Hi Folks,
Spoiler alert—this particular post is not about writing.
As you probably will hear in the tone of this post, I am so annoyed with Walmart I can barely express myself in words. But hand gestures don’t translate well into blog posts, so I’m going to try. For a long time I’ve had in the back of my mind that I should boycott Walmart and encourage others to do so as well for various reasons. You know all those reasons, so I won’t bother enumerating them here. Today, that simmering notion was catapulted to the forefront by a Walmart employee.
I’d spent the better part of an hour moseying the aisles, picking up a few groceries that appealed at the moment to my taste buds and finally making my way to the electronics department. I had in mind a very specific item. I found it. The price was no lower than most other times, but it was exactly what I wanted so I didn’t mind. (There’s an old saying that a woman will pay $10 for something she doesn’t need if it’s half its regular price, and a man will pay $20 for a $10 item if he really needs it or it’s precisely what he wants. I believe, for the most part, that’s true.)
Anyway, I found precisely what I wanted and proceeded to the checkout. The cashier I chose was about 15 feet from the exit door, where stood a woman with a scanner and a yellow highlighter. It’s important to note that she watched as I checked out. She watched the cashier scan each item, place it in the appropriate bag, then set each bag in the shopping cart. She also watched the cashier scan the electronic item and place it back in the cart. At one point her steady gaze caught my attention and I nodded to her. She nodded back and smiled.
The transaction completed, I pushed my cart away from the cashier’s station and toward the exit. The woman who had watched the entire transaction and with whom I had only seconds earlier exchanged a silent greeting, put up one hand:
“Just a moment, Sir. I need to see your receipt.”
“What? Why?”
“Because this is the season when people like to steal things.”
I pointed back in the direction I’d come. “But you just watched me check out. You watched the girl scan this, ring it up and put it in the shopping cart. You watched me pay for it.”
She smiled and held out her hand. “Doesn’t matter.”
I handed her the receipt. That was my only mistake, as I’ll explain shortly.
She closely eyed the numbers on the box containing the electronic item, wrote the last four numerals of the serial number on the receipt, drew a large X on the receipt with her yellow highlighter, then looked at me. “You’re free to go.”
What? I’m free to go? “Sure, whatever,” I said and left, feeling every bit the criminal.
Now I’ve been guilty of many things, but never, not once in my life, have I ever stolen anything. By the time I reached my pickup at the end of the parking lot, I was simmering. I was dressed in jeans and a light sweatshirt, and even with the cold breeze blowing out of the north, I thought I might spontaneously combust.
I loaded my other purchases into my pickup, closed and locked the door, then turned around to wheel the cart back to a parking lot stall. When I got there I retrieved the electronic item, strode back into the store and had the lady at the entrance put a sticker on the box so I could return it.
At the service desk, the girl asked whether anything was wrong with the item.
“No. But the woman at the exit suspected me enough so that I no longer want it.”
She returned my money and I left.
But you will remember I said earlier that handing the woman at the exit my receipt was my only mistake. It was. As is all too often the case, on the way home I realized a couple of basic truths:
Despite what Napolitano and some others would have us believe, we still live in a free country. The woman stationed at the exit in Walmart had no right to detain me. She had a right to say something like “Have a nice day” and then shut her pie hole. If I had it to do over again, when she held up her hand and said, “Just a moment, Sir. I need to see your receipt,” I’d have kept walking. If she’d insisted or tried physically to stop me, I’d have said calmly, “Ma’am, you have no right to detain me. I’ve made a legal purchase and I’m leaving the store. If you would like to call the police, I’ll wait in the parking lot. Your choice.”
Unfortunately, there won’t be a next time, at least not at Walmart.
I don’t allow unreasonable searches (e.g., searches without enough reasonable suspicion to create probable cause) on my person at airports, and I most certainly will not allow unlawful detention in retail stores. I just have a feeling ol’ Sam Walton would be pretty ticked off himself.
‘Til next time, happy writing, and happy holidays.
Harvey
