy and his younger sister living in the backroom of a mall after their parents died because no foster home would take both of them together. The kids aunt is eventually found and they go with her at the end.
@downwithmonstercable:
Me too. You could basically have whatever food or electronic thing you could ever want.
Salesman: “Someone’s actually buying our appliances! What should I do?”
Manager: “Lock the store down until we can get video proof. I need to send this to corporate!”
@The Name’s Ash78, Housewares:
Hehe. Nice.
@The Name’s Ash78, Housewares: It would be funnier if it were true, but tons of people buy appliances from Sears.
When I worked at Best Buy in college, I offered my Grandmother my employee discount to buy a washer and dryer. She insisted on paying hundreds more to buy the EXACT SAME washer and dryer at Sears, because “Sears appliances are better”.
Sears is still riding the wave of a huge generation of loyal customers…unfortunately, they’re dying off, literally.
@InfiniTrent: I thought Sears was all privately branded (Kenmore) so you couldn’t comparison shop for the exact same thing. That was common with other stores when I used to sell furniture in college.
@acarr260: Nah… they’ve been a full spectrum appliance retailer since the introduction of “Brand Central” years ago. When I was there we had Maytag, Whirlpool, GE… all of the bigger brands.
@acarr260: Sears has privately branded appliances, but they sell the major brands too, so it’s entirely possible to buy the same thing at Sears or Best Buy.
I think they stopped being brand exclusive in the 70′s-80′s. I think the furniture stores manage to get away with it since outside of La-Z-Boy there’s not really a whole lot of brand recognition. Sears appliances would have a harder time maintaining that when Whirlpool, GE, Frigidaire, Maytag, etc. are fairly well-recognized.
@acarr260: Kenmore=Whirlpool – Whirlpool Warranty
@The Name’s Ash78, Housewares:
Yeah, we bought a dishwasher there once. We wanted to put it in the truck and take it home, but the store assured us of free next-day delivery.
…Nope. They could only deliver during a few hours the next week. We’d have to take a day off work to wait. Went around on the phone with several increasingly unhelpful people, including the regional manager.
Did a charge-back on that purchase in one hell of a hurry, and will NEVER shop at Sears again.
Now the police are in the receipt checking business.
@itsallme: I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed this. They were locked up against their will and the police checked their receipts before letting them out? Absolutely not.
The police come to check on people whom they have never met and say they were locked in the store. To me it sounds reasonable to check their ID and receipts if they had packages to verify the legality of them being in a store that is locked up and closed. How often is someone locked in a store-not often at all. What other means could they use to verify them?
@ManiacDan: to be fair, they could’ve been thieves who were trying to take some appliances. If I were the cops and found someone in a locked store, that would be my first thought. Granted, they had their kids with them…
@Coles_Law: hey, even thieves can’t afford childcare now
@Coles_Law:
Theives usually don’t call to be let out..
@dottat1: You’d be surprised… Anyway, if the cops didn’t at least check, why wouldn’t theives call to be let out?
@West Coast Secessionist:
Just what I thought when I saw the thread.
Imagine a world where stealing was as easy as hiding until the store was closed, bagging up a bunch of merchandise, and then calling the police to say you were ‘locked in’!
Obviously wasn’t the case here, but that’s PRECISELY why they chedked the receipts.
With the right Craftsman tools, it might have been possible to do his hip surgery in the store.
@MyPetFly: Or at least cut a hole in a door.
@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★:
And drive away in YOUR BRAND NEW RIDING MOWERRR!!! COME ON DOWNNN!!!
@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★: Cut? That’s for amateurs. GET THE SLEDGE!
@MyPetFly: Niice one, first chuckle of the day haha
@MyPetFly: Bah! MacGuyver could do it with a broken toothpick, a foil gum wrapper, and some baking soda.
What is this the insta-close mall? I’ve never been in a store that announces the store is closing and then REALLY closes like 2 minutes later. Weren’t there any clerks around, wtf?
