When people take their jobs too seriously...

According to Boing Boing, an assistant managing editor of the Wall Street Journal was detained at a Kmart (who would have thought they'd still be in business?) and accused of stealing. Well, she was accused of putting more expensive shoes ($24.50) in a box for less expensive shoes ($16.50). After walking out the door, she was confronted by a security guard and led to a windowless room in the back of the store. They held her for an hour questioning her...
Here's a link to the original article: ARTICLE
Here's a link to an MP3 podcast interview: INTERVIEW

I have a few (obvious) questions....

1. What is an assistant managing editor doing shopping at Kmart?
I know titles can be misleading, but managing editor sounds impressive, so assistant managing editor sounds almost as impressive. Maybe she is a glorified administrative assistant, but it seems like she could afford at least Target, maybe even Ross, or definitely Marshall's.

2. What happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt?
I understand that $8 times a lot of people pulling this "ticket switching" type of stealing amounts to many lost green backs, but couldn't they have just asked her to pay the difference of her mistake? Did they think she was going to run to her car (with the rest of her family) and peel out of the parking lot? I'm sure she would have just paid the $8 plus tax and apologized for her error.

3. Coming back to the title of my post, did the rent-a-cop security guards really need to question and accuse her of stealing for an hour?
For $8, wouldn't a more valuable use of their time have been watching for other possible thefts? They wasted the company's money by being on the clock and questioning her unnecessarily, not to mention the potential loss of merchandise since they were understaffed in the loss prevention department.

I have worked in retail and understand loss prevention, but I think they went a bit overboard. Just like Eletronic Vagrant hates Wal-Mart, I will now hate and boycott Kmart. Their revenue just decreased a total of $0, because I never shop there, but I encourage all of you not to shop there also. I wonder if the domain kmart-sucks.com is available for purchase...