Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

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Less relevant, but reminds me of my all-time favorite grocery store LP encounter, near MIT. The chain was running this big promotion with lots of tear-open prize tickets that are either coupons or game board pieces, so I had been visiting often, to buy ramen noodles (one ticket per package!) and I had a small stack of coupons in my wallet. I was checking my coupons for this visit in the middle of a center aisle, and was returning my wallet to my back pocket, when this nice middle-aged probably church-going woman store employee walked up, looked at me, and the "oh!" expression on her face said she was very surprised that I was stealing. She hurried off. When I get to the checkout, this middle-aged guy acting a bit like a drunk comes behind me and boxes me in, by sprawling across both the lane and the conveyor. The young checkout woman says to him, annoyed, "Not you again." The guy strikes up a conversation with me. "That's a nice backpack. ... If I had a backpack like that, people would think I was stealing something." It was an ordinary cheap bare-bones store-branded backpack. He's getting close to illegally detaining me, which would go extremely badly for him. To de-escalate, I do my best folksy code-switching, and pretend not to know what's going on. My hyperobservant mode also kicked in: there was abnormal maneuvers of multiple people from the other side of the checkouts. One young guy coming up with the others, my eyes dark to him, he sees I see him, and for some reason gets a look like he's noping the f right out of whatever is going down, and he spins 180 and quickly walks away. Eventually, this friendly and sensible person, who I took to be the manager on duty, comes up on the other side of the checkout, and we have a friendly conversation about the ticket promotion. I think she immediately realized that I was a good-natured MIT type, not a shoplifter. And I would guess she thought the LP guy was a clown who risks getting the store sued someday.

Appreciate the story, but what's the hangup about naming these companies?

It's not really a secret that retail LP generally abuses their role across the board and allows prejudace to run rampant in its ranks, giving that it is almost entirely comprised of people from backgrounds that lack any higher education and recieved a few months training at best to do what they do. Heck, step in any active American mall and you will encounter mostly white men who didn't quite have the chutzpa for the police academy, but still carry the guilty-til-proven-otherwise attitude.

Source: I was LP briefly for TJX companies and left due to the rampant and accepted bigotry I encountered with them. In their case, it was that I was repeatedly told to target black women if I wanted to meet quota each month, since their own numbers said most apprehensions were black women and not one person in the LP heirarchy knew what confirmation bias or survivor bias was. Also, yes, they have quotas. I was put on their equivalent of a PIP the second month I was there for not meeting mine. We can rest assured that Kroger, Walmart, etc, use lots of the same tactics and quiet codes.

> I was repeatedly told to target black women

not that i'm that surprised, but still shocking to read such things in 2025.

I should have specified that I worked LP in the early 2000's but I doubt much has changed, since bigotry and racism do not seem to ever go away, especially when it's woven into the fabric of an institution.

Lasted a mere 6 months at that job before I decided I could no longer turn a blind eye, since by then it had become clear to me that the problem was not isolated to just a few LP associates.

My observations (Canada, bigger city): The LP people you see (ie in "uniform") are often visible minorities, often women. They're positioned to remind you "we're watching!" not pursue any action. At best they'll call emergency services (a health event as common as theft). The covert LP people seem to be big, white, young males - the same type you see at popular gyms. They're still easy to spot because you see a young dude putting the oddest selection of products in their basket (always a basket) as the follow a "suspicious" person around. Their game seems to typically be stop the known thieves, recover stuff and kick them out of the store. Physical confrontations are limited because of liability and only rarely do they call the cops. I'd expect the experience is different in the US or other environments.

> the same type you see at popular gyms. They're still easy to spot because you see a young dude putting the oddest selection of products in their basket (always a basket) as the follow a "suspicious" person around

Hah, I was in JC Penney and I grabbed a handkerchief for a suit, and I packed it into my fist, to do a magic trick type thing. Went to find my fiancee, felt someone behind me. Except I looked back, and he hurriedly asked a sales associate some benign question about where to find X. I kept walking to my fiancee, who was looking at jewelry, and when I got there he ducked behind the counter, as if he worked there, and was poking at the register and talking to another sales associate. I pulled the handkerchief out of my closed fist, did some lame "ta da" thing to my fiancee, and dude looks disappointed and walks off, no longer pretending to be either an employee or customer.

> what's the hangup about naming these companies?

Without snark I think we're on a site where being anti-corporate could hurt someones stock investments, naming companies is seen as rude.

> Appreciate the story, but what's the hangup about naming these companies?

1. Social media today has strong mob behavior, which is one of the reasons I often default to not naming when you want to talk about a more general problem. In this case, it would probably be OK, but I defaulted to not. Think of it like a blame-free post-mortem for the org to learn from.

2. I don't want to invite more grief from elements the stores and their bureaucratic mechanisms, if the mention of them online percolates up to corporate. The-coverup-is-worse-than-the-crime is a commonplace thing in corporate hierarchies, and if we're talking about a potentially dim/petty/underhanded person with access to power (e.g., the high-tech systems including features like facerec and maintaining profiles of ordinary people, and some data shared between companies) that could be a whole lot of grief for you. You can possibly eventually find out what happened, and sue, but the harm to you will be done, so better to just stay off the radar of sketchy employees of stores you frequent.

I get this and tend to not name names either, but at the same time I also think the mob like behavior is a symptom of the rampant abuse. What's the old MLK Jr quote? So honestly I've been asking myself if not naming names is actually the best strategy here. I tend to also be willing to give benefit of the doubt. But it is clear that people are taking advantage of this behavior as well. So I guess the question is which failure mode is worse: corporations being caught in the cross-fire or corporations taking advantage of good nature? (There's definitely more complexity than this one question)

It’s common sense to avoid putting things in your pocket in stores. What’s with the creepy write up about this? You sound like you were going to spaz out and attack multiple people if this escalated. Why not simply open your backpack and show them what’s inside? A lot of MIT types look like they haven’t been outside in months , school shooter types , so I don’t get that analogy either.

> When I get to the checkout, this middle-aged guy acting a bit like a drunk comes behind me and boxes me in

Is this a new jobs program? I've been seeing a lot of these middle aged/elderly guys with "Loss Prevention" on their shirts walking the aisles aimlessly in supermarkets and department stores. What's the point really when there are cameras everywhere?

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