@Oranges w/ Cheese: Well, if it’s anything like the Sears by me, it takes about half an hour to check out. Of course, that’s just for a simple off the counter tool, so for something as complicated as an appliance that requires delivery, I’m betting 45 minutes to an hour minimum checkout time.
Sears – seriously, get you f*&%ing act together (or sell craftsman tools somewhere else, then I guess I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if you went out of business)
@nataku83: Craftsman tools are sold on military bases (but that will only help if you know someone with Exchange shopping privileges).
10 minutes to check out, and 20 minutes for the receipt to stop printing.
You can buy most of the Craftsman line at K-Mart, but that’s not much of an improvement, is it?
@Oranges w/ Cheese:
With a bum hip, the guy probably wasn’t very mobile.
Wow, it’s a total childhood dream come true to be locked in a mall/grocery store/candy store/toy store.
@monkeytown: The adult version involves a liquor store or a sex toy shop.
@RandomHookup: Being locked in a sex toy shop would just be creepy. I could handle the liquor store though.
@samurailynn: No one said you had to be locked in alone…
It was cool for 2 minutes…
Holy crap, that’s the Sears near my house. Been there many times, though unfortunately it’s a bit of a dive. Looks like the last time it was remodeled was back in the 70s. Considering the general unhelpfulness of their staff, I’m not terribly surprised this happened.
I went to my local mall to get a lawnmower blade from Sears. I had to run to the bathroom, which was just down the hall from Sears. I saw that they were closing in 10 minutes and didn’t think anything of it. There were still salespeople and customers inside of the store. Well, when I returned to the store 2 short minutes later, the lights were off, the door was locked, and not a soul was to be seen inside. So I went to Ace Hardware to get my lawnmower blade.
@idesigner: oooh, Ace Hardware. being away from it is the worst part of moving to Los Angeles… that and traffic. all that business.
Don’t these stores have Emergency exits? Either way the cops are going to show up, so you might as well push the door.
@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★: Most emergency exits are located in back-room type areas of stores. The door didn’t have a little turn knob to unlock it. (I’d have given them a quick shout, “I’m leaving you should lock it back” and left it unlocked).
Not a horor movie….But there is already a movie like this
Career Opportunities (1991)
[www.imdb.com]
Was Jennifer Connelly in there wearing a tight wife-beater? If she was I see this as a win-win for everybody. In fact, I would have insisted on spending a few night a week locked in the big box store.
Ugg, I have how they are playing off that the guy has hip problems. It is totally irrelevant and designed only to drum up sympathy.
@SarcasticDwarf: The man’s hip surgery is probably the reason why this even made the news. If it were able-bodied persons who had nowhere special to go the next day, then I doubt this would have been considered newsworthy.
@thewriteguy: Why was a guy going in for hip surgery the next day out buying appliances anyway?
@Mr_D: Why not? He’s not an invalid, he’s just got a problem that requires surgery.
@Mr_D: He was going to have the surgery, and then declare bankruptcy to avoid the bills, so he figured he should go ahead and buy a bunch of other stuff too.
/not really
//I hope
@SarcasticDwarf: Of course they’re playing on it. It helps when they inevitably sue in the very near future. Never fail to mention something you rely on in court, you know.
@SarcasticDwarf:
people always seem to have problems like this the day before or right after some sort of surgery.
You’d think they would just chill and relax.
@SarcasticDwarf: It’s an issue because preparing for surgery requires special behavior regarding what you can and can’t eat or drink. I’m not sure Sears is a good place to spend the night under those circumstances. It also means that there was a level of urgency involved in getting out so it is therefore important for them to mention it in the story. I don’t think it was mentioned to elicit sympathy, but simply as a fact that was reported by the family. It certainly doesn’t seem to have gotten any sympathy from you.
And this is news how?
I worked at Sears for a year and I know of 2 occasions in my store alone where a customer was locked in the store. I know of more times at stores in the region where it happened too.
I don’t think this is a consumerist issue. It is just an honest mistake that happens from time to time. It isn’t just SEars, but all stores.
It happens.
It is an accident. I’m sure Sears didn’t mean to lock the family up.
