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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;PlanoSteve, post: 3062250, member: 91609&quot;]Randy, I&#039;d like to agree with you, but I am taking the cynical approach.&nbsp; There are a percentage of people who are not good, to varying degrees, &amp; I doubt the validity of the statement &quot;people in general are good&quot;. </p><p><br /></p><p>For example, up until I <i><b>totally</b></i> retired 2 yrs ago, I spent the previous 14 yrs in retail with a large international (US) company.&nbsp; Prior to this experience I too felt that people, or most people, in general were &quot;good&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>Our store mostly averaged $8k to $12k in sales daily (annual sales in the $14-15 million range).&nbsp; But thefts (empty packages), damaged goods (parts missing &#039;cause they only needed a part), &amp; returned damaged goods (abused merchandise returned because &quot;it stopped working, but I don&#039;t need a replacement because the job is finished, just want my money back&quot;) averaged $1k to $1.5k daily!! </p><p><br /></p><p>Then there was the &quot;Returns Desk&quot; which was located &amp; assessable from <b><i>inside</i></b> the store.&nbsp; Since there was a &quot;no receipt required&quot; return policy, people could simply pick something off a shelf &amp; &quot;return&quot; it!!!&nbsp; With no receipt, you could only get store credit, but....OK.&nbsp; Or, people could buy an item, take it home and install/use it, then come back to the store with the original receipt, select the item again and take it directly to returns.&nbsp; And if they paid cash, they got cash back.&nbsp; (We would actually watch this on CCTV - someone enter the store empty handed, pick up the item they previously bought, &amp; &quot;return&quot; it.) These thefts are not included in the daily avg. above.&nbsp; These losses were &quot;verified&quot; by video and during inventory.&nbsp; We might have an &quot;acceptable/allowable&quot; inventory shrink of $600k, but actual shrink was 2 1/2 times that!!&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>But none of that mattered, because corporate essentially said &quot;we&#039;re operating on 80% margins, it doesn&#039;t matter (yet)&quot;!&nbsp; In 2002 each store had it&#039;s own loss control (read: security), within 5 years they were all gone.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, some are professional thieves, but there are also too many &quot;good&quot; people who are opportunists.&nbsp; It&#039;s not that they exist....it&#039;s that they exist in much greater numbers than one realizes.&nbsp; And that they think it&#039;s OK to steal from &quot;deep pockets&quot;.&nbsp; (I&#039;m still mad that big business encourages this behavior.&nbsp; My former employer is not the only one who conducts business in a way to &quot;encourage&quot; crime.)</p><p><br /></p><p>My personal experience leads me to believe that maybe 60% of the population is maybe &quot;100% good&quot; (whatever that means), which leaves 40% in the professional criminal or occasional opportunist category.&nbsp; I just don&#039;t think this makes the statement &quot;people in general are good&quot; valid.</p><p><br /></p><p>Btw, only about 6 people know of my illness, er, coin collection, and I trust in anonymity of CT to keep it that way. </p><p><br /></p><p>I only rant on this because I think there are many out there who are naïve about the subject of honesty.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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