Yeah the title I chose is way overboard for this little post but I thought it was funny so that’s what I used.
Some stores like to check your receipts when you leave their establishment. Best Buy is notorious for doing this, almost more-so than pushing their shitty “extended warranties” on customers. Well it appears Bitter over at Snowflakes in Hell got the special treatment from Wal-Mart.
I’m pointing this out to point out something else people don’t often know. When you are leaving a store with your purchased goods and you are asked for a receipt you are under no obligation to show it. The burden of proof that you’ve stolen something (because somebody who just payed for something obviously is in the business of theft as well) if they want to get the police involved. Funny enough the only way they can detain you is if they get the police involved… which requires them to provide the police with above mentioned evidence.
There are two ways you can think about this. The first is checking the receipt it little hassle and is easier than fighting over it. The other way of thinking about this, which is what I believe, is a store has no right to accuse a paying customer of theft. That’s what they are doing when they ask to check you receipt; telling you they believe you’re a crook. It’s a practice that pisses me off and frankly is the reason I rarely shop at stores such as Best Buy.
Personally, I do exactly that – tell the WalMart checker “no thank you” and keep walking… Unless I am openly carrying. In that case, the two seconds of digging around for the receipt is worth it to avoid two hours of “an armed man robbed the store!”
My biggest gripe with it is the irregularity of it – I have actually made a game of driving my buggy out of the store, loaded down with obviously not-bagged things (the checkers only seem to care about things not in bags around here), when the checkers are not looking my way. Most of the time, I make it. But sometimes I do not. So if I really was trying to rob the store, most of the time I would be successful.
Yeah, that is a great front to put on a useless program…