How to Dramatically Increase Theft of Trading Cards....

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

stick them in a blind corner of the salesfloor.

We used to have our trading cards (sport, Pokemon, WoW and so on) on a couple of racks near the checkouts. There the cashiers could straighten them and put out new stock when they weren't busy with customers.

A couple months ago, corporate ordered the racks moved. Their rationale was they didn't want the messy racks to be the first thing customers saw as they entered the store. The only place we could put them was this blind corner over by candy and groceries.

Since the move, theft of trading cards has gone through the roof. Yesterday one of the salesfloor people filled an entire small plastic wastebasket with empty wrappers and packages, and I found a Yu-Gi-Oh tin that had its booster packs spirited away. At least when the cards were up by the checkouts, thieves had to take them someplace else to steal them, past other customers and employees.

[Becks]

Repeat after me: If it makes sense, it's not allowed.™®©

[lordlundar]

Repeat after me: If it makes sense, it's not allowed.™®©

I'm beginning to think we need to expand that to "If it's the most stupid, asinine thing ever conceived, it's company policy."

[Hon'ya-chan]

Kids do it constantly every time Shoenen Jump has the Yu-Gi-Oh cards. They rip those magazines just to get the card.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Guess what! I was low on the amount of empty wrappers we found. Somebody else filled up a shopping bag with some more they found stashed someplace.

However, we did catch the culprits, or at least some of them: 3 boys ages 9 to 12. Nice to see them starting out young.

However, here is another way corporate encourages theft without knowing it: For active shoes we used to use two-piece anti-theft tags where the tag is attached to the shoe with a pin. Some time ago corporate told us to stop using those tags. The new they directed us to use are basically plastic zip ties with a sensor embedded. They can be cut off the shoe with a scissors. Today our active shoes specialist found five boxes where somebody stole the new shoes and left their old ones in the box.

[BookstoreEscapee]

In the bookstore we often find the tags from the reading glasses. The sensor is in the plastic hanger thingy that just slips over the arm of the glasses so you just slid it off and drop it somewhere...

Sometimes we'd find the barcodes ripped off of paperback books or magazines. Which is just really stupid.