Mark is not a shoplifter, yet due to a combination of high-pressure doormen and bad weather, he found himself sprinting out of a Walmart to a receipt-checker’s dismay.
Let him explain:
At the exit the alarm goes off. The greeter calls my attention and said they may not have removed a tag that triggers the alarm. A few seconds later an uniformed asset protection individual comes and and grabs my basket. He says, “can I see your receipt”? and I say sure as I was in good mood because of the cashier. My hands where full as I was carrying a drink I purchased at the McDonald’s inside Walmart, so one handed I looked inside my two front shirt pockets and couldn’t find it.I move to my front pants pockets and my employee leans over and says to me, “the cashier didn’t give you the receipt”. I asked if she was sure and she responded in the affirmative. I replied to the AP individual that the cashier must not have given me the receipt. Immediately he starts opening my bags and says, “I am going to have to ask you to wait until I can check the receipt”. My mood turned as I felt he had no right to look inside my bags at the items I purchased. I stated, “I’ll give you five minutes to get it figured out” as I was still not to peeved to comply.
I followed up with, “I’ll wait over here” as I moved to the side. He grabs the basket and says, “you have to come with me”. I said, “no, I will wait right here”. He told me that he could not leave the merchandise alone. In which I replied to him, “either can I and I will wait with my merchandise right here.” I reminded him very sternly, “you have five minutes”. At this point I moved from irritated to pissed. …
He tells me that I need to go get the receipt, which I declined, and reminded him that his five minutes was ticking. He asked my employee if she could go get the receipt. She sheepishly looked at me for a decision and I nodded in the negative.
She looks at him just as sheepishly as she looked at me and said, “sorry”. He grabs the basket and tries to pull it back away from me. I said, “Look! I told you I am going to wait right here and I am going to give you five minutes to get it sorted out”. To which he replied, “either you or the merchandise need to come with me”. Fed up I said, “If you think I stole something call the police, I’m leaving”. He muttered something under his breath and just looked at me. I pulled the basket away and said “let’s go”. As I got just outside the doors I noticed it was raining something fierce. I handed my employee my drink and we ran to the car to get out of the rain.
As I popped open the trunk, I thought how it must really look like we where stealing because we were running, although we where running to stay dry not to get away. I glanced behind me and expected to see staff at least looking at us if not coming towards. Nothing. We drove off and continued on our way.
What’s your most adrenaline-pumped story of receipt-checker evasion?
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Assuming Mark doesn’t carry multiple purses it sounds like they wanted to see what he had in his “Walmart” bags.
Oh the outrage! He sets the alarm off, has no receipt and THEY have the audacity to want to look inside his plastic Walmart shopping bags..WTF!
…Immediately he starts opening my bags and says, “I am going to have to ask you to wait until I can check the receipt”.
they’re doing their due diligence
with the holidays approaching, shoplifting hurts everyone….its not a victimless crime
as a college kid, i volunteer to show my receipt so that troublemakers are aware, and it shows i’m an upstanding citizen
if losses keep up, everyone who comes in the store isn’t necessarily coming to buy, but steal instead and will be perceived that way….as a consequence, service goes down and prices go up
yea, they have no real right,but if you have nothing to hide, its only another minute, tops
The problem is Training! A police officer, security guard or bouncer is trained in how to approach, confront and speak to someone in this situation. Wal Mart greeters have not received any training other than “Thank You come again”.
The few times I have set off that alarm I knew exactly what item did it, but trying to explain that to the seasoned citizen at the exit tried my patience.
Every time I had to ask for a manager, I tell them, they wand the item, “Beep”, they take it over and demagnetize it and we are done.
I was at a Zellers once and the alarm went off. The guy wanted me to go to the back room to ‘straighten it out’ . I refused, he then wanted me to return to the cash and rescan everything. I refused and told him that I was in a good mood and would let him take a quick look through the bags right there.
He was kind of thrown off that I was laughing at him demanding me to go to ‘the back room’. Anyway he looked through the bags and found a thing that was not deactivated at the cash. I debated walking out, but I didnt want people think I was a thief, nor was I going to ‘the back room’ like a thief.
What? Somebody could understand the utter mumbling coming from the exit door sensor things?
All I get is “Caution! Mumblemumblemumblerattlerattlemumblemumblerattle!”
They’re all like that. Completely unintelligible, except for the Caution at the beginning. Caution about what? Is there a forklift coming? Maybe I would know but I can’t understand the rest. I suppose it’s saying something in English but I am not entirely sure. In my area, many of the customers don’t even speak English so this mumbling rattling thing squawking away not even in clear English is NOT going to even get their attention.
I did ask a door greeter once what the heck the thing was saying and he admitted he had no idea. He could not understand it either and he worked there.
This stupid door sensor thing is at the portal to every major store and should be the pride of American industry and a symbol of American retail power. But instead it’s a cheap mumbling gibberish-spewing annoying embarrassment that nobody even pays the slightest bit of attention.
It might be giving out lotto numbers but nobody will ever know for sure.
My congratulations to the audio engineers who worked on that design to cut the fluff from the speaker and save a whole dime per unit simultaneously earning ‘employee of the month’ honors and making the product sound like crap. Good job!
