Asked to show your reciept? Just say no!
Many retail stores will station an employee near the front entrance/exit to check customers' sales receipts as they leave. It's a well-intentioned but wrongheaded way to combat shoplifting, insulting the integrity of honest customers caught in a colossal dragnet with a few would-be thieves.
Some of us shrug our shoulders, flash the paper and wait while the worker scrutinizes the receipt. Others find this practice presumptuous, unnecessary and time-consuming, and we've decided to stop playing along.
We refuse to show our receipts. The merchandise is ours, we paid for it and it's as much our private property as the contents of our wallets, purses and pockets, according to federal and state common law. We'd be glad to politely decline the door check and stroll out of the store, but some overzealous and undereducated employees will force a standoff.
Stories about stores preventing their customers from leaving until they show a receipt have become a regular fixture on The Consumerist, a New York-based consumer rights blog. See: http://consumerist.com/362866/detained-and-harassed-at-walmart-for-not-showing-a-receipt .
This kind of strong-arm tactic elevates a simple matter of personal preference - whether or not to participate in a voluntary receipt check - into a bona-fide civil rights struggle. Stores can't cow you into compliance by blocking the exits. That's called illegal detainment and unlawful imprisonment.
What if the employee's a security guard? Doesn't matter. If (s)he isn't a sworn law enforcement officer, then (s)he has no more power of arrest than a busboy - at least not here in North Carolina. The faux-cop uniform and cheap tin badge project the image of an authority figure, which can help deter shoplifting. But playing dress-up is no substitute for police academy.
You are not legally required to show your receipt, and in North Carolina, a store can't detain its customers without probable cause - that's eyewitness evidence or surveillance camera footage - to suspect shoplifting.
If you know and assert your rights, they're less likely to be violated. So I'm asking everyone out there who's unnerved by the prospect of being treated like a juvenile delinquent to just say no the next time you're asked to show your receipt. It is voluntary, and properly trained employees will not attempt to coerce you into compliance.
This entry was adapted from a newspaper column I wrote recently.