Security guards

By Hilbert Haar

I don’t know how many people have noticed – and started wondering about – the additional function that several stores have bestowed upon their security guards. I certainly did; on a certain level it irritates the hell out of me and on another level I find it hilarious.

When I leave stores like Ace in Cole Bay or Cost U Less in Philipsburg there is always a security guard at the exit. He or she has apparently been instructed to ask me (and all other customers) to show the receipt for the purchased items.

The guards are well equipped for their task; they carry a ticket punch like the ones conductors use to punch a hole in your train ticket.

And punching holes in store receipts is what our security guards do with gusto. Nobody leaves anymore without showing a receipt. So far, the system seems to work, but somehow the guards seem to have forgotten the highly impractical purpose of the exercise.

Let’ s take a step back here and examine why a retailer would ask security guards to  punch holes in their receipts.

The most logical explanation would be that this is done to prevent that customer to leave without paying for whatever they have in their reusable shopping bag.

Does punching holes like a train conductor solve this problem? I don’t think so.

To make this work the guards would have to check the contents of your bag or your trolley against your receipt. That would make sense, right?

I have never caught a security guard doing this. More often than not they are chatting with someone; they barely notice me – except when I want to pass them without showing my receipt.

Then it is, on good days, something like: “Receipt please?” This suggests that being economical with words is part of the security guard training.

After this request I meekly hand over my receipt while the guard continues chatting with whomever he or she is charting with.

Punch!

If I’m lucky I get a smile out of the security guard and then I am on my way, forever puzzled why security guards have to do completely useless things.

In the context of building a better and stronger St. Maarten after hurricane Irma, punching store receipts does not make the top of the list – if t makes the list at all.

Why not let security guards do useful things? Like, keeping an eye on shoppers to prevent that they slip something in their pockets?

Or, to support the notion that this is the Friendly Island, just stand at the entrance and the exit of a store to greet customers and ask them if there is anything they can do to help?

But punching receipts? Mwah. Drop it guys.