@Ramza69: It’s sensationalism from the first news outlet. The guy was going to have surgery, so that all of a sudden makes it news.
I don’t mind Consumerist reporting on it though – it’s kind of a funny story, and it was interesting enough to get me and 6,000 people (at this point) to click on it.
@Ramza69: I agree. When I read the story title, I assumed the family had to bivouac overnight inside the SEARS and we’d hear all about where they found sustenance, what were the most comfortable couches and what entertainment they were able to come up with (i.e. receive cable on the television sets, swap all items in the toy department with the items in the “intimates” department, see how big a box pile they could make and surf down the escalator on something suitabley big and slidey).
@Ramza69: I used to work in a department store (not Sears) and I got locked in one night. It was pretty funny. When I tried to find a manager I set off the motion detector alarm. Called the cops and let them know what was up, they asked me what I was wearing and stuff. After a while, a manager showed up and let me go.
Boy did I feel stupid.
@West Coast Secessionist: “and let me go.” <– I mean “let me out.” They didn’t fire me. But i sure did get teased about the incident by my co-workers.
Why didn’t they use an emergency exit?
Reminds me of the joke about the family that was stuck on an escalator for hours waiting for a repair man.
@MrsLopsided:
Or how about the guy that fell down the up escalator. He kept falling and falling and falling…
This story needs to be heavily edited. It doesn’t make much sense. They were about to buy some appliances, and the store was about to close. And then the clerk locked them in? Where does the fault lie?
i agree some facts are certainly not reported and makes the whole story suspect-my hip my hip my hip … uh, i wouldn’t feel better locked in hip or not
I used to work at Sears awhile ago, and the Sears where I worked at was fitted with motion detectors, which should have picked on the movement in the store after it closed and sounded the alarm (well, I think it’s a silent alarm) which would have prompted the security company to call whatever manager was on call, forcing that manager to come down to the store to silence the alarm. At least that’s how things used to be at the store I worked at…
Also, after they made the purchase, the salesperson would have had to close down his register and take the money and checks collected throughout the day downstairs to the office. Meaning that there were employees in the store for several minuites after the trasaction was complete. What exactly was this couple doing that caused them to stay inside even longer?
@almigi:
“What exactly was this couple doing that caused them to stay inside even longer?”
@MyPetFly:
Crap… got submitted by mistake, but the joke won’t be funny now, so screw it.
@MyPetFly:
I think the joke works pretty well, just in a figure-it-out-yourself style.
As for “what they were doing”, it’s entirely possible that the transaction took a long time after the announcement (notice that when they mentioned it, they weren’t anywhere near done as they mentioned just coming back the next day). It wouldn’t surprise me if most of the employees had already left, especially considering that it’s Sears.
@Xkeeper:
Thanks for the save! I owe you one…
@Xkeeper: Even if most of the employees have left, the salesperson was still there, as well as at least one manager. After the transaction was completed, the salesperson would still have to close down his register, and the manager would have to stay.
However, the more I think about it, this is what I think happened: Because it was so late, and this couple was the last two customers in the store, all the doors except the main enterence (usually by merchandise pickup) were locked. The couple, however, had their car parked near another enterence and were trying to exit that way. When the door was locked, rather then look for help/another exit right away, they decided to wait and see if someone would notice them. Probably because the husband’s hip was bothering him and they didn’t want to wander all over the store looking for the manager/another exit.
All I know is that after the transaction was complete, the salesperson and at least one manager would have been in the store for at least a five or ten minuites to close the register and lockup the store…
@almigi:
They might have motions but, they either don’t use the system or it is broken. The alarm should not have been able to be armed in “away” mode because of the people.
@undefined: @downwithmonstercable: I swear I read a book about this when I was a kid…maybe it was about the mannequins coming to life after closing. Or was that the plot of the same book? Aggghhh…holey childhood memory
@spazztastic: You’re not imagining it. It was “Secrets of the Shopping Mall” by Richard Peck.
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Shopping-Mall-Richard-Peck/dp/0440402700/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227723264&sr=1-1
@spazztastic: There was a TV show like that! It was called “Today’s Special.”
