It’s probably happened to you and it feel like a violation of trust, when a cashier or security guard, at a store, checks your merchandise to make sure you haven’t inadvertently stolen merchandise.

Doesn’t it feel good for a cashier to come up from behind you and see what you are packaging into a shopping bag at the self check out?

 How about when you have undercover guards following you and your friends throughout the store to make sure you don’t try to lift something. How about the security guards at the front of the store checking line by line all the stuff in your cart matches up to the receipt?

It can get quite aggravating. Most people come to their store to shop and get out as fast as possible, by using self check out. And yet here is Joe Shmoe the cashier going through the bags making sure you haven’t stolen anything. It feels like a violation of trust and you would be right. Most people come to a store to buy stuff not to steal. But because of one bad apple we are forced to have our dignity trampled on just to make sure nothing is stolen. It gets to the point that you have to ask how much are these huge stores really saving anyway in avoiding shrinkage?

It used to be that stores had a level of stolen or lost merchandise, called shrinkage that was an acceptable part of doing business. Now in come the new managers who tell the cashiers and guards that if they reduce shrinkage the whole store will benefit and you’ll get a bonus.

So you have these cashiers and guards who violate your trust. These companies spend millions of dollars on TV ads to get us into the store and then proceed to treat us like thieves. It is no wonder when you have a customer start yelling and screaming, at a cashier for violating her space and trust that, she is not stealing anything, the cashier just takes it and continues looking through her stuff.

Now granted it’s not the cashiers fault or the security guards fault. In fact there is an easier way to check if someone has stolen something, it’s called cameras and I remember most stores installing them.

So what happened? No one is watching them anymore? A camera can be a lot less intrusive then a cashier looking through your stuff and is nearly invisible to a shopper. I know what happened. The cameras made cashiers and security guards self conscious and work harder so as not to seem like they are not working.  But seriously if you want to check my bags, fine check my bags, but do it in a way that does not violate my space, or trust as a customer of your store. Violating this trust just makes me angry and leads to rumors flying about how your friends and their friends should not visit these stores because of a violation of space and trust.

What happened to just buying something and leaving a store. Now it has become buy something, get your packages looked through deliberately, and then leave the store.

Has capitalism corrupted workers so much that, just to get a bonus, and find that one person out of hundreds that is stealing; you will treat all customers like thieves?

We were brought up better then this.