Why Stores Check Receipts 10 Feet From the Register

EARLIER THIS YEAR, a middle-aged certified public accountant living in small-town Washington state was convicted of misdemeanor assault after a three-day trial that had the whole community talking. His crime? Shoving a 75-year-old Wal-Mart greeter who wouldn't let him leave without showing a receipt. "He didn't have the right to make me do that," he told the local paper.

It's best to avoid assaulting the elderly, but I can almost sympathize with the CPA. Used to be, only club stores with membership rules checked your receipt and searched your bags at the exit. Now stores like Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are doing it, and a trip to the store has taken on all the charm of a jaunt through airport security. Not surprisingly, shoppers are starting to challenge the presumption that we're all suspects who must prove our innocence before exiting the store.

Sanford, Maine, Web designer Rob Page-Auger has been snubbing the receipt checker for years, but it wasn't until he saw another customer endure a humiliatingly thorough search that he launched StandUpToWalMart.com, an online petition urging Wal-Mart to banish receipt checks. "You shouldn't be required to sacrifice your dignity to get a better deal," he says. So far the site has attracted more than 130,000 visitors.

Others protest by making a game of what they see as a farcical proceeding. John DeArmond, a nuclear engineer turned trucker turned retired Tennessee mountain man, insists that the checker compare every single item in his grocery cart against the receipt. (He's got a lot of free time.) Once, as a sort of grand finale, he marched his cart back to the service counter and returned the entire load.

Perhaps the most high-profile resister is Michael Righi, a software consultant who was detained by a Circuit City store manager in Brooklyn, Ohio, for refusing to show his receipt. When Righi called the police, they arrested him. The town later dropped charges, but the case created an online stir, prompting more than 200 supporters to contribute $5,300 to a legal-defense fund.

Not everyone came to Righi's defense. Hundreds wrote angry messages, calling him a "pretentious lunatic" and a "grade-A moron" for making such a big stink. "Please, for God's sake, don't start thinking you're some Rosa Parks," sneered one critic. Indeed, plenty of consumers say they don't mind the check if it thwarts shoplifters and lowers prices. I recently watched in astonishment as one Kmart shopper after another insisted that a lax security guard check their receipt.

Stores say the checkpoints are needed to thwart a growing problem: sophisticated crime rings that create distractions and move big loads of merchandise right out the front door. Mark Doyle, president of security consulting firm Jack L. Hayes International, says brazen thieves will wheel out dollies loaded with appliances, cases of liquor or, in one recent instance, an entire sectional sofa. The receipt checkers aren't there to catch individual shoplifters; they're posted as a deterrent. "You'd be stupid to try to walk something by them," he says.

I'm glad stores are shutting down crooks, but that doesn't mean they get to stop me. Turns out, a store can't legally detain you for refusing a receipt check. Don't want to create a scene? Don't pause or make eye contact; just say, "no, thanks," and keep walking. It works. Home Depot's oversize security guard checked every shopper but didn't blink when I whizzed past, lugging a 4-foot piece of sheet metal. The checker at Guitar Center loudly demanded my receipt, but I kept going, and the heavy-metal goon squad never appeared.

To be honest, I expected more of a reaction. Maybe I should have tried the tactics of the online wag who wisely identifies himself only as MR. His strategy: Make eye contact with the checker, then slowly stuff the receipt down the front of his pants. "The look of horror is priceless."