This is one of those small, but important, life lessons: When you buy a new item of clothing, make sure the checker removes the security tag.The other day I was in my closet, putting away laundry, when I saw a black security tag staring back at me on a skirt I bought last summer. I don't know what haunted me more--the fact that I didn't have the receipt or that I had worn this out in public several times. (Cue "loser" finger on forehead.)
The sad thing is that these annoying little things are becoming more and more pointless. There are actually tutorials on the web on how to remove them (I didn't take the chance,) most of which have the disclaimer "Don't Steal!" (Um, OK.) When I left the store many months ago, the tag must have set off an alarm, right? Does that even matter anymore? Guess not. After all, my old Blackberry used to set off store alarms all the time and nobody cared.
So today I put the skirt in a bag and sheepishly returned to the store from which I bought it. The alarm went off when I went in. No one cared. I had to go through another section with a sensor and it went off again. No one cared. Good thing I'm not a thief. I had half a mind to just jump back and forth in front of the sensor and see how long it took before somebody noticed.
When I found someone to help, he didn't care that I had no receipt. When I bought a couple of items, the other person who helped me didn't care that I had a piece of clothing in a bag with their store name on it.
The whole experience was a little weird--and eye-opening. And the reason I'm not putting the name of the store in this entry is obvious. They just make it way too easy to walk out with items you haven't paid for! (That's YOU, the thieves. Not me, the gal who goes out in public wearing security tags.)
2 comments:
I had the same experience last year buying a coat for my daughter. We set the alarm off leaving the store, but when no one seemed to notice or care (and knowing we weren't trying to steal anything), we left. Once we got home, we realized the tag was still on the coat. (Then the alarm made sense.) =) Same thing when we went back - no one seemed at all bothered that we set off the alarm. Maybe we just didn't look suspicious?? =)
That is what I was thinking when it happened to me. I didn't look like a shoplifter. Although, what does a shoplifter look like? I've heard that some people do it for kicks instead of need.
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