So tempted to do this
I hate Fry's Electronics. They seem to have a knack for hiring leftovers from the least evolved gene pool.
Frisking you like a criminal as you walk out the door after shopping is demeaning and insulting, which probably leads one to ask why I keep going back. I have no idea.
What if, after paying for the goods and securing the receipt, I just flew out the door and attempted to flee from a pack of angry security guards down to the parking lot. Wouldn't that be a scene? I'd allow them to catch up with me to show off my receipt. Would they turn me in for my refusal to submit to their humiliating treatment of their customers? I cannot imagine why a prank like that would be illegal.
posted by David Cho @ 9/12/2005
13 comments
13 Comments:
That would be a specticle but well worth it. Sounds like they really havn't mastered the art of good customer service!
I'm laughing at your imagined scenario. I sometimes envision scenes of "radical rebellion" like that too. Do write about it if you do it. (just don't get shot)
I've never had the receipt-nazi frisk me... maybe I'm intimidating looking or something.
Oh yeah, just so you know, it is actually in their business model to hire people who don't know what they are doing (or what is going on) as they are cheaper to hire than a competent work force.
-Mike Ax.
At the beginning of the year, I bought four phones from Fryes. By June, non of 'em worked. Anyway, the frisking is humiliating, however a few bad apples mess it up for everyone. I submit to the frisking, but with teeth gritting.
Sometimes they can't chase you into the parking lot due to insurance liability so you could just stand there and taunt them from 20 feet away.
Okay, I exaggerated. Frisking is not the right word. They rummage through the shopping cart, but it feels like frisking.
No, no, I've been frisked.
They really frisked you. That is unbelievable. Sorry to hear that.
10 years ago, I returned a laptop to the service department just the day after I bought it.
The guy opens it, and said out loud, "This laptop left the store with 16 megabytes. Why am I seeing only 8?" in front of a bunch of onlookers. I was so shocked, couldn't react right away. After collecting myself, I escalated it, and his boss gave me a $300 discount as an act of apology.
They check receipts at Costco too, and someone once told me that it is technically illegal for them to do it. Costco claims that they do it "to make sure you got everything you paid for" but obviously the subtext is to make sure you're not leaving with anything you didn't. A thin excuse if you ask me. But the moral is, if my source is correct, then they can't MAKE you submit to a search. You could run and taunt them, shouting back the laws prohibiting such a search. But I don't know how Christlike you would come off...
So after a little more research, I have not been able to find any laws related to this issue in particular. The constitution prohibits the gov't from unreasonable search/seizure, but we're not dealing with the gov't here. I guess the best thing is just to suck it up and not take it personally. They don't know us, and I suppose they have a right to protect themselves. Interestingly, though, another blogger pointed out that they never check the ones with no receipts...so I guess if you want to shoplift there you can't make any legitimate purchases at the same time without risking apprehension. Does strike anyone else as kind of funny?
Thanks Jenn for your research.
That is interesting that what they do is technically illegal. I guess we can always vote with our feet. CompuUSA and Best Buy don't do that.
As to actually doing it? I just fanatacize about these things.
A LOT.
Dave, I regularly walk past the receipt checker and flash a nice smile. Sometimes I say "Sorry, no time for that today." They really can't do anything; they rely on general compliance to be able to do it at all. It's easier for them to look in everyone's bag than to single out those whose bags they'd really like to look in. I've done this at both the Anaheim and Whittier stores. They have too much to do to actually react and usually they were looking at someone else's stuff when you walked passed anyway. I think they've been told to just check as many people as they can.
We don't have ANY stores that I know of here on the EAST coast that frisk shoppers! NOT their carriages NOR their person!
Maybe those friskers are the two that Brother Buck wrote about....
hmmmm maybe they just don't frisk WOMEN.
Or maybe here in New England- touching someone is like a federal offense. Remember, we are the ones with back decks and not front porches. We love our privacy.
A store checking what we bought or frisking us wouldn't stay open a week out here-
a lynch mob would probably burn it down!
I agree- Don't shop their anymore! My step father was a manager in retail, he told us that the customer was "always right..." or there would be no more customers.
To treat a customer like a theif is disgusting and should be illegal if it isnt. In a country where we are innocent until guilty that is a really weird dynamic!
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