They’re Insecure With Security

(I’ve just been hired on the Loss Prevention/Security team at an electronics store I regularly frequent. My manager is taking me through my first day’s training. It should be noted that LP has a different staff id badge design to the rest of the employees.)

Manager: “Now the one thing you need to remember, customers tend to behave differently around security personnel.”

Me: “As in they’re more polite? Less demanding?”

Manager: “Not exactly.”

(We’re later walking along an aisle when a customer comes up to us.)

Customer #1: “Excuse me, do you know where…” *she breaks off upon noticing our badges* “Oh, you’re security? Never mind, you can’t help me.”

(A while later my manager is explaining the in-store phone system when another customer approaches us.)

Customer #2: “Hey, can you call someone to tell me where the aisle for [Product #1] is?”

Me: “Sure, it’s just four aisles down that way and to the left.”

Customer #2: “Can you still call someone to show me? An actual store employee I mean? Not you rental security guys?”

(I look bewildered as my manager sighs and summons an employee. Another hour or so later, after I walked around the store a few times, I get stopped again by a couple.)

Customer #3: “Excuse me, we’re looking for [Product #2].”

Customer #4: “Honey, that’s a security guard. He doesn’t know the layout of this place.”

Me: “Uh… yes, I do. [Product #2] is at the end of aisle ten, just over—”

Customer #4: *ignoring me* “Come on, let’s find someone who actually works here proper.”

(They leave. From behind me, my manager stifles a giggle.)

Manager: “That’s what I was referring to about us getting a different treatment.”

(True to form, the entire time I worked there as LP customers would stop me, then walk off when they saw I wasn’t a regular store employee, adamant that apparently the folk whose entire job is to walk the store and know where everything is meant to be couldn’t possibly help them out.)