Best Buy Employee Fired for Stopping Laptop Thief

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


Its not about a criminal case.

It is about a civil case.

The money to pay for an employees liability will be much greater if they win a court case than it would be to simply pick up a new employee, especially in this economy.

And being a manager, he should of known these consequences, since they are a dogma at any big corporation.
Sad but true. You can thank our sue happy society for many ills.

reply to post by Caji316


Apparently, yes.


Are there no more good samaritan pardons or laws on the books anymore?

reply to post by Skewed


Every major corporation has done this and has fired employees for these incidents.
You may have trouble eating soon.

Originally posted by Miraj
reply to post by v1rtu0s0

 

Its not about a criminal case.

It is about a civil case.

The money to pay for an employees liability will be much greater if they win a court case than it would be to simply pick up a new employee, especially in this economy.

And being a manager, he should of known these consequences, since they are a dogma at any big corporation.
Sad but true. You can thank our sue happy society for many ills.

Exactly, it's our flawed system that has to change, not this good samaritan.

reply to post by alittleironic


Probably not, I've seen people steal stuff while working at Home Depot and all my employers did was ask me what was stolen and such..

This is the underlying problem of the American justice system.

China has 1.2 billion people. It has 50,000 lawyers.

U.S. has 300 million people. It has 500,000 lawyers.

Originally posted by Bringer
I know where I'll be stealing stuff from in the near future.

It's prolly all a sting operation to set you're azz up.

OP two paragraphs?

I can understand this policy very easily.

1. Guy sweat'in his addiction to heroin real bad.

2. Guy arms himself with S&W 38 snub.

3. Guy walks in to BestBuy. And baby you can guess the rest.

Its for employee protection. I have had years of experience in retail and food service. I'm not paid enough to risk my life for the man. I tell the younger kids to just walk away when a fight errupts or somebody insane starts stealing. Call the cops and thats it.

This must be a Corporate policy. I have a friend who works at bed, bath and bodyworks. She tells me that people come in there quite often with pillow cases, bags, whatever, filled em up with products and just walk out. She finally got fed up and called the cops on that last people to rob her store. She was worried that she would get fired because its against policy to call the cops. I couldn't believe it, and neither could the cops.

Having been in retail many years, i can tell you that things have changed and not always for the worse....25-30 years ago if an ink tag beeped at the door it was any and all sales associates job to go outside the store and confront the shopper. Too many times it was because the check out associate forgot to remove the ink tag(s) and wound up confronting and embarrassing a regular cutomer. I'm sure it resulted in many lawsuits, complaints, and illwill. In those days customer service was top priority and It just didn't do to confront and embarrass all these regular customers. So over thecourse of a few years policy changed. Not only were they risking customer relations they realized the liability for endangering their employees, so training became "DO NOT BE A HERO!!!" - "DO NOT CONFRONT A SHOPLIFTER!!!!"- "CALL SECURITY!!!THEY WILL HANDLE IT!!" So what this guy should've done is simply call security orput out a coded alert over the paging system and go back to work. Corporate HATES it when employees show "ownership" like he did. I remember one night when a sales associate felt threatened as she witnessed a shoplifter in action..no security on duty so she called 911.................she was fired within three days. Alex Jones only warns of a police state...all you have to do to experience one is work for a major dept store. The reason feel this change is not for the worse is because if an employee follows security rules,,, they are not endangered like they used to be. Sorry if this has been covered i haven't read the whole thread.

I would have titled this thread Best Buy Employee Fired for Assaulting Laptop Thief.

You can seriously injure somebody by tackling them. This fool salesman is lucky he didn't hurt anyone - over some electronic toys!

Originally posted by optimus primal
reply to post by Sinnthia

 

why buck it? it's the right thing to do.

How so?

we're told all our lives "do the right thing" " evil is allowed to exist because good men do nothing" . yet curiously doing the right thing often leads to negative consequences, losing your job among them. no one should ever be punished for doing the right thing. stopping thieves is the right thing.

