Shoplifter

[bean]

We caught yet another shoplifter today. We've gone from catching a couple a month to a couple a week lately. And we don't even have a working camera system (we have about 25 cameras, but the monitor for them is broken) - the only reason we catch so many is the sheer number of employees in the store (about 275 or so, in a grocery store). Don't ask me why we can't get it fixed, I don't know. We also don't have dedicated LP staff - we hire off duty cops for security after dark, but they're there more as a show than anything else. One of them will walk the store regularly and busts and/or scares off a few people a week, the rest just stand by the doors.

This one pretended to only speak Chinese or another Asian language, according to the store manager (who speaks 3 or 4 languages fluently himself). We get very few non-English speakers in the store - we're a very high end, gourmet/organic store, in the richest part of the city. You need to know at least a little English to read the labels, a bit more just to handle our horribly unfriendly credit card machines, plus I got a look at her as the cops lead her out in silver bracelets - she's come through my line before speaking English (a bit broken, but some English - enough that I could understand what she was trying to say).

In a nutshell - not speaking English doesn't excuse you from shoving items in your pockets in plain view of employees.

[Hobbs]

How do you have that many employees for a grocery store? O_o

On a technical note, do you know anything about the monitor itself? Is it a computer monitor or just a regular tv, because there's a few tricks I know for getting tvs to work.

[hobbitt97]

friendly shoplifters

I used to work in a neighborhood convenience store as a cashier. A person that I knew from high school was shopping. He was looking at the section of the store that had newspapers on the bottom floor shelf and adult magazines on the top rack. I watched as he shoved a Playboy magazine into a NY Times. He came up to me to have me check him out. I rang up both the magazine and the newspaper. He told me that he didn't have a magazine, just the newspaper and that I should check him out as such. I made him give up the magazine. He was mad at me because I wouldn't let him steal. I told him not to come into the store anymore. He was lucky I didn't call the police on him.

[WhiteRose]

good trick to hide it from other shoppers if you're embarrassed, but come on, expecting the cashiers to not notice the unevenness and weight of said magazine? sheesh...

[bean]

How do you have that many employees for a grocery store? O_o

On a technical note, do you know anything about the monitor itself? Is it a computer monitor or just a regular tv, because there's a few tricks I know for getting tvs to work.

We run close to a million a week in sales. We're also extremely focused on customer service. Whole Foods generally has an insane amount of employees. Front end alone has 45 people, the majority of them being cashiers (we have 20 registers, including the customer service desk). Most of our employees are full time too.

It's a monitor specifically meant for CCTV. It doesn't even show a picture now, and up until it stopped working it had a really dim picture. The controls for it were also getting pretty flaky, it's anybody's guess as to whether the monitor crapped out or the camera system itself crapped out. It uses a BNC connector, and has some pretty severe burn in on it. A lot of our electronic equipment is slowly failing in various ways, the only thing they really keep up is the registers. Our burglar alarm doesn't work, at all, except for the hold up alarm - nobody in the store, including the store manager, knows the code for the alarm, and even if they did it always shows at least 10 zones as open even when everything in the building is locked up.

[Hobbs]

Found some on amazon for $150-ish...couldn't you buy one and then invoice the company? Like w/ an emergency repair or something?

does the connector or the monitor have the burn?

[Gravekeeper]

Our burglar alarm doesn't work, at all, except for the hold up alarm - nobody in the store, including the store manager, knows the code for the alarm, and even if they did it always shows at least 10 zones as open even when everything in the building is locked up.

Hah, wow, sounds like a really secure place ><

I have a CCTV monitor myself at work for the exterior building cameras. Its crapped out on us once, just from burning out. Like yours it just got dimmer and dimmer than died. They just replaced it and all was well again. The cameras were fine.

But we also have a security system and a patrol that checks the exterior once or twice a night.

To reach me you need 2 different keys and 2 door codes. ;p

[Andara Bledin]

We run close to a million a week in sales.
<<snippage>>
Our burglar alarm doesn't work, at all, except for the hold up alarm - nobody in the store, including the store manager, knows the code for the alarm, and even if they did it always shows at least 10 zones as open even when everything in the building is locked up.

You do a million a week in sales, but they can't be arsed to get the alarm system working?

As for the monitor, if it's a CRT display, going dim and then failing is pretty typical of one of those reaching the end of its life-cycle.

^-.-^

[bean]

Part of the reason they haven't bothered fixing the alarm is because there's ALWAYS someone in the building, 24/7. The hold up alarm still works fine (we found out on accident one day, coworker said "What's this button do?" and pressed it).

The only time there's not somebody in the building is from closing time Christmas Eve until 4am the day after Christmas.

The screen has the burn-in.