88 Tags Does Not Equal 1.21 Jigowatts

[B&NGoddess]

we've been getting hit hard by thieves recently, especially in audio. audio used to be tucked away in a corner near bargain, so when i took over bargain i would find almost a dozen security tags a shift. we've since moved it, but being near the main aisle has done nothing to deter our thieves. i'd find a tag here and there, nothing to get too upset about. but then there was sunday. oh, sunday, thou shalt live in infamy and go down in history as the day that B&NG found 88 security tags.

audio is on the outside wall, while kids is on the inside. i was on the inside cleaning up in kids when i noticed that some books were standing funny. i walked over and damn near had a heart attack. i gathered all the tags up (i had to get a bag, there were so many) and brought them to management's attention.

something like this doesn't happen in one night (or i hope not. you'd need a shopping cart to carry all that product) so we figured it had to be over a few days. i was in the department for maybe five minutes and that's the first thing i see. you mean to tell me the woman that runs childrens area and the four other people that are regularly scheduled back there never noticed that? way to keep an eye peeled.

that's about $3000 in loss right there.

[Ms. Pounce]

Rut roh rorge... Are you sure it's not one of the staff?

[Andara Bledin]

Methinks you need a security camera pointed to audio, with a monitor at the counter, with the audio section further from the door.

Just being able to stop and possibly prosecute a few of them should bring a lot of the rest of it to a trickle.

^-.-^

[KaeZoo]

In keeping with my cultured reputation as a Wanna-be Electronics Guru, I offer the following irrelevant correction:

It's "gigawatt".

[Lehk]

In keeping with my cultured reputation as a Wanna-be Electronics Guru, I offer the following irrelevant correction:

It's "gigawatt".

it can be said either way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigowatt#.22Jiggawatt.22

[Andara Bledin]

Ah, yes, but it's still spelled the same.

^-.-^

[B&NGoddess]

In keeping with my cultured reputation as a Wanna-be Electronics Guru, I offer the following irrelevant correction:

It's "gigawatt".

i was trying to channel doc brown a la back to the future.

as for cameras, yeah, that'd be great. except the music dept. doesn't even deserve cameras apparently. our store is relatively untouched by modern technology.

[Luna]

We were told to do a VHS relay in the music dept. at my old B&N store. The shelves were ridiculous. They were metal, with a slot for each single VHS in a slight overlapping formation. You slid a single VHS in each slot. They were arranged in such a way that each VHS was slightly overlapped by the other creating a sort of fan eefect. It looked beautiful when set up, but it was terrible to merchandise. If you needed to put a VHS next to another, and there was no empty spot - you had to move each VHS down a slot for the entire 12 foot row. Rinse wash and repeat for the entire shipment. And then there were the double VHS packs that didn't go in the slot...ack.

Anyway, we were told to install different top shelves for the box sets b/c apparently the wrong ones were there and the box sets kept falling off. So here comes Luna one day with the screwdriver to help the music manager take down the old shelving. I unscewed the first shelf, and when I lifted it - maybe about 100 tags fell to the floor.

Now B&N music tags were security tags and shelving tags in one. So it had the title, artist and sku# on the tag. $3000 dollars later, as I frantically started throwing VHS on the floor and removing ALL the VHS shelving....the music manager was given an ars reaming by the SM.

There is ONE entrance to the music department. Unless you can fly and jump over the wall. There is always someone in there. Yet music manager had no idea it was going on. And the department was as small as your average little tiny mall store. There were NO blind spots and NO hiding places. It's not like they were found in a remote place in the surrounding 25,000 sq feet of store.

But the senior management did think it was internal. After a couple of firings, and when the music manager was fired - tags weren't found anymore I was told.

I wanted to puke seeing that. And they had no cameras at the time despite our pleas. All of that was installed after I quit, along with security. *sigh*

[Hraesvelg7]

I can imagine 88 CDs being stolen in one day. Especially if it's on a tuesday, when the new stuff goes out. I actually thought that was par for the course among music retailers.
We used to regularly find 20 or more broken CD keepers every day at my old store. That doesn't count the ones people just walked out the door with, not bothering to break them open. Our shrink numbers in music were usually around 50%, meaning half of it was stolen. It was even worse with the test prep and nursing books, almost all of them were stolen as fast we could put them out.
Ugh, I hated Borders so much.