Photo courtesy tiphut.com

Scams are used on a daily basis, but we usually don’t realize just how prevalent they are. I worked at a department store for about a year and within that time I became aware of many scams used in the store that I had previously been unaware of. From creative ways of stealing to intentionally short changing the cashier. Fortunately the store I worked in had some defense against the untrustworthy shopper.

Some of the scams were very simple. One day I was working as the store’s cart attendant. I was inside the building at the time a plump black lady riding one of the store’s electric wheel chairs was setting the alarm off as she was leaving the store. No one really suspected her, but the security guard at the door walked over to her to do a routine check of her bags and receipt any way. While the guard was checking the bags the woman pointed out that the chair she was riding had one of the magnetized stickers on it that would set off the alarm. Sure enough there were three of them. The woman was free to go and went to the parking lot to off load her bags and she left. I went out to the parking lot to retrieve the store’s electric wheel chair and drove it back in to the store, but as I entered the store the alarm was not set off by those magnetized stickers. I thought that was strange, so I told the security guard and she reviewed the recording of the shopper’s journey through the store. Sure enough the shopper was seen hiding DVDs and other merchandise in her over sized purse. The security guard then told me that sometimes thieves will buy electronics while riding the store’s wheel chair. When in the parking lot they will peel the magnetized stickers off of the merchandise and put them on the chairs with the intention of coming back another day to steal something. The stickers don’t really work because the merchandise they were attached to was demagnetized at the register upon purchase, but this technique gives the thieves an excuse to use when the alarm sounds as they leave the store.

Another scam people use at department stores is the short change. There are many variations of it but they all have the same outcome, a short register. One version is when a scammer buys and item, lets say a soda for $1.00, and hands over a 5 dollar bill to pay. As the cashier goes to get $4 in change, the scammer asks if he can trade in some ones for a $10. The cashier gets the $14 dollars for the scammer and counts the ones to make sure that there are 10. The cashier catches that there are only 9 and asks for one more dollar, but the scammer also has a $10 bill he wants changed with the ones the cashier is holding and hands the cashier the $10 and $1 to make $20. So the cashier hands over a $20 bill. If you didn’t catch it read this paragraph again to find the $10 dollars missing from the register.

Fortunately the store did have its defense against thieves and scammers in the form of a undercover security guard, we’ll call him Joe. This guy probably had the most fun job in the whole store. Usually he would shadow shifty people as they browsed merchandise and if they pocketed something he would follow them to the front of the store and slap some handcuffs on them as they tried to make their exit. Then he would take them to a holding room where they were cuffed to a chair and waited for the police to arrive. This was very entertaining to watch and now that I think of it I’m glad that my store was able to provide such entertainment. Another job Joe has is to find people on the recordings in the act of stealing. If what he sees is bad enough he can black list them. When he does this he informs the other store locations of his findings so that when the criminal goes back to a store someone can call the cops and have them arrested.

Ultimately, the risk out weighs the rewards when it comes to stealing or scamming. Just don’t do it. It is a good way to get black listed and eventually arrested. So if you ever think about stealing something just remember, Joe is watching.