They can’t hold you hostage. Oh wait, it’s the USA . Maybe that’s legal now. I don’t know.
Yeah the US can make anything legal and the citizens don’t do much. I’m pretty sure they still have the death penalty in some states
How has the fire department not come down on them like a ton of bricks?! Maybe the fire exits are accessible, but those are meant to be additional exits, not the primary means of egress.
I cannot believe they stay in business. The first time I have to scan my receipt to leave, fuck that noise, never going back.
On top of all that, several idiots at Safeway had to approve this thing. This shouldn’t have made it past a loss prevention idiot bringing it up in a meeting. “Jesse, what are you talking about?”
Yes I am.
Yeah, no, if I’m trapped in a store, I’m kicking the door in
You cannot stop me, that’s false imprisonment and you have no authority in this jurisdiction. I will be leaving, or I will be pressing charges. Your choice. That’s not even close to enough for reasonable suspicion (which is debatably actionable anyway in most circumstances).
Unfortunately you have limited opportunity to make a fuss. Looks like they can claim the security guard can let you out.
Or maybe pull the fire alarm, idk. I don’t see how blocking the exits for an emergency is acceptable
Speaking of fires, what time does that store close and the people leave?
More than one way to skin a building.
So…fire hazard. Got it
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Experienced similar at a Vons in Long Beach, CA. Not only that, but leaving from the checkout was itself a small maze-like experience. This won’t last long once people die or are injured.
So false imprisonment is acceptable now if it’s a corporation doing it?
I think I’d just leave though the fire exit.
Beat me to this response by an hour. Who the fuck do they think they are, right? What if I can’t find what I’m looking for, or was just browsing?
My thought was checking if their pharmacy has my meds in stock
This too, especially the way that a lot of retail has started to graft pharmacies onto their stores.
I have to go to a bunch of pharmacies every month to try to find Adderall
People go to grocery stores to just browse? I’m not defending this, I just thought it an odd argument.
If I went into a store that demanded money to regain my freedom, they’d find themselves in a precarious legal situation pretty quick. Unlawful detention quickly turns into kidnapping charges, or, an “I feared for my life” defense (2A) situation.
Not to browse, but I’ve left empty handed (without shoplifting!) plenty of times if what I wanted wasn’t in stock.
“Hmmm, I’m looking for this thing. I hope they have it” and then they don’t
Not quite like window shopping in a department store per se, but essentially the same if I can’t find what I was looking for and search for alternatives on the way out. I’ve gotten weird looks sometimes when this happens, including cases where I’m asked for a receipt. “You didn’t have what I was looking for” or “What receipt? I didn’t buy anything” seem to satisfy staff inasmuch as I’m not a tiny person and aren’t inclined to take shit from rent-a-cop security or management - just try to detain me, I’m not waiting for the cops, I’m dealing with it first hand right away.
People go into stores to see what it’s like. They may leave for reasons like not finding what they wanted or being offended at being treated as a criminal. If I saw this crap, I can see my reaction likely being to just leave and go somewhere I’m more welcome
My wife and I just yesterday stopped at a Target while on a 5 hour drive. We were looking for a specific pharmacy item. They didn’t have it at that store. We didn’t need anything else so we didn’t buy anything. That might not be as common in a grocery store, but it’s not unheard of.
And then there’s always the chance of “I just got an emergency phone call” and need to forget about shopping…
Aaaaah you definitely can’t resolve any situation without sprinkling a little bit of violence, that’s how it should be
When the situation is a corporation imprisoning you arbitrarily, I don’t think violence is unwarranted or unprovoked.
It is because no one present likely has anything to do with the decision, and even if someone is actively restraining you there’s a reasonable amount of resistance and while that includes mild violence it does not include shooting someone or similar. Unless you really need to be somewhere reacting to that with extreme violence is completely unhinged.
Maybe mild violence is what you meant, but that can easily be read differently.
New gates at the entrance automatically swing open when customers walk in, but they’re set to trigger an alarm if someone attempts to back out.
This sounds like a great way to troll them. There’s nothing illegal or even just wrong about deciding to turn around when entering a store, so alarm away! What do I care, I have time.
I already set off alarms all the time at stores with these gates. They seem to be set to close completely after every customer enters. Or maybe the ones near me just need their motion sensors adjusted, to be a little more sensitive. Either way, I just don’t stop walking, and usually end up hip-checking it out of the way since they’re still trying to close when I approach. They’re not difficult to open and they don’t hurt. But forcing them open (by just walking through them) sets off the alarm.
I don’t even bother slowing down or acting surprised. I just keep moving to whatever I was going to buy while the alarm blares behind me. It’ll stop after a few seconds, meaning it only seems to go off while the gate is actively being held open. If someone truly wanted to be annoying and malicious, I guess they could just set a shopping cart inside the gate as they walk through, so an employee would actually need to manually intervene and move the cart.
This is standard practice in europe
One more lie from reddit, for karma. Pathetic.
The one way gates are standard, the only exit being ticket scan isn’t. The change is supposedly only the one way gates, so they’re half truthing to pretend it’s normal.
never in my life living in EU countries have I witnessed such bullshit
The only remarkable thing about this coming from the perspective of Sweden would be if there is no ungated exit, for example at the manned checkout. Having one-way gates at the entrance has been standard practice for as long as I’ve been alive, and basically ever since self-checkout became a thing, they have been receipt-gated.
You’ve always been able to exit by the manned checkout though as for obvious reasons you can’t imprison people who visit your store
Yeah I saw that… The fuck it is not.
