Bad Stops are Bad for Business

If you’ve been in the LP profession for any length of time, chances are, you know someone who has had their career ended for making a “bad stop”. If you’ve never heard that term, great news for you. This is the term given when an LP agent makes a shoplifting apprehension outside of set guidelines and detains an individual, who in fact, did not partake in any illegal activities. Sounds like something that should NEVER happen, right? Unfortunately, it does and it can spell big legal trouble for your company. If you detain an individual who has not committed a crime, they have the legal right to file a lawsuit against you, your employee and your company. I’ve personally seen more than I would like in my tenure and they usually end with a large settlement and an employee or two in the unemployment line.

How does this happen? If you have an LP program, or policies relating to shoplifting apprehensions, you may ask how does an agent get to the point where they make such a bad decision. Just with any other job, no one is perfect. As a manager, or business owner, you need to have very strict rules and guidelines that are to be followed in regards to shoplifting apprehensions in order to protect not only the safety of your employees, but the very business you are running. Looking back at the incidents that I’ve personally dealt with, one common theme always stands out. An employee who will try to bend the rules as much as possible. When you develop and maintain adequate policies, you have to enforce them. Letting something slip by won’t do you any good. That employee does not have your company’s best interests in mind, and in your position, you have to make sure that your polices are followed to the letter.

One case that stands out happened a few years ago. One of my top performing agents saw a customer place something in her purse and walk out the store. He didn’t see exactly what the item was, but still made the apprehension. Once in the security office, he realized she had placed a shirt in her purse that she entered the store with. The customer had brought the item to compare colors to a new item she wanted to purchase. Understandably so, the customer was highly upset and sought legal action. After all was settled, my company had to pay a substantial settlement to keep the matter out of court and I had to release one of the best agents that ever had worked for me.

During the termination conversation, I asked him why he made the stop without knowing exactly what was concealed. His response was that he had done it several times in the past, and he was normally right. This was the one time he was wrong, and it cost him and my company in a big way. Due to that incident, we implemented more vigorous training programs and did a better job of documenting training with all LP agents in order to prove, it we needed, that all LP agents were trained according to a set policy and that anything done outside of that was the result of poor performance.

I would encourage anyone with a small business, or managers of small companies to adopt and implement a written policy regarding shoplifting apprehensions. If your store doesn’t have an LP department that has agents in store, your policies should state that only a salaried manager may initiate a shoplifting apprehension and only before going through some type of standardized training. This will protect your store not only from shoplifters, but it will go a very long way in keeping innocent customers from being detained by an ill-trained, or poor performing associate.