@jurijuri: I used to love that show! Jodie, Muffy & Sam. Don’t remember the Mannequin’s name though. I remember they brought him to life with his cap and the words “Hocus Pocus Alamagocus!”
@RAEdwards: The mannequin’s name was Jeff. That used to be my favorite TV series as a kid, next to Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show. Wow, I feel old now. I was five when those shows were in their prime.
@spazztastic: My guess is you’re thinking of the 1979 book, Secrets of the Shopping Mall. Fun book back then. When I re-read the first chapter a few years ago, it wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered.
The coming to life part is also part of the plot of a Twilight Zone episode. I can’t remember if it was the older or newer one, though.
It is also tangentially part of the various Auton-based plots in Doctor Who.
Also the plot of the terrible ’80′s romantic comedy “Mannequin” in which Kim Caatrall plays a window mannequin who comes to life at night when the store closes, and a janitor or some other dude who is apparently around when this happens falls in love with her. [Shudder]
perhaps people should actually check stores before locking them up for the night? i mean who the hell ever heard of a a store clearing out of customers the second the announcement is made?
@spazztastic: you mean like the movie ?
I’m so jealous. This would be so much fun!
@Toof_75_75: To be locked in a Sears? Are you a masochist?
@thewriteguy: no, it’s possible that he could act out his fantasy of trying on all of the women’s lingerie?
@mariospants: You can watch 6 tvs at once, drive the lawn-mowers around the store, try out all the different beds. There’s so many choices.
@Toof_75_75: Why doesn’t anything [fun] like this happen to me?
When the cops asked to check their receipts, they should have said no and asked for a manager!
Am I right, guys??
should asked the cop for some identification – i hear badges and uniforms are easily available …
I used to work at a Sears, and I can see how this happened. Likely what happened is the commissioned salesperson made the sale, and sent the family to package pickup to get their appliance. After they left, he went home. Meanwhile, the minimum wage package pickup people left at 3 mins to closing, without letting anyone know or actually checking to make sure no one was waiting there.
Not saying its a good excuse, but I bet thats how it happened.
It seems like it would be pretty darn easy to go hide yourself somewhere and stay in a big box store overnight if you wanted to. If you stash yourself somewhere before it opens and pop out during store hrs you could likely leave before anyone knew you were there.
Otherwise… how is this a story? If the family doesn’t have a cellphone, the store has landlines, right? They’ll be locked in for what, an hour at most? Indoors. With bathrooms. With chairs. Big whup…
@quizmasterchris: I don’t think someone trying to get something over on the Sears Man would call the cops to get themselves out of the store. Seems to me that it would be a very small price for larceny to get let out the next day.
@quizmasterchris: 1: It’s a problem because the guy was scheduled for hip surgery the next day.
2: One hour? I wish I lived where you live. Around here, if you’re not bleeding, it’s 3 hours, minimum.
If they were purchasing the product how come they weren’t with the sales person, or somebody else? I am guessing these aren’t the sharpest tools in the Craftsmen line. I hope the police charged these idiots for the cost of sending a police car to Sears because they cant leave a store at the announced time.
chaching lawyer says wrongfull imprisionment
@frodo_35: and Sears can argue they were hiding in hopes of robbing the place and when they got caught had this story lined up for a cover.
@frodo_35: I can smell the lawsuit all the way from Canada!
A few months ago I almost got locked into an Old Navy. I was in the back of the store looking at stuff, then as i walk up up to the registers to pay, I notice it sure is empty all of a sudden. Then I see the gates were closed.
The employees were making fun of me, but the idiots never made a PA announcement. I’d much rather get stuck inside a department store with comfy beds and such, rather than a smelly Old Navy.
@DrGirlfriend: You should have just kept “Shopping” taking stuff off shelves and putting it in a cart until they ask you to leave. Then tell them to have fun putting all the crap back.
Watch your subject/verb agreement. The family WAS locked in a Sears store, not WERE. “Family” is singular!
(Noting that no blog post correcting anyone’s grammer can be made without making a grammatical error…
@pegr: Since family is a plural noun, either word is grammatically acceptable.
