Great, so show the guy the receipt and/or immediately ask for the store manager, don't just keep walking. That's pretty damn rude.

I look forward to the store's account of the situation; specifically, whether the kid actually said "no thank you."

His attorney's advice seems odd: it's ok for you to blog to your heart's content, but don't give any interviews for the love of God!!

The receipt check isn't important. That's why he said no thanks and kept walking. That's where the drama should have ended - but CC decided to escalate the situation and make it worse.

Are you saying a customer is legally obliged to consent to a VOLUNTARY receipt or bag check? For what reason do you believe a customer HAS to stop and allow a clerk to check his receipt - other than, that's just the way it is and everybody else does it.

He was well within his rights to walk right out the door. There was nothing illegal about it. Nobody's rights were violated at that point.




Then all that other stuff happened that you conveniently want to ignore.

Sounds like you have a great career ahead of you at Circuit City.

It's even more rude for the employee to think he has the right to make him stop - is it not?

You keep resorting to odd statements to further your arguments. It's getting boring.

No.

I suppose "illegal" or "criminal" is probably a better word than "rude"...

And that's the difference.

Walking past the employee without acknowledging him = rude.
Chasing after the customer and stopping him from leaving = illegal.

If the employee was being rude, do you not think every customer would be bitching to the manager about it? Was he only being rude to this one customer? Just picked him out of the blue to be rude to?

Good point. Demanding a customer to consent to a voluntary search - then chasing him through the parking lot and standing in front of his car, preventing him from leaving the property isn't rude at all. That's picture perfect customer service.

He didn't chase the customer, he called for his manager, which is likely what he is trained to do.

If its store policy and he doesnt like it, he can shope elsewhere. They obviously have these guys in place to reduce the number of thefts. The guy onlyt wanted to verify a purchase by checking the receipt. Ive heard of people taking a bag from the store inside there pocket, snatching items and walking out like they paid for them. Thats why they check receipts. It may not be legal but it is store policy. All receipts are checked. And how suspicious is it when a guy wont show you a receipt for an item he just purchased. I also like how he assaulted the circuit city employee.

Im going to laugh my ass of when we get video footage of it and the guy was lying. All he did was jack some Games and try to make a break for it but they got him and now hes telling you some sap story so youll give him money.

Trying to talk to you is like trying to talk to a fucking wall. Welcome to my ignore list.

Well that's just rude.

Actually, if you talk to anyone in loss prevention, you'll find that the vast majority of theft out the front door is done by the cashier, who will have a buddy come in, go through the line, but not pay for the stuff they walk out with.

That's why they check the receipts against the contents of the bag. It's mainly to double-check their own employees.

Not that this matters to the topic at hand, but there you go...

Oh my. You're kidding, right?

I know it's not legal... but it's right there on the sign. I guess I have to let them do it.

No no man, you gotta think of it as a victory. Your "what is the matter with you people" attitude scared one person away! Good for you!

[P.S. Helluva day in Atlanta today. Finally a break in the weather.]

That depends upon what CC's policies are about this and the legality of those. This is information we don't have.


As soon as we get something more than one person's POV I'll feel better about talking about. Do you usually draw conclusions based only on 1/2 (or 1/3 in this case) of the evidence?

If that is the case, why would any customer have a problem with it? They aren't accusing the customer of being a thief, they are enlisting his help in policing their own employees.

Look, I don't care if it was the guy at the door, the manager, or the owner of the damn chain.

All this guy did was walk past a voluntary search and ignore the employee. That = rude. (Incidentally, for all the CC employee knows, it could = hearing impairment. Or it could = can't speak English. Or any one of a dozen other things.)

What then followed was a CC employee going out to his car and willfully preventing him from leaving the parking lot. That = illegal.


Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows that rude customers are a fact of life. You have to deal with douchebags every day. That doesn't give you the right to infringe upon their liberties... such as the right to leave your establishment.

