It’s also insane that the Barnes and Noble employee requested for you to remove your belt as that wouldn’t set off a security system. Belts, cell phones, pagers, MP3 players, watches, cameras DO NOT set off this type of security device. And, perhaps if Mr.Barnes-And-Noble had given you better customer service and been more aware of his own security measures he could have easily discovered that it was the sensor sewn into your jeans and politely handed you a pair of scissors to remedy the problem!

As far as “frequent false positives” being a “serious flaw”… there is no such thing as a “serious flaw” that constantly reminds people not to steal b/c they will be caught and that gives employees at said store the opportunity to provide better customer service than the lackluster folks who failed to deactivate the merchandise in the first place!

Last summer, I went into Barnes & Noble at University Village, and as I was walking into the store, an alarm sounded and a checkout clerk came over. I told him I was just entering the store and that I didn’t have any Barnes & Noble merchandise on me. He asked me to empty my pockets and take off anything that might set off the alarm and set the items aside. I felt like I was at a security checkpoint at the airport or something. With completely empty pockets and no belt, I walked through the detector and it went off again. We tried a few more times and the clerk said it was fine and that he’d remember when as I left the store later.

A day or two later, I was walking into Rite Aid on the Ave when the alarm on their security gates went off. I kept walking into the store, and none of the employees seemed to notice or care (this is an example of the weakness of poor employees mentioned in the post). After I was done shopping and had purchased my items, I was leaving the store when the alarm went off again. This time, a couple employees ran over and accused me of trying to leave with unpurchased merchandise. They had me unload my bag and my pockets and examined my receipt and found nothing out of place. Eventually they let me go.

I was thinking about these events, wondering why I consistently set off alarms at two different stores even after I completely emptied my pockets both times. Maybe I had a government chip placed in the back of my neck that was tracking my every movement. Suddenly, I recognized the common thread between the distinct events. I had recently purchased a pair of American Eagle jeans, and had taken off all of the tags and stickers before I wore them, but I suspect that there was still some small electronic identifier somewhere in the jeans that was setting off the alarms. While I had been wearing different overall outfits, I had worn the same jeans to each store. I ran my jeans through the wash, which I assume destroyed the security device because I haven’t had any trouble since.

In any case, the moral of the story is that stores should make sure that their sensor gates are only triggered by merchandise from inside their own domains. I might be more understanding if my jeans set off an alarm at a different American Eagle location, but Barnes & Noble and Rite Aid have nothing to do with American Eagle jeans. It may be that each of these stores employs the same brand of security sensor, but frequent false positives makes this a serious flaw of these systems.