Monday, April 10, 2006

Grocery Store Artifact: Pack Your Bags PSA

This grocery store instructional sign is available at work for the baggers to study so they are aware of how to properly pack a grocery bag with customer purchases. These are posted all over in the hope that they will not damage the products when packing them. Good thing "hope springs eternal" or I'd have given up by now and replaced the posters with unrelated comic book PSA's. Not that they would notice. This poster is suitable for printing so they next time a bagger throws a gallon of milk on top of the eggs smashing them to a gooey mess, you can hand them this.

Ironically, this is also how a shoplifter will pack a cart when ripping us off. The items that the shoplifter intends to steal are placed in the center of a cart built up on all sides with walls constructed of paper towels, toilet paper, etc. We call this a "Set-Up Cart" and that trick hardly ever works. There are easily identifiable and observable behavior patterns that always go along with someone pretending to shop using a Set-Up Cart. The outward appearance of the cart conceals the smaller, high-value target items placed in the center while making the cart appear full. This is safer for the shoplifter than concealing the items on their person, which shows intent to steal. So does the Set-Up Cart, for that matter, but they don't think it does. When the thief feels confident that they are not being tracked by security or employees they wander nearer to the exit, grab the items from the cart and flee to a waiting vehicle.

1 comment:

  1. I wish some of the places I shop at taught their staff such useful information.

    ReplyDelete

Moderation enabled only because of trolling, racist, homophobic hate-mongers.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.