This information has been posted several times.

http://www.crimedoctor.com/loss_prevention_3.htm

A customer can refuse to have their bag checked and simply walk out the door past the bag checker. Hopefully the bag checker has been trained to know that they cannot force anyone to submit to a bag search without cause. This is important because the expectation of the bag checker is that all bag contents have been purchased. The worst thing that could happen is that an aggressive bag checker would forcibly detain or threaten a customer who refused to comply with the voluntary search


http://www.crimedoctor.com/shoplifting3.htm

In the United States, citizens value their civil liberties and constitutional rights and don't appreciate submitting to unlawful seizure and search. Because of this, there has been a legal trend of suing the retail store anytime a customer is wrongfully accused of shoplifting. In recognition of this, the retail security and loss prevention industry have developed six universally accepted steps to minimize the potential for a false arrest claim.

They are:
You must see the shoplifter approach the merchandise
You must see the shoplifter select the merchandise
You must see the shoplifter conceal, convert or carry away the merchandise
You must maintain continuous observation of the shoplifter
You must observe the shoplifter fail to pay for the merchandise
You must apprehend the shoplifter outside the store

Store policy is irrelevant. Store policy does not trump law.


Under what circumstance do you feel Circuit City would have been right to force a bag check, or chase the guy down and falsely accuse him of theft?

Unless the other side of the story is that he said no to the receipt check, walked out of the store, got in his car and drove away without Circuit City blinking an eye - I really don't see how their actions can be justified.

The entire course of events was triggered by someone who knew that simply showing a receipt for something legally purchased before exiting the store would be a simple and painless experience. But, that same person also knew that not doing it would probably cause the events to unfold as they did and that he would be legally within in his rights to acts as he allegedly did. Now, if you want to remove the legal aspects of what happened to determin if the guy was a "prick" or not then one should look no further than his initial actions. Knowing that the CC guy was trained to check receipts (ie: would probably get in trouble for not doing it by those who employ him) and also was more than likely unaware of any possible illegality of such policy, one would reasonably expect to draw a reaction from the person for not showing the receipt regardless of how polite he/she may be when declining. Now, is showing a receipt before leaving a store really an encroachment upon one's legal rights? I say no emphatically, it causes absolutely no inconvienence and the same policy is enforced on all patrons removing any alienating aspects of the act. Without regard to the events that followed, the initial act of refusal to show the receipt with full knowledge that it was store policy to do so would certainly classify one as "looking for a conflict." And if such behavior makes one a "prick" as other here have suggested, then let it be.

As for people comparing this guy to Rosa Parks, you seriously need your heads examined. Comparing the civil rights equality movement against segregation to this very very limited "movement" against retail store receipt checking policies pretty much disqualifies your opinions from being viewed as intellectually based in my opinion.

"Crime doctor" ain't the law. What has been posted is Ohio's, and other states', laws regarding false imprisonment.

In Georgia, you don't have to see someone take the merchandise. I haven't dicked around enough with Ohio law today to see if the same protection applies there.

Everyone keeps arguing "this is the law" and "this was illegal (or legal)." So far the support for these positions has been crimedoctor.com and Wikipedia.

Store policy may be irrelevant; so is your opinion about "the law."

I really don't understand why he just didn't cooperate with the police once they got there. Before refusing to give the cop his ID he should have asked why the cop wanted it.

The cop is called to investigate the situation. I'm not a legal expert, but at that point doesn't it somewhat change the situation? If he is investigating doesn't he have the right to collect the information of the involved parties? I know when my car was stolen the cop asked for my id. I gave it to him. All he did with it was use it to copy down all my information onto his report since my license had all my info on it. I think this makes it a totally differant situation than the one where the guy kept getting stopped when jogging.

And in a situation like this wouldn't it be standard procedure to try to determine who these people are, whether they have records or not, etc. etc.

I think if I was a police officer called to a site to investigate something, and then the person who called me didn't cooperate I would be a little pissed off.

I don't think anyone said it does. Store policy may (or may not) explain the CC guys actions though. If they were told to enforce a policy that is in violation of the law then the onus is on CC. If they went beyond what was outlined in policy than the onus is on them.


So you do usually draw conclusions w/o hearing all sides of the story. I guess the innocent until proven guilty policy only applies to the person who talks first, or tells the best story, uh? Just because they are in positions of authority the CC guys and the cop are automatically wrong for picking on the "little guy", no matter what their account of the events is, right?