"Help needed at the front!"…read more
The first time I heard the announcement called over the store intercom, by the young woman at the front counter, to what appeared to be an otherwise empty store, I didn't make anything of her tone or her anodyne call for backup. I had made my way past the snack isle to the cooler, grabbed a soda, and brought it to the counter as the unoccupied cashier, who had called for backup, slinked away at my approach, awkwardly avoiding eye contact as her help (a man in street clothes) quickly took her station. So far none of this seemed too unusual for CVS at 2AM...
Maybe she was going on break... who knows?
I initially tried to apply my CVS Rewards to the small $3 purchase using my phone number. I was informed that there was zero balance on my account. Fair enough. Although I knew I had accumulated more than enough CVS Rewards cash, but I figured that there must still be some step I have to complete to apply it. I apologized for my error and then went to check my CVS account which did have $16 worth of rewards but indeed a zero balance as the app requires an extra step to make the funds available in store. Again fair enough--no harm no foul. I tapped the "apply rewards" button and then came back to the store to buy the soda and a few other food items (it's the only grocery store open in that part of Birmingham at 2:15AM). It was when I returned to the store that the situation became off-the-rails bizarre.
"Help needed at the front!" This time with more urgency in her tone. And this time unmistakably prompted by my entrance, again the only customer at the still empty CVS. Okay, rude but still we aren't overtly crossing any lines of etiquette. Hey I get it, there's a good reason why their experiment in self checkout was so brief at the 24 hour Roebuck Parkway CVS. But I can do that dance with indignity if it means that I can buy groceries this late. I figure a little criminal profiling is a price to pay for ramen and marshmallows at 230 in the morning--within the standard passive aggressive, junior detective posture that in most cases is mostly harmless, if tactless. There, again swooping into the grocery section to heed the call for "help", comes tracksuit. And this time he's prepared to deliver a stern directive by way of a warning:
"If you don't pay [meaning pay for the items I had chosen] this time I'm banning you from the this store."
It took me a minute to realize what was (and was certainly NOT) going on there. And finding any benefit of the doubt I offered for this behavior rebuffed, with extreme prejudice ( whatever I was up to must have been REALLY bad) I left.
I know that there is no company policy, that extends any such authority to store managers to demand immediate payment in full, at the threat of banishment. Countless viral videos that have gained infamy in present years which show CVS employees standing aside as gangs of organized retail thieves casually walk out the door, arms full of body wash, AA batteries, shaving cream, and dental dams in brazen daytime robberies. Clearly corporate policy (even for actual shoplifting) gives no legal wiggle room for managers to assert, "If you don't pay this time I'm banning you." I do pay **all the time** and no, sir, you are not. That's not what's happening on this crisp winter's night.
Sorry. That's the line.
The thing is, I don't take things that don't belong to me from stores. I should have made that clear from the start of this review if only as "spoiler alert"--as I should have to the store's employees themselves directly after the initial intercom warnings. I will from now on--in a clear and unbothered tone to match the volume of the store's PA system that chirpingly reassures CVS customers who wander into the "Health & Beauty" section that "staff have been altered to your presence!" (how sweet of them to notice) when even slightly prompted by store motion detectors tracking their every move around the $27 tweezers, as their own digital protocol for: "Help needed at the front!"