I guess I do not see how this is the right thing to do. Do you think Bestbuy is successful because they are purely altruistic and moral? Who exactly is wronging whom?

as an aside, why are you and los lobos so against people doing the right thing?

I can only answer for me. I fail to see what is so right about it.

Originally posted by optimus primal
the right thing is pretty black and white in most situations.

This sentence just made my CPU burn out.

Hitting my turf guys!!!

Being a "higher up" for ___ ____ I have seen to many times where an associate was injured by some type of weapon or just assaulted, even though they approached a suspected thief in a non threatening manner.

To make a long story short, each person working in the retail field signs an employee handbook that specifically states that you cannot physically grab and/or impede them from leaving regardless of if they are stealing.

If you are assaulted, you do have the right to defend yourself.

I would take a person..(piece of flem) walking out with product from my store anytime rather than one of my associates getting hurt or worse.

If one associate opens up the floodgate without being held accountable for their actions, every other associate will do the same without them thinking their actions will be held against them.

BUT when someone gets hurt, the company allowed this to go one........

reply to post by Sinnthia


in regards to stopping thievery and other crimes committed in your presence. i don't see how that's confusing, perhaps i wasn't being specific enough.


as for how stopping thievery, or other crimes in your presence is the right thing to do. if you can't understand, it doesn't pay to explain.

Originally posted by optimus primal
in regards to stopping thievery and other crimes committed in your presence. i don't see how that's confusing, perhaps i wasn't being specific enough.


as for how stopping thievery, or other crimes in your presence is the right thing to do. if you can't understand, it doesn't pay to explain.

I do not think you understand. The reason Bestbuy has this policy is for liability reasons. They are well aware that it would take very little for your action to lead to a law suit costing far more than those two laptops. Bestbuy has obviously weighed the options and decided that they stand a better chance of suffering less harm if you do not act. So what is so right about it? Who are you helping? What good is it doing? There is a big difference between what is right and what you think is right. Bestbuy thinks it is right for you to let them walk out. So who are you to decide that Bestbuy is wrong about how Bestbuy might be damaged?

Do not respond just to blow it off with a "if you dont get it, I wont tell ya."

I am pretty sure I get why you think it is the right thing to do but I am not sure your logic follows through. If your help causes me more harm than your inaction, then how do you get to impose your morals on me, on my behalf, and cause me more harm?

reply to post by Sinnthia


and i quite clearly stated earlier in this very thread that what really needs to be done is laws need to be changed so that those stopping crimes from happening are not punished and neither are businesses who employ them.

but hey, you go on about how I dont get it.


edit to add: best buy doesn't get to say what is right or wrong, the law and personal morals do. best buy is just covering their butts with their policies in this area, which could be solved with changed laws.

stopping crimes, and not saying " it's not my problem" should never be punished. but hey, what do i know... you could get hurt doing good may as well not, right?

reply to post by randyvs


That is another good point. Suppose you attempt to apprehend this person and you get harmed. Then what? So Bestbuy is already ripping someone else off to cover the predicted shrinkage and you risk taking yourself away from people that need and love you. This whole "right thing to do" falls apart when you apply real world varaibles dont it.

Originally posted by optimus primal
reply to post by Sinnthia

 

and i quite clearly stated earlier in this very thread that what really needs to be done is laws need to be changed so that those stopping crimes from happening are not punished and neither are businesses who employ them.

but hey, you go on about how I dont get it.

Second sentence from my first post in this thread on page one reads as follows

Originally posted by Sinnthia
With our wonderful legal system, the thief would walk away with a lot more of BestBuys money than the wholesale value of two laptops.

Apparently you have no idea what you want to argue about, you just want to argue. Now, I asked you to explain why this was "the right thing to do" and this is how you respond? Yeah, I covered that already. Keep up.

The old line "Only in America" springs to mind...

Land of the lawyer.........