Mildly Infuriating

A lot of the time they just peek into the bag for like two seconds and look at the receipt and wave you off. What's the point? If you're THAT concerned with what's in the bag, you know it would take much longer than seconds. The entryway would just be a TSA-like checkpoint, but with your purchases. You'll almost never get out in a timely manner.

Every time they try to stop me at Walmart, I just say, no thank you, and keep walking. Nobody's ever tried to stop me from leaving the store.

Sam's club and Costco are a little different. I begrudgingly stop there because of the membership. We technically agreed to it in the terms of signing up.

Just... Don't stop? Keep walking. They legally can't stop you and they know it. It's a psychological barrier, not a physical or legal barrier. Make direct eye contact, smile, say "No, thanks" and keep walking. It's worked for me so far.

It's security theater. They have a whole department, loss control, that watches the cameras and double checks the inventory counts to find thieves and track stuff, plus RFID detectors for high value stuff. Anything that slips through the cracks ends up either insured or a write off that their accountants can use to justify not paying corporate taxes.

So when you see the receipt checker, derisively say no and keep walking. And if they lay so much as a finger on you, file assault charges.

After all, if the corporations can abuse the system, so can you.

I once sat and chatted with one of these guys waiting for a bad downpour to stop. Being stopped sucks, I know, but here’s some insider information:

They are stopping you for appearances. They absolutely are skimming your receipt, they really don’t care about you personally. It’s all circus.

If they are looking, they are looking for the big loss items. That TV that gets rung up in the back, was it actually rung up? The water case under the cart coming from self checkout? Another big loser for the company. Coming with a tote or loaded cart from the wrong direction is a little obvious to everyone.

Every other stop is for show. To remind the tote runner they are watching. To make the TV thief skittish. It’s all about appearances and breaking down resolve. The door guys can’t stop you, but they can make you afraid that they are vigilant and someone who can is waiting(and the salarymen can, shopkeeper’s privilege apparently in the US). It does work, loaded carts abandoned near the doors apparently testify to the effectiveness.

Some door hosts get by with being passive, they are supposed to be pretty chill and friendly, and dial up the theatrics when someone is reported to be suspicious or when a “frequent flyer” walks in. But that just makes it seem discriminatory and unbalanced so apparently some managers want the theatrics 24/7 to avoid the complaints of unfair treatment.

As everyone has said, they have no legal basis to stop you from walking out, unless they're asserting shopkeeper's privilege, which has certain limits and opens them up to possible liability. This is why employees are trained that only managers and Loss Prevention can do that.

However, they absolutely are able to ban you from a store for not complying. How effective a ban is at a store that sees thousands of people walking in every day, I'm not sure. But it's something to keep in mind if you have limited other options nearby.

Nothing like being treated like a criminal when I go into a store to give them money.

Decades ago, my father would have some fun with the receipt checkers at Costco. After a shopping trip, we'd commonly have lunch at the cafe in Costco. When leaving the store, he'd hand the receipt checker the receipt for lunch rather than the receipt for the items bought. More than half the time, the checker would just swipe the receipt with a highlighter (their way of marking it "checked") without noticing that it was the wrong receipt. So ya, it's complete security theater. Anyone with a modicum of thought can figure ways around it, and it only accomplishes inconveniencing the people who aren't trying to get away with anything.

The idea is to make people who are stealing nervous

Security theater, just like the TSA. They don't need to stop bad actors, they just need to convince their shareholders that they are taking action against losses.

You don't have to stop. I never do. I might say hi in passing when I walk by them and catch eye contact. If one ever tells me I need to stop for them to check, I would tell them to check the security cameras. We are tracked the entire time we are in there. I'm not stopping for them to pretend to check for shop lifters.

I've seen people in line waiting to be checked. WTF is wrong with people. They are not entitled to your time. You already paid for it. The transaction is done. If they want to do something else with my stuff, go check the tapes.

There are other shops beside Walmart, aren't there?

You can ignore them. Don't even acknowledge and walk on by.

They work similar to captchas... They are not there for your benefit. They are there to make a corpo parasite feel like they are doing a thing.

You can refuse the check and there is really nothing they can do beyond banning you.

If you didn't commit a crime and they try to detain you, they gonna have a fat law suit against them. So they won't really bother to do anything.

Iirc they just check the date to make sure you arent using an old receipt so that might explain why they look at it so briefly, not that they really get paid enough to do anything more

I only experience this at Costco and my theory is that they just check that it’s a receipt from today, and that it is about the right length for your size of cart. On top of just making sure you have a receipt at all, this would make it harder to walk out with a pirate cart. Plus there’s just an overall deterrence because you don’t really know how much they are checking. Maybe every 10th person gets a real look-over.

They can see my receipt for 10 bucks

What's even worse than a real cop is a poser cop. I love meanmugging them.

I don't live in the states but there's similar systems in some department stores here in Australia and I suspect, but don't know, that applicable law in these cases is broadly similar. The store and their employees aren't law enforcement and can't arrest you or have any legal recourse for you ignoring their demands to stop and allow your receipt to be checked. They likely also have the right to refuse service to you and deny you entry to their premises and so long as this isn't being done for a small number of specifically forbidden reasons (such as on the basis of race for example) they don't need a legal justification to do so. This would mean that refusing to comply with their receipt checking policy might be enough if they see fit, to decide to deny you entry to their stores going forward. Many large department stores are incorporating facial recognition and don't it seems feel the need for proper informed consent beyond some printed signage saying that but entering you're consenting, so the practicality of them doing this is at least a little bit higher these days but I guess there's no way to assess how likely this really is.

My Walmart scans the receipt and then scans 3 items from your cart to verify they're on the receipt.

I always wonder why people get annoyed at receipt checkers, but then again I only see it at Costco.

I don’t have a nearby Walmart, so avoiding them is trivial

the club stores have been doing this for awhile. normalization of it is definately another step on the road to dystopia though.

So, Walmart has a membership option now, which means, yes they can check your receipts. It's not required my law (lol) but it is legal.

And yes, security theater to scare thieves away. I remedy this by not shopping at Walmart.