"Mike Marlow" wrote:

I have
seen the Home Depot shrink reports. Besides power tools, the two
biggest
shrink items are patio sets and refrigerators.

That wouldn't surprise me at all: however, here in SoCal. the garden
seems to take quite a hit.

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.

Okay, was not considering anything but internal theft in my
definition. Strictly speaking, that is an incomplete definition.


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.

Of course it is discrete, but they are still cuiffed and taken off the
floor during business hours.

Typically these are not associates on the sales floor.

Well - it's not common throughout the chain.

Can't comment outside an area that includes maybe a dozen stores, but
one thing is crystal clear.

The day Nardelli showed up, HD quite being a fun place to work.

It's no wonder Welch didn't pick him to run GE.

The morale of the staff has gone in the tank.

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.

So I have been told.

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.

So much for the loss preventation group.

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.

I'm aware of that.

Lew