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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

I've never had a good experience in Staples. I really try. Every time I go in I think it will be different. It never is. I don't know why I do it. They're just really close and handy for those odd things. It just never ends well. The last time i went in was for pens. It ended with me arguing with a security guard who decided i'd been looking at the pens too long. He stood there yelling at me while I purchased my pens, threatening to call the police...i'm still not sure why...and the cashier was trying his best to be polite and completely uninvolved.

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Sometimes it feels like you can have someone who takes their job extremely seriously to a fault or someone who couldn't care less and lets everything bad happen, no way to have someone right in the Goldilocks zone.

Yeah, pretty sure that's was what it was. It was pretty quiet in there. As soon as I walked in the security guard started following me. He asked me immediately what I was doing there and what I wanted...I said pens, so he escorted me to the pens aisle,.stood there for a bit getting impatient before telling me to hurry up. I said straight up to him that if he was suspicious of me and wanted to watch me fine, but not to sit there and tell me to hurry up. That was when he started yelling.

He never really did anything just stood there and yelled. I just kind of ignored him at that point. I found the pens I wanted and he followed me back to the register. That was when the threats of calling the cops came.

I dunno, I could understand if I'd looked or acted shady or something. But I was on my way home from work, dressed reasonably, shaved and groomed and all that.

I would have told him to call the cops honestly. What are they going to do? You've done nothing wrong, in fact, you're the victim of harassment. In a just world they would ream out the idiot security guard for wasting police resources.

I did...several times and laughed at him and asked what he planned to tell them i'd done. By that point, i was feeling fairly adversarial and was in the process of purchasing the needed pens, so i stopped giving a shit. He didn't have an answer for that but he pulled his phone out and everything just, didn't dial for some reason.

I even told him i'd wait for them to show up and we could all have a nice talk. By that point, the cashier had finished, he'd made no move to call so i left. He kinda followed me to the door and just stood there while i walked away.

I feel kinda bad for the cashier. He was young, looked like a highschool student or something. He looked really uncomfortable and really tried his best to be completely uninvolved. I was extremely polite with him. Told him to have a good evening and thanked him profusely for the pens. This seemed to anger the security guard more.

Doubly ridiculous considering that people who spend too long in the pens aisle are Staples's main customer base.

That sounds like a really weird experience.

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