Asset protection and methods thereof...

[Grinner]

I've been interested in asset protection for a couple weeks now. Not as a career nor for the purposes of optimal shoplifting, mind you. It's more that I'm struck by how asset protection agents at retail stores do their jobs so fluidly. For example, I'm walking out the store when I'm stopped and asked for my receipt. I hand it over, and the guy looks over my cart and hands me back my receipt. We part ways merrily.

The problem with this scenario is that there's no way the guy did an itemized inventory in his head of everything in my shopping cart in the five seconds he looked over it. This gets me thinking, What was he looking for? Is he actually just looking for high-value items in my shopping cart not listed on the receipt? That would work if I'm trying to steal a TV or something, but for small items? I don't think that strategy would work under that circumstance.

So what are they looking for? Or is their place at the store exits more...I don't know, symbolic? Like, they just check you at the door mostly for large, high-value items and are otherwise there for show?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

So what are they looking for?

Having anyone at all at the door visibly doing something about product leaving the store is sufficient to significantly cut the amount of stealing done by the customers (it does not affect the stealing done by the employees, AFAIK).

What they are looking for, which is secondary to the actual presence, is a gross discrepancy between the purchase total and the cart volume. If the receipt has $27.28 as the total, and you have a full cart, they'll take a little longer to go through the list to make sure nothing looks out of place. But if the value is in an expected range, they'll wave you through.

Grey Wolf

[JeenLeen]

I wound up taking to someone who does that at Sam's or Costco (forget which) & they said they count the number of items in your cart and compare it to the number of items listed on the receipt.

That might not be the practice all the time -- my wife recently got nagged because of <long story won't go in, but she was legit & was cashier's fault> and had to go through a mess since 'eggs' was not written anywhere on the receipt. If they were just counting items, they would not have caused the issue.

[Lacco]

One of the reasons was already stated by Grey_Wolf_c: crime prevention through "capable guardian", or illusion of such guardian (see Crime opportunity theory).

Some of them may look for basic inconsistencies and your reaction. As it was explained to me by one former law enforcement guy who worked in retail store: it's normal that people get a bit nervous when you ask them for receipt, but with sufficient practice you will notice the difference in behavior of people getting nervous because "it makes them look bad" and the "guilty" crowd. Also: based on regular checks of missing items they are able to usually estimate what gets stolen the most and what pieces they should look for.

If there are the "self-service" counters/electronic cashiers the issue is more "Didn't notice them 'beeping' an item, let's check if it's on the receipt".

So it's a combination of all these things. They naturally decrease (or it would be better to say "displace") shoplifting by being there, but may be looking for your reaction and irregularities/inconsistencies.

There is lot to be said for asset protection and I'll gladly share, since I studied security management :smallsmile:.

Also as someone who worked as a cashier - it's a matter of seeing enough shopping carts. You get used to estimating prices in your head, so you take a look at the contents and compare the visual image with the estimation (e.g. I've grown accustomed to estimate my normal shopping cart price by multiplying the amount of items by 1 or 1.2 - if shopping for standard groceries only - to get the price). If it's really off - there's something wrong (or I bought a pricier item).

[Algeh]

It seems like one of the things they look for at Costco is making sure that if it says you bought more than one of an item on the receipt, you actually have that many of whatever-it-is in the cart. This seems more like a "customer service" function since it would presumably trigger you getting a mis-ring corrected if you actually only bought one but were charged for two (which is not something I've ever had happen at Costco), but it's the only thing any Costco door person has ever commented to me about.