I finally got a job. I will be working at TARGET as a target protection specialist. I guess you can say that I am happy, because I will finally be able to afford that ACog that I have been looking at. Anyway, has any of you guys worked at TARGET or similar department? Any tips will be much appreciated.
is this like a loss-prevention gig? plainclothes floor-agent? or are you uniformed? i did loss prevention for about a year and a half right after i got out of the army while going to school on Chapter 31. it was fun at times… kicked a lot of ass, excelled at it, but it sure as shit wasn’t something i would make a career out of. good way to get into a lot of legal trouble, too.
Yea, you sure are right. I am going to have to look at cameras all day, put handcuffs on people and occasionally spear tackle a grandma for shop lifting some bengay. Sounds like fun, but in no way am I making this a career. I think if I clothesline someone, the company will have to deal with the legal battles.
the retailer i worked for talked alot about the “umbrella of protection.” the problem was, you couldn’t operate under that umbrella- the “5 elements” needed to make an arrest were generally impossible to maintain, so we’d usually only have 3 or 4 checked off when we went out. the cameras, while state-of-the-art PTZs with 98% floor coverage, were completely useless to us for their intended purpose- if you wanted to catch, you had to work the floor. the cameras were necessary, and very useful, for internal investigations, however… my position was that externals (shoplifters) were my primary targets, and employees were secondary- my manager, on the other hand, was the reverse of that. my manager got redeployed after about 6 months, and i became “acting manager,” and i really enjoyed doing the internals. we had a really good setup, with register terminals set up right next to the CCTV displays- i could watch what was being entered into the register on the terminal monitor, while simultaneously zoomed in on the employee/register with the camera. we also had “coverts-” little matchbox-sized hidden cameras that we could put anywhere in the store. spent countless O/T hours climbing around in the ceiling/walls/guts of the store running cable and finding good spots for those. only place that was off-limits was the bathrooms (but that didn’t stop some guys ;)) busted more than a few employees.
back to the “umbrella of protection-” if you stepped outside the protection of the umbrella (made an arrest even slightly outside of company policy), you were on your own if you got sued. meaning, if the company decided you used excessive force making a stop, they wouldn’t protect you if the dickhead came back. pretty fucked up.
i only made one bad stop out of over 200 arrests- and the store was sued. fortunately, i was not listed as a defendent. ambulance chaser lawyers know a guy making $14/hr isn’t worth suing, but it does happen sometimes.
My dad works at a target as a post-retirement gig. Hopefully your management is more competent than his. They have recently changed store managers or something and they can’t figure out how to make a schedule and keep it the same for the full timers. In response, he dropped back to part time so he will have more time for his & my brother’s concrete counter top business.
It could be far worse–you could have been hired by wal-mart.
does walmart even HAVE loss prevention? you could load up two shopping carts full of their most expensive items and they’d still only be out $4.75
I worked at Lowe’s Hardware in college and we also had to get the magic 5 in order to prosecute. However we did get a % of recovered items if we caught people stealing. Sadly most of the people stealing were the employees. One guy stole over $30,000 of products. He would buy items at a special “managers” price and then return it to another store and get his money.
Youll find that in any big store, Home Desperation, K-Mart, Target, Wal-Mart, and especially Lowes. My brother works at lowes, and I tell ya what, some of the managers that find their way to a job their are unbeleivable. And the girls who do the scheduling just make you want to hang yourself. No offense to girls, just that the ones who run the schedules happen to be girls. Its particularly bad here though because this lowes is in a college town so you get people workin there that dont know the difference between a flat head and a phillips, and dont realize theres a difference between latex and oil based paint:rolleyes: Its almost funny, in a cruel sad way. And yes your right, Wally world managment is MUCH worse.
Congratulations. Do some Target stores still sell guns & ammo?
No, target does not sell guns and ammo. I remember when walmart, target, sears etc use to sell guns, but I dont know why they stopped. Maybe it was because employees were stealing shit, as noted above.
Man be a bouncer it pays ALOT better, there is no “umbrella of protection” you have to abide by because your always right when alcohol is involved, and when it’s slow your not staring at a computer monitor your watching women dance.
The only problem is that you aren’t “clothes lining grandma” for stealing, you actually have to be comfortable, capable, and coherent during physical conflicts between people at their physical peek, as well as non physical altercations.
I would suggest this option over Target if you have it available to you! It is what I am doing while i look for another teaching gig.
I’ve helped out on busy nights before, and it isn’t bad. Good laughs and would usually take a girl home. The problem is that at a place that pays good, you have a chance of going up against someone with a gun or knife while you are unarmed. That combined with constantly looking over your shoulder for the drunk you threw out last night, make it a somewhat risky career choice.
Yes, Wal-Mart has loss prevention. Very aggressive ones. My shooting buddy, customer, and neighbor is the main manager of our local Wal-Mart Supercenter. One day I was in the store looking for something and walked by the gun counter and he was there doing something. I mentioned what I was looking for and ended up getting a kind of tour of the store as we walked to the front. He kind of gave an eye and a little “hi” to two dudes walking by and then he whispered to me they were 2 undercover loss prevention guys who wander the store looking for shop lifters etc. They did not at all look like employees but 20 something “kids” with jewelry, ratty t shirts, etc. I would never have suspected that they were employees looking for shoplifters
Chad
that’s how we rolled… i’d wear my shit-kickers and wranglers one day, baggy/ratty cargo pants and skateboard shoes/shirts the next. nobody ever saw it coming.
I’m not sure where you’re working the door, but the patron being drunk does not make you “always right”. If you go over the top and stomp the shit out of someone, you’re still liable, not the bar. Or if you kill someone because of your negligence, like happened to those bar managers near Penn State who laid on the drunk guy and suffocated him, or the similar situation that happened out here, you’re definitely up shit creek.
I’ve graduated past those days, but I still have to worry about liabilities and my security hosts going too far, which sometimes can happen pretty easily. With the clientele we deal with here, that can be alot worse than having to worry about the drunk you beat up last night looking for you.
Understood. I was speaking of the common “bouncer” or “drunk tosser”. I am sure that your profession carries a more professional title that that.
I was joking. Yes you are right refraining from beating the sh*t out of people is required, and if you enjoy doing so, you need not apply…
hmm… my love for a good scrap is the only reason i stayed in loss prevention as long as i did… if you don’t LIKE to fight, you’re not going to have much fun in the private ass-kicker sector.
Like and Encourage are two different things.
There are too many people in bouncing that bait kids just to kick the crap out of them. I think this is disgusting, and wrong.
For me it’s more about comfort with conflict, I don’t really like or dislike it. I just try to understand it. I do enjoy a good rush though…