so the security guard can't actually guard nor offer security, all he can do is offer assistance?

Cool! I'm headed to Target baby, PM me if anyone wants some high dollar alcohol, electronics, or anything else.

Pick me up a few bottles of that tequila will ya? at $45 a bottle it must be good!!

Reminds me of this post. (It seems to be deleted, but it's still in the Google cache. We really need to ask Jax about those deletions.)

I hate these situations.

I think the policies are stupid.

However, they are the policies and Target has every right to fire him if he violated the policy.

When I worked at K-mart we didn't have the "catch thieves" people working there very often either. We were allowed to ask a person to stop, ask them if they 'forgot to pay' for something but if they said no and kept walking, oh well.

It always made me laugh when we had to watch the security video that laments over how much money is lost to theft each year.

yeah, they aren't actually deleted just the pointer to the article seems deleted.

After the edit work around it is back:


Need to see if it stays around or gets auto-deleted

and we would all love to have Jax comment on that and the rest of the bugs here as well as deleting the extra categories that we can't delete due to a bug.

This is really amazing to me. I understand the need for policies but this was an obvious reason to stop someone.

Thank God you can't buy alcohol here in Jersey at Target.

2many: stock up on some Stoli for me, yeah?

What time you want me over, baby? ;)

It's true you can't do a single thing unless they cross the threshold. However, I had no idea only "certain" people could actually do anything. What is the purpose then? He did the right thing.

Now, 2Many...Lark and I looking into getting a Hi-Def TV, we will meet you there....

:( Here, the average bottle of half-decent tequila is $40. :(

Sometimes, the alcohol tax gets me down.

hell yes he did the right thing. i am glad that Target did what they did. it goes to show the world how badly written their policies are. too bad the guy had to lose his job but it exposed the idiocracy. Target would rather have her walk around the store with alcohol, leave and have somebody else deal with the consequences than get their own hands dirty and risk 'bad press'. but it ended up a total backfire. score. send in the clowns.

Another link that I had to undelete is this one:


an employee stops a shoplifter while he was off the clock and off company property and then gets fired on Christmas Eve for his troubles.

I don't understand why he was a guard who wasn't allowed to stop people. I blame the morons at the Consumerist for their stupidity in attacking stores with a 'stop a customer' approach but that's another topic.

I've stopped people before, and was rewarded by my company for doing so when they were a shoplifter. It wasn't my job but I did what was right. Then again, I've worked at one place whose policy on robbery was quite literally "Ask the nice man holding the gun whether he'd like the cash in paper or plastic."

Reason? Becuase no job is worth a life. If someone says they have a gun, you don't play the odds, you don't question it, you allow them to go and help them get out as calmly as possible.

Is the neighborhood such a place that their particular Target has adopted such an approach? Could the store managers have decided that only those people who are trained (and paid enough) to risk themselves take on this responsibility? It's easy to judge without knowing the facts, actually, I think I would have done the same thing.

If this guard put hiimself and other customers in danger by stopping this girl where he did and without following other policies he wasn't aware of (such as 'Get help first' or 'Never around other customers') then they might have a case to dismiss him. If they are simply taking a hard line on 'You aren't allowed to stop them no matter what' then they should examine the situation more closely.

The store would rather lose a bottle of liquor, than have an employee get hurt or killed, and have to pay out for disability or wrongful death.

Underaged girl shoplifts alcohol

"Security guard" stops her

He gets fired for stopping her

/smacks head. WTF is wrong with Target? This guy should have got a raise.

still shaking my head over this.

If I were this girl's father, I'd have a few things to say to the idiot manager of that store.

If I were this girl's mother, I'd have a few things to say to her with a belt.

Typical "Use the rules over your brain" mentality that is taking over our society. I teach my kids to think, and they do. Hopefully they will be in a position to fix something like this someday.

Hopefully, thinking for ourselves won't land people in jail too easily in the future.

But if they did nothing to stop the girl, and she got drunk and drove and killed someone, could they not then be sued and held liable for providing the alcohol?