RANDOM PAGE 3 THOUGHTS with ABOB TEFF:

It is very entertaining to find a store that still uses the clear plastic hardshells. Almost every store that I have seen use these does not use them properly -- meaning they will have 5 copies of a movie and only 3 of them will be in the cases.

Meijers was my favorite for the longest time ... they put every one-disc DVD in the glass locking case (even the cheapo $5 stuff) but left ALL multi-disc box sets out on the shelf because they wouldn't fit in the glass case.

My first job as a a retail manager was taking over a Suncoast store that was suffering a 26% shrink. That's right, for every dollar coming in, 26 cents walked out. Of course, a good chunk was internal. It was downright scary some of the things I found: invoices hadn't been received for 6 months; envelopes of cash in the filing cabinet; empty DVD cases galore ... one of my first moves was to change the layout of the racks so that you could see down every aisle from the register (previously they ran parallel to the entrance with the register right next to the entrance). We found 50 empty cases shoved between the racks, including a 10-disc foldout Bruce Lee set -- this thing has over 5 feet long when opened up to get to all the discs! How the hell did nobody see that happen?!

Butterscotch pudding rocks -- but not as much as scotch.

For those of you who actually buy out of the glass cases -- and actually wait for somebody to open them -- you should not feel guilty about anything. In fact, you should waste as much of the clerk's time as they wasted of yours -- read the synopsis of every DVD they carry, even the Bratz DVDs.

The biggest problem that promotes shoplifting -- most retail establishments refuse to empower their employees to stop it. Rather than actually training employees in loss prevention, they practice "loss discouragement." I will say this, everytime I go to JC Pennys there is a squad car out front with somebody cuffed in the back. I'm honestly convinced that these are out of work actors that they pay to sit out there -- I've never worked for any retail company that was that gung ho on stopping theft, unless they could make up things to make it look like the employees are stealing.

I dunno, if every time I went to a store there was someone getting cuffed, I'd think about shopping elsewhere...

If fuckers want to steal, they steal. Those plastic clamshells don't do anything. When I worked at a video store, a couple kids ran out the front door with gigantor duffle bags, full of DVD's. They cleaned out pretty-much the entire 'new' DVD stock. Apparently, they spent approximately fifteen minutes in the back, opening each clamshell with their own key.

And, you know, we were fairly busy, and not one fucking customer said a word. There were, like, five people in line when the kids ran out the door. And one of the customers was like, 'oh, yea, I saw them doing that for awhile'.

Same goes for ANYONE who wants to just sprint out the door. What are the employees going to do, follow you? They might call the cops, per company policy. But there's not much else to do.

I disagree, I think the anti-theft devices do actually help. For the folks that really want to steal a bunch of merchandise, yeah they'll still do it. But I imagine it certainly helps some of the "small time" stuff or maybe direct thieves to a store that doesn't have these things.

Actually I have a DVD that wouldn't start no matter what. Finally I decided that there's something physically wrong with the DVD, pulled it out of the drive, flipped, and voila! the sensor sticker was right on the optical surface!