@DarkKnightShyamalan: Maybe in England, where they say things like “Sears Roebuck are opening a new store.” Here in America singular nouns like family take singular verbs. Families would be a plural noun, by the way.
@PhilanderCachondo: WHOOSH! did you even read the sentence that misspelled word was in??
@pegr:
And if you’re going to be like that, it’s GRAMMAR, not GRAMMER.
Idiot.
This has made me ask myself: If I had to be locked overnight in a big store, which one would I prefer? A mall doesn’t count.
My answer: IKEA
@thewriteguy: I agree. Beds, couches, swedish meatballs and hot dogs. But no TVs.
@thewriteguy: WTF kind of sick fetish do you have?
@thewriteguy: Whole Foods all the way.
@DarkKnightShyamalan: Best Buy. They have Direct TV, internet connections, and snacks by the register.
@erratapage: But I have all those things at home.
@thewriteguy: 7-11. That way I won’t actually get locked in.
@thewriteguy: AutoZone. That way I can be evil and empty all the boxes of air filters in the back, and then put the filters back in the wrong boxes. That way when Joe Honda comes in to buy a filer for his Civic, he’ll get a filter for a Ford Taurus instead!
For those that figured it out, I am trying to make a South Park reference here to the alter ego Butters created which does very minor things to people, although for the life of me I can remember his name…
@almigi: Professor Chaos?
Why were receipts checked? I highly doubt they were carrying all those items out the front door. I would also hope they returned the items after being forced to show ID and receipts to the police. You do not become a criminal because Sears locks you in the store.
@Corporate_guy: No, you self-identify as an idiot for shopping there.
(guilty myself).
My Sears has glass doors. If someone locks me in their store and leaves, they are going to have a broken door.
When I worked at Sears we had two ten year old kids try to hide in the store in the middle of a clothing rack. They had motion detectors somewhere in the store which caused the cops and a loss prevention guy and a manager to show up and find them.
The kids were hiding in the store because they said they wanted to play gamecube. Good luck with that since the power was off. It made the local news.
Bah, bush league.
When I worked for a bank some years ago we (as in the bank, I wasn’t there that day!) locked an elderly customer in the safe deposit vault on a Friday night. The vault also contained inspection cubicles for customers, she was short and no one saw her in there so everything was secured at closing. Fortunately when the cleaning crew arrived in the middle of the night, someone just happened to look up at the monitor displaying the surveillance camera output and saw her. That was a result of poor customer service and sloppy procedure that could have endangered or even ended someone’s life.
I’m not really sympathetic to Anthony’s bum hip preventing him from looking for an emergency exit. Okay, maybe a little sympathetic. However, let’s not forget that he somehow managed to make it from the parking lot, into the mall and comparison-shop for appliances all night. Where was his pain then? Or did it only show up when he talked to the reporter?
I could also go off on a lengthy tangent on how people have replaced their brains with cell phones and instead of looking for an exit the first thing they did was open up the magic talking device and scream HALP ME HALP ME but I’ll save that for a post on my own blog.
@dantsea: Dude… he was having SURGERY the next day. He was probably more worried about missing the surgery than he was about some kind of pain issue. I know that I have surgery when the doctor suggests it, not when I subjectively feel like it.
@erratapage: I know the first thing I do when I’m scheduled to have surgery to correct painful, motion-limiting physical problems is roam around a huge shopping mall!
@dantsea: AH, but perhaps he was out to do some serious shopping at Sears the night before surgery BECAUSE it would make hip surgery so much less painful by comparison.
@dantsea: I work at a bank branch–in a case like this the woman would be stuck inside until Monday morning if the time-lock is properly set.
How does a store this large close down this quickly? I’ve worked in retail stores before, and we never got out earlier than a half hour after official closing time. Normally it was an hour. Managers had to cash out registers, associates had to straighten shelves and just generally make sure the store looked good for the next day. Does Sears really just shut off the lights and send everyone home immediately?
Being locked in a Mannequin factory would be awesome, Sears not so much. Oh crap, did I just say that out loud?
