There are several things I am seeing in my store with increasing frequency:
1. Customers coming into the store and INTENTIONALLY spilling things. Sometimes we have 6- 7 major spills in our store during a shift. I don't know if this is a distraction thing for shoplifters or what.
2. Customers loading up a cart and getting to the register and all of a sudden their debit/credit card/EBT card "doesn't work" and we are left with a load of groceries to put back. This has happened at least 4 times this week in my store.
As for the spills happening intentional, I've never seen that. Sure, spills and other accidents occur, but not on purpose. When the card doesn't work it's for several reasons. Link goes down, the card system itself goes down, the customer doesn't have enough in the account, or the bank or EBT place makes a mistake. Most customers have the foresight to bring cash and/or their checkbook.
I worked for a competitor and we had this **** who was deliberately knocking over 300 cc jugs of detergent. Biggest mess you've ever seen. Our poor maintenance guy was old and he would no sooner get one mess cleaned up when it would happen again. Happened 3 x in a row one time, I thought the guy was seriously gonna have a stroke ... They finally caught the asshat, it was a former disgruntled dept. manager.
