Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:

Today I was in Home Depot, standing in line to pay for a couple rolls of
hardware cloth. In front of me was a gentleman, and I use that term
loosely, that had placed on the counter six one inch electrical PVC ells,
along with six couplings, each of which was attached to the ells. The
ells had their UPC stamped on them, but the connectors had a stick-on label.
To a woman clerk, that may or may not be wise to how such things look and
are used, it was very easy for the items to be scanned by the label only,
considering the UPC on the ells blended well with the other data printed
thereon.

That's what happened. The buyer paid with a credit card, the total coming
to under $3. It was obvious to me that he had placed the connectors on the
ells intentionally, likely thinking they would get scanned just as they did.
I did more than nothing, but I'm interested in hearing what others might
think would have been a good course of action to take. When I've heard
various opinions, I'll describe what I did, and why I did it.

Comments?

Harold




Can't speak for home Depot, but my daughter spent many years as a Lowes
cashier. At Lowes, they periodically have cashier tests to help train
cashiers to catch such things. Basically, they bring a shopping cart to
them full of goods with a couple of "tricks" that need to be caught.
Although the cashier has a "heads up" as to their being stuff to watch
for, the kinds of things are pretty sneaky. You get a score at the end
of the test based on what you find or miss.

That being said, the real problem at the box stores is low wages (danged
low). The result is high turnover, employees who don't really give a
crap, and hiring bottom of the barrel people to do what should be one of
the most important jobs in the store. If the store puts so little
importance on their staff that they hire bottom of the barrel scrapings,
feel that these employees are disposable, and treat em generally as
liabilities rather than assets, it's the store's problem when a crook
gets away with something like this.

Yea, the buyer made an effort to conceal that the parts were supposed to
be priced seperately in hopes of cheating the system but it was the
CLERK that didn't give a rat or wasn't trained enough or was simply too
lousy a worker to do a proper job. The buyer didn't actually (by the
description) steal or conceal the parts, he just tried to fool the clerk
witha simple and (VERY!) common trick. The fooling happened due to the
store's negligence.

Koz