Retail receipt checks are voluntary. Many customers, myself included, don’t appreciate being treated like juvenile delinquents. We politely say “No, thank you” when asked for our receipts, and properly trained employees won’t insist that they have to search us.

Merchants must have enough evidence to meet the established legal standard of “probable cause” or “reasonable suspicion” (depending on your state) before they can detain someone suspected of shoplifting. Refusing a receipt check meets neither standard.

Any effort to coerce someone to show their receipt by preventing them from leaving until they do so is illegal. This is false imprisonment and, in some states, kidnapping.

In this case, the girl had in fact stolen, but she’s the proverbial needle in a haystack. Receipt checking is poor loss prevention and does more to frustrate, insult and demean honest customers than it does to catch thieves.

See we don’t profile based on race, we profile based on behavior. Shifty eyes, looking at cameras. Two young girls with purses in the cosmetics section is a giant red flag. Gangbangers of any color are automatically suspect.

Also, if I observe a child ask a parent for a toy, and the parent says no, I will follow that child to make sure they put the toy back cause I was a kid once and guilty of stealing myself when I was denied.

I get accused of being racist everyday. The fact of the matter is, don’t steal and I can’t mess with you. If I do and you have nothing, I’m toast.

1. Did the women with the Bratz fixation not notice that the internet is a great place to find things that are not available in stores?

2. Does this same woman (“rich” by OBAMA standards!!!) actually, REALLY spend more than half of her income in Wal-mart?? $1000 a week = $52,000 a year? Much more than half when you figure in taxes that this rich woman is paying! Hell, she had a right to be angry – apparently she OWNS the store by now!

When I worked in the government, I had a saying – ludicrous, but not surprising. It fits here too.

It’s been awhile since I’ve taken a day to look through my entire blogroll, seing what all my friends are up to, but that’s what I’m doing for the 90 minutes or so. I will update this with links to……

Anyway, I like going to Walmart (Super Walmart, 24 hrs). I’ve found the best thing to do is act cheerful, even if you aren’t. It really really pisses off other customers and puts a smile on the face of the cashiers.

how is it that the parent of an 11-yr-old doesn’t know what items the child legitimately owns and so doesn’t notice ‘suprise’ items?

Yeah, see, this could be one big positive side effect of the economy tanking (assuming it does and it’s not too bad). Some of these absolutely spoiled kids today, not to mention even people my own age group, come to think of it (mid-30′s) will suddenly have no choice but to not fulfill every single desire immediately.

Of course we’re probably going to “bail out” everyone (except those of us that were responsible.. we’ll be paying for it) and we’ll just slide farther down into outright socialism anyway.

Oh, and for the 2nd one. She’s right in one sense: there definitely was racism involved. Too bad it was all coming from her.