On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:18:51 GMT, Lew Hodgett cast forth these pearls of
wisdom...:



Since I know some HD employees who are in a position to have knowledge
of the situation, I'll stand by the comment that internal shrinkage is
a real problem.

Fair enough. But - I don't speak on the stories of other people. I have
seen the Home Depot shrink reports. Besides power tools, the two biggest
shrink items are patio sets and refrigerators. It's not hard to find -
it's posted in every store. One thing to remember is that "internal"
shrink does not mean employee theft. Shrink comes in a lot of forms, and
it includes damage, which far outweighs incidents of employee theft.


That's not to say that customers are not a major problem when it comes
to "5 finger discount" activity, but when employees are taken into
custody and handcuffed while on the sales floor, on a regular basis,
you have to wonder.

Your friends either work in a rather unusual Home Depot store, or they are
grossly misleading you. Evidence that they are misleading you (or at least
strongly suggests that they are) is that Home Depot would not arrest an
employee on the sales floor. This would be handled in a discrete manner,
out of the eye of customers. Not only is it bad for business to do this
publicly, but it leaves the store open to litigation that the chain tries
very hard to avoid.


BTW, this is not isolated to one store.

Well - it's not common throughout the chain.


I won't go into detail here, but there are some amazing schemes
attempted to steal from HD.

Sure - people can be very creative. Some don't even have to get creative.
It's not uncommon for customers to simply walk out with a product. The
alarms go off, and (especially when the store is busy), the associates are
so used to hearing them go off, that they don't even notice it. Out walks
the "customer" with hands full.

Some are even craftier. They have figured out the ways to defeat the hard
tags and the soft tags. When these guys walk out, they don't even set off
the alarms.

The really good ones know when the LPA is working and when he/she is not.
The LPA is the only one authorized to tackle (if necessary) a thief -
though most won't. Associates and managers are not allowed to apprehend a
thief, other than to ask the thief to stop. If the thief doesn't cordially
accommodate that request, they can't do anything except maybe get a license
number on the car they leave in.


--

-Mike-