Steve was taken aback when Lowe’s asked him and other customers for their phone numbers as they were checking out.

He writes:

I was wondering if you’d heard any other reports of this. I went to Lowes tonight to buy some cinder blocks (great for DIY speaker stands — why spend $40 at Best Buy on plastic sticks?), and while in line to checkout, the customer in front of me paid with a credit card. The cashier asked for their phone number, and they obliged. I thought, “That’s odd, I’ve never had that happen to me shopping before,” and just shrugged it off, figuring maybe they were doing it with CCs.

Anyway, I paid cash for my awesome rocks, and I got asked the same thing. I was actually standing to the side of the register too, and saw the little popup that was on their CRT specifically asking for it before they could continue checking out. For the record, my answer was, “I’ll pass.”

This kind of thing is more common than Steve realizes, but is jarring the first time it happens to you. Giving a corporation your phone number can make a lot of things happen, few of them good, so it’s probably best to act like 90 percent of the women I approached when I was single and shoot cashiers an “are you kidding me” glare.

Which retailer first hit on you at check-out?

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