Brought to you by my discovery that some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law.
Does working as a security guard and having the company that contracted your company trying to get you to basically be their own personal police force count? I worked for a security company hired by Longs and the loss prevention manager of the Longs kept trying to get us to do things that, in California anyway, are illegal as a security guard. Such as digging through someone’s personal belongings. We can ask to look inside, but not touch, and we really can’t force them to comply. We could not arrest people. We couldn’t have weapons (not even allowed to carry a pocket knife while on duty with our guard cards). Little Napoleonic complex motherfucker didn’t care. He would insist that it was legal and we would just tell him to talk to our boss because he isn’t our supervisor, manager or even part of our company.
I used to work retail loss prevention and had several of the exact opposite- we’d get contract security to supplement our staff as a visual deterrent and they would then think they were given carte blanche to hassle whoever the fuck they wanted. It really didn’t take long to realize that as long as I treated shoplifters with respect, more often than not they would come with, take care of the paperwork, get their ticket from the real cops and then be on their way unless the jurisdiction required they get booked. But there would always be that one fuckhead trying to steal thousands of dollars worth of shit and then act like we had no right to stop or detain them . I know it varies by where you live, but we were fully allowed to make citizens arrests and would do so daily. In 21 years I got subpoenaed four times and testified once. Never lost one case.