Touch me, get knocked the fuck out.
And then you go to jail for assault, battery and resisting arrest.
Do Wal-Mart security types have arrest powers?
“And then you go to jail for assault, battery and resisting arrest.” LOL! You’ve been watching too much TV.
The store I work at has a LP officer. I dont think he does anything other than get paid more than me to wander around.
Are there any other articles on Consumerist except for various retellings of the same story of how someone asked someone else for a receipt who refused because, “by golly, I’m an American! and I read the constitution”.
C’mon people, there most be something else more important to talk about! Innocent bits and bytes are dying here of banality. Please let them at least die an entertaining or informative death.
I once kicked a checker in the face. Old b!tch had it coming.
… so OP tries to leave Walmart, the door alarm goes off, he can’t produce a receipt and is peeved that their Loss Prevention wants to verify his purchases against a copy of a receipt?
I fail to see the issue here… if the greeter had just arbitrarily stopped him, that’s one thing, but the alarm went off.
I remember one time I must of had an active security tag in my bag and nobody said or did anything I even triggered the alarm several times and nobody came around after like 10 times a cashier told me to leave.
Once again, fault me for blaming the OP, but if you shop there, you deserve to be treated as humanly as they treat their employees and suppliers.
How do I obtain a personal Walmart employee of my own?
wtf….i thought it was pretty good.
I did something similar a few years ago. I keep my receipt out, placate these people, but if they can’t be bothered to do their job right, I can’t be bothered to stop.
I had just bought an air conditioner and had my receipt in my hand as I walked out. There was no greeter or checker. I was about 20 feet from the store, pushing my cart, when I hear someone call after me. I had a feeling what it was, but I was halfway to my truck so I ignored it.
I get to the truck, take out the A/C, and as I’m lifting it in he comes running up to me yelling, “HEY YOU HAVE TO SHOW ME YOUR RECIEPT!” When I exited the store I put it in my pocket, and when I walked out the guy was nowhere to be found (the Wal-mart was extremely empty that day so my guess is he walked off to chat with someone). I was really irritated at being yelled at by my vehicle, so I laughed at him and ignored him.
He yelled at me again, and I said, “Look, you can’t just chase someone out to the parking lot and ask for a receipt. Not my fault you weren’t doing your job.” He was confused and said, “I can go outside!” I laughed again, and said, “Wal-mart may let you go outside, but the law says once I am outside you can’t.”
Still confused, I got in my truck as he yelled for my receipt again, to which I replied, “Go ahead, call the cops” and left. Look, I keep my receipt out when I walk out of the store, I try to play the little game (and, in fact, since I usually smile and say hello when I come in, and smile with my receipt visibly in my hand when I go out, they usually don’t even stop me), but if they can’t be bothered to be waiting for me, I’m certainly not going to put up with being embarrassed and followed out to the parking lot.
Ugh, come on. You set off the alarm, didn’t have a receipt and you acted like a jerk. If I’m the Walmart employee (*shudder=*) it would make me a little suspicious too.
I don’t understand this mentality at all. If you set the alarm off, it behooves you to show that you did not steal anything. Not every interaction needs to be a Grand Statement of ‘I Have Rights.’ Take your receipt, show your receipt, no drama no problems.
If you are buying business supplies (or even merch for yourself) wouldn’t you actually want to make sure you had a receipt?
I know I would’ve at least made an effort to get one even if it meant looking like I was obeying a receipt check request I was fundamentally opposed to.
Ok.. normally I won’t show a receipt, but this guy was an ass. He didn’t get a receipt from the cashier and something in his stuff was triggering the anti-theft device. Loss prevention was well within their rights to investigate once the alarm got triggered.
There were two of them. One of them could have stayed with the cart while the other got the receipt from the checker.
Definite shopping fail.
All the Wal Mart’s near me only check your receipt if you have something that is not in a bag. Kind of ridiculous because you could walk by any cashier (especially the self check) and take a bag if the item does not have a security tag.
As soon as any store employee touches me or my property, it’s ‘lights out’.
I have a short story.
I was in a Wal*Mart here in Vancouver, Canada.. and had just purchased a few things (Provisions for a D&D session. Chips, cookies, pop. Some DVD’s too) and the receipt checker tried to stop me. I kept walking. I didn’t say a word to them. They walked up to me and grabbed me by my arm at the elbow. I stopped, looked the checker straight in the face and told them “If you ever want to have functional use of that arm again, you will take your hands off me.” They looked shocked (Older man) and asked me to stop. I stopped long enough to tell the checker that yes, I did have a receipt and that no I was not going to stop and prove to ANOTHER employee that I have legally bought and paid for everything I have with me and that if he didn’t like it, he was free to call the police.
He didn’t like that and called me a jerk. I filed complaint against him with both the manager of the store and the manager of the mall that the store was in. I never saw him again at that location.
Bottom line is… you DO NOT put your hands on a customer unless you are good and ready to LOSE the use of those limbs. And secondly, the cashier saw me pay for the items I bought, she rung them up. Why should I waste my time stopping for a receipt checker at the door?