Wait On Line To Show Your Costco Receipt Or You Will Be Assaulted

[fma_fanatic]

http://consumerist.com/2010/06/wait-...assaulted.html

Long story short, the letter writer/submitter goes to Costco return some items and get an item, gets impatient and cuts the line.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

There should be a Zero Tolerance Policy for this type of employee behavior.

I concur. The girl at the door shouldn't have grabbed her purse and tried to detain her.

There should also be a zero-tolerance policy for line cutting. She's not the only person whose "time is important."

The letter writer and the door guard deserve each other.

[draggar]

Yep - bad move on both people. But - two wrongs don't make a right.

[Jack]

I'm unsure whether there were two wrongs in the first place. After very cursory research (because I don't quite care that much) I can't find the conditions that Costco members are held to, so I'm not sure whether a Costco member has previously agreed to stop for receipt inspection at the door. If there is no such condition: Regardless of what anyone feels, the pure fact is that the store has no power to stop a person or to make them prove that they've paid for something unless the store has seen and verified that the person has taken merchandise, kept it thereafter (i.e. didn't ditch it when they weren't looking), and tried to exit the store with it after passing all possible points of sale without paying. The door greeter needs to understand the scope of her duties, which I assume doesn't include LP, and that there can be legal and internal trouble for her if she tries to do LP's job. Woman may be sucky for not wanting to play along, but it's up to her and the whole situation wouldn't have escalated if the employee had understood that.

[dendawg]

Just found this in the Fark thread about this very same subject. See if you can see what movie they paraphrased?

Son, we work in a Costco that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by people with markers. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Sra. Almafuerte? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the receipt checkers. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, reduces shrinkage. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that exit, you need me on that exit. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent reducing shrinkage. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under an electric blanket from the very store that I protect, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a marker, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

[fma_fanatic]

Having had a Costco card, I don't ever remember seeing anything in any of the member agreements that says that I have to wait to be inspected. However, it has been pointed out in various posts on boards that I do frequent that Costco, Sam's Club, BJs and any other wholesale club is a private club, so they are not privy to the same rules that public stores are. Whether or not I agree with that is another matter.

If I'm walking out with my month or two's worth of groceries from Sam's (like I probably will be tomorrow), yes, I stop. The only time I haven't stopped is when I've gotten medicine there. No one has said anything to me then, but I think they're more interested in just checking and putting a big ugly line through the receipt. No one has ever really scrutinized my cart.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I dunno...I don't think it's unreasonable that a person with one item should be able to slip out the other door. Perhaps the writer was slightly sucky in doing so without being invited to by the employee, but the employee's actions far outweigh the customer's in suck factor, in my opinion.

Hey, Dendawg, do you have a link to the Fark thread? That could be fun.

Never mind, I found it. http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=5450325
(Wow, that's a lotta comments...! Sometimes it amazes me what stories get the most posts...)

[Sliceanddice]

well she did show her the receipt... i actually think the suck is soully on the employee yeah it wasn't the exit that everyone else was using but it was an exit in common traffic in fact it states in the letter/article it was in between the Line Exit and the Entrance. obviously it is used.