Jeeze people trying to argue that Europe is different from america I get but not pretending you get locked in grocery stores to do so.I have seen scan gates after self checkout counters before. In Albert Heiijn shops in Amsterdam and in Lidl Shops in Zürich.
But Coop and Migros Shops don’t have them in Switzerland. I think the 7/11 in Copenhagen also didn’t but I’m not sure of my memory.
Those gates are coming to switzerland too. Example: The food section of Coop-city Fribourg, and the Migros of the train-station in Fribourg.
I have to go to Uni Fribourg soon anyway, I’ll try to swing by to have a look. Thanks for the hint!
We have a scangate at my local edeka. But you could still just walk by the normal checkouts if you don’t have anything
But you could still just walk by the normal checkouts if you don’t have anything
Ah yeah, of course. I thought that was the same in the location of the article, but maybe I misunderstood and that’s the main issue.
After re-reading it I’m still confused by this paragraph:
During my Monday visit, I purchased a kombucha and went through the check-out line without incident. (No high-tech gates block the exit if you go through the line like normal.) But for journalism’s sake, I then headed back into the store to try going out the new gate.
“You didn’t have what I wanted at a price-point I found acceptable, but that’s all right - I came prepared with full camping gear and my own sleeping bag. Don’t worry about it - you’ll hardly notice me sticking around, possibly for ever.”
Yeah never purchase and you can never leave. Just beg for food from those that want to leave desperately enough. They get their receipt and you get their items.
And you repay the establishment for the inconvenience of your unlawful imprisonment by advertising their special services to all the other visiting patrons. That seems fair.
I mean, I do have to wonder how many people with physical or mental disabilities are effectively just going to be trapped in here.
Also get the sense that they’ll have more and more and more and more and more security in and around the building as younger people start passing around exploits in the security setup.
Well, I mean, even if the thing has access to a shared PoS DB using properly randomized, sufficiently long and non-sequential transaction tokens, it’s still deliciously susceptible to simple malicious compliance: Find the cheapest single item carried by the store, fill up an entire basket with them sumbitches, line up each item separated by a divider and insist on a receipt for each separate transaction to “prepare for any future need to check if the store carries anything i actually want while maintaining strict compliance with store policies”. Then, head outside and start distributing whatever it is for free to other prospective customers and use that to strike up a conversation about the recent changes. You never know. People might get ideas.
Which means you’re going to have security guards checking receipts, not unlike at Krogers or Costco.
And I’m sure they’re very aggressive with anyone who looks criminally young or tan.
You’ve got security guards at Kroger?
Here in LA, we have security guards at virtually every store: grocery, liquor, convenience…as well as fast food restaurants.
Just about all we’ve got. Like, three store cops for every one clerk.
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Is this not illegal as hell?
Oh for sure this would be unlawful imprisonment and probably break some minor fire codes but who cares about that kind of stuff these days.
There is profit at stake!
Yeah like the time a book store locked me and my wife inside. I pushed on the door not knowing it was locked and it broke open. Guess due to the emergency exit bar. They got pissed but I told them they illegal locked us in and fuck off.
This isn’t a minor fire code. but a death trap
The article says nothing about emergency exits being locked. If that was the only exit available to me then I’d use it and let the store employees deal with the alarm.
And for that very reason, it’s also extremely illegal. If the fire exit is the only way to get out in the event of a fire, and it’s blocked by said fire…
Huh. I’m reminded of Roller Coaster Tycoon, which has scenarios where you have to have a certain number of guests in your park at a specific time; and a valid strategy is to get enough people to come into your park, and then delete the path behind them so that they literally can’t get out.
Doing so will cause a decrease in your park rating, When guests are trying to leave but unable to find the exit, it lowers the rating significantly. There’s a reason every guest goal scenario has a park rating requirement as well.
It is effective up to a point. It takes time before the guests realize they’re trapped and kill your rating. You have to time it right. The guest spawn rate calculations include the rating, so a low rating also reduces the number of guests who spawn. Trap the guests too soon and you’ll never get enough.
Trapping guests with no entry signs or removing the route to the exit will ruin your park in time. It can be effective in some specific circumstances but not many.
True, though I think you might be able to use entertainers to overcome the rating drops long enough? I’m not sure.
No, at least not beyond a certain point.
Entertainers increase guest happiness. Happiness is part of the rating, so entertainers do cause an increase. Most increases are capped, so you can only get so many points for happiness.
Lost guests lowers the rating directly. As I recall the lost guest penalty is uncapped. Blocking the entrance usually results in a park rating of 0 in the fullness of time, regardless of the park.
There are strange manipulations that allow guests to be trapped without the game realizing, which avoids the penalty. But as a normal player there’s no action that overcomes the lost guest penalty.
Are you really playing Roller Coaster Tycoon if you aren’t torturing your guests
Peak American entrpreneurship
That’s just trapping them inside. I’d argue peak is making the exit for every ride the entrance to the next ride. They have to pay their way out or stay stuck in line.
If you’re really concerned with people not getting stuck you can have three ride entrances for the single square of path at the exit with different costs. They get ‘choices’ then.
You got me some nostalgia there… As a kid in the 90s, I learned HTML to make my own Roller Coaster Tycoon website on geocities 😂
Nice. I learned Qbasic to make a Pokedex.
Looks like a little glassbreak keychain tool would make for a quick and crunchy exit.
Me personally, I’d start kicking and hospital bills means a reason to sue.