Shopping while in pain? There is no one in the store but then the lights went out? They made the purcase but the store was closed? What happened to the cashier that just rang them out?
There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Hm. Anyone ever see Bad Santa? Yeah.
The Sears employees at that particular location aren’t too bright. I have a family member in very close contact with them on a daily basis. Oh, I so wish I could share the stories.
Hey I got locked inside of a Forest Lawn one night. It was pretty cool.
They got off with a warning THIS time. Next time they better use their Sears card. With its low 28.5 percent over prime rate and competitive “never lock you in the store” rewards program.
Fire exit?
Anthony, Crystal and Kathy don’t sound like the sharpest tools OR Anthony’s “hip surgury” can’t be that bad if he’s out appliance shopping.
Stores usually give plenty of notice when they’re closing, they don’t want people locked in their store for the safety of their stuff and for your safety.
You know… I’m having surgery in a couple weeks. Should I not be out appliance shopping? Hmmm….
I used to work at Sears, and I don’t know how anyone could miss the “We will be closing in fifteen minutes.” “We will be closing in ten minutes.” “We will be closing in five minutes.” “We are now closed.” People would just ignore the announcements, and those people deserve to be locked in the store.
That’s actually happened at every retail store I’ve ever worked at, and it’s always the people making major purchases that want to shop at five minutes to close. I only wish I could have left them there and gone home!
The police checked their receipts. Not one but a few. So they shopped and loaded up with merchandise from different departments and then decided to impulse buy a dishwasher, stove, and fridge on the way out. LOL.
I just watched the video and it confirmed what I suspected about why they likely didn’t use the emergency exit and set off the alarm. They were Shopping While Black. I believe it’s relevant to how they were treated when ‘help’ arrived.
My whole family got locked into the nature trail area at a museum once – in the days before cellphones. There was no posted closing time on the trail area, which was fenced in, and no kind of sign-in for it, so when we were done hiking and found the gate closed, we were stuck! My parents were getting ready to help once of us kids over the fence to go get help when an employee noticed us.
Does anyone else think this is B.S.? I mean I think I’ve been able to see an exit everytime I’m at a checkout register in Sears. Secondly, what do you mean they made the purchase headed for the exit and then no one was there? I’ve worked big retail before it takes hours to close down a store the size of Sears, I’m sure, nore than enough time for people to trickle out. Finally at the end of the article it says Police checked their receipts and a representative of the company let them out, so obviously there was still someone to represent the store in the area. this whole story just sounds off to me. It used to take my store, about the size of a Sears about 3 hours a night to shut down after the last customer left. And I can’t imagine any customer not being noticed in that period unless they went way out of their way to not be seen . . . Or the guy with the bum hip moved so slowly that clerk mistook him for a mannequin.
@biswalt:
Yeah, the whole thing doesn’t make sense. And, as Judge Judy says, “If it doesn’t make sense it’s a lie.”
Either we’re not getting the whole story or someone’s lying.
Police likely called the store rep and told him to get down to the store. I used to get calls all the time, the alarm would go off, the police would show up look around and call me to come check things out and take the ticket.
These customers are complete idiots. There is no way to get trapped in a Sears, as all Sears stores have fire exits. It’s fire code. They must. I got locked in a Home Depot once, and the asshole manager told me he couldn’t let me out until they were finished pulling the money out of the self-checkout registers due to “company policy.” I said “oh really?” walked to the fire exit and viola! I was outside.
And no, the police didn’t show up, because in most stand-alone stores (Home Depot, WalMart, etc.) the fire-door alarms aren’t connected to anything. Hell, they aren’t even connected to electricity, they’re battery powered. In a mall though, I’m sure they’re tied to the central security system. Regardless, leaving through a fire exit (especially when trapped inside) isn’t a crime.
I blame the store for poor service (it IS Sears afterall), but I blame the customer for being “trapped” inside.
I live by this store and this doesn’t surprise me. I was there recently, during normal business hours, and it was a ghost town. I don’t think I saw more than one employee in the whole store (and about as many customers).