If there's one thing I've learned working in retail for years, it's that people love to complain. It's human nature to complain about things. We do so because it makes us feel better, as if we can somehow alleviate the situation by garnering sympathetic ears. I know there are times when I want to vent about the stupid crap I dealt with in the day, just to get it off my chest. There's nothing inherently wrong about complaining. What bothers me, though, are people who complain about security measures put in place to protect them.
Cashiers ask for ID, or call to verify that the person in front of us is authorized to pick up orders on someone else's behalf. Sure, maybe it's inconvenient to dig your license out of your wallet, or to answer a phone call, but does it really do you any good to get mad about it? With how easy it is for someone's identity to get stolen in this day and age, why protest when a store takes measures to protect its customers. It's too easy to assume that companies are doing all these things to protect themselves, and it's true that many retail stores use identity verification policies to prevent paying what are called charge-backs on purchases made with fraudulent or stolen credit cards.
That's because they are. Charge-backs impact a store's profit margins and a company's bottom line. Just because they do, however, does not invalidate the protections those policies also afford their customers. With the increasing impact of unmanned self-checkout stands and online purchases, stealing credit card information is easier than ever. Yet people frequently complain about the inconvenience of providing ID, as if the thirty seconds it takes to pull out a licence or ID card is somehow worse than spending the rest of their lives cleaning up the results of identity theft.
Online orders are even worse. Working in home improvement, people will often order parts online and contractor will come to pick them up from the store. What I don't understand is why people do that but never bother noting it down. It's as if store employees are supposed to psychically know that John Doe ordered a toilet, but the contractor he hired to remodel his bathroom is going to pick it up from the store instead of him. Many companies have a comments section attached to their online order pages where a customer can leave comments, notes, or other information that is visible to both the customer and the store. Why not use that to let a store know that a contractor will be picking up the order instead of the customer? It isn't hard to leave a note, and it saves everyone time and effort.
Instead, customers ignore it and then chew out cashiers who are forced to call to verify it's alright to release the order to someone other than the customer. Stores rightly can't just trust whoever comes in the door looking for John Doe's toilet. It could be a case of fraud, identity theft, and even outright theft if it turns out the person claiming the order was simply trying to see if they could get away with it. We regularly tear down companies for their data breaches. So stop protesting when companies try to do something to prevent it!
Unless, of course, you'd rather stores just give what you paid for to whoever asks for it.