I've worked in a gamestore that employed three other guys in it, and on a saturday, when everyone was working, we'd find that young kids who didn't have the money to buy the games, would come in and steal the empty BOXES we had out in the racks, eventually forcing us to make copies of the box covers and plastering them on wooden blocks just to show people what we had in stock.
This is how far people will go to steal crap. Stealing empty boxes. This was in the early 90's, when Streetfighter 2 for the Super Famicom was the ultimate top seller, and eventually I just put a sign up that said "Yes, we have Streetfighter II", because the fucking kids would even steal the fucking wooden block with the SF2 pictures on it...
You CANNOT stop all theft, and pretending that people "should just pay attention" is a fucking stupid statement anon. In your argument, every single case of shoplifting in the world is because shop employees don't pay enough attention to their merchandise. Sorry, but that's just bullshit. If there are four employees in a store and 30 customers, and you're some kind of Sherlock Holmes genius who can keep an eye on 4 people at the same time, that's still 14 people you're missing.
Sure, I caught some of those kids when they tried to walk out with those boxes, but on days where I was the only guy working behind the counter, and I was helping a customer out by showing him where to plug all the console's cables into a tv, I didn't have an extra pair of eyes in my head to keep an eye on that kid who was swiping stuff from my shelves.
Heh, I even had one guy, early 20s, come back and demanding that we put the game he had just bought in the box. Now, this was on a pretty calm day, and I remembered seeing the guy in the store, he just had walked around for awhile and then left when I was helping another customer. Apparently the ass had stolen a box (this was before the wooden block era) and thought it was full, then he comes back and dares me to give him the game he had so justifiably stolen. He hightailed it out of there real quick when I picked up the phone and started calling the police.
Obviously some stores are way too lax with their security. Any gamestore that leaves its games in the boxes out on the shelves is practically BEGGING for them to get stolen, even though I think it's a sad indication of just how fucked up this world is getting, and there are some employees in stores that won't speak up if they see someone walking out with loot, simply out of fear. But most shoplifting is simply a matter of numbers. There are more customers than employees, so eventually they'll get spots where nobody is watching them.
As for the lawsuit, that's bullshit too. If a store has a seven day return policy, you can expect that some of their games will have been returned by other people, who've used that policy. And since the product is not defective, the store can't return it to the publisher unless they have some very specific return policy (which I very much doubt, seeing as how pretty much ever game publisher is an unmitigated asshole).
However, I do think gamestop is in the wrong for shrinkwrapping that game and pretending it's never been used before. Some people are just freaky like that. Gamestop should have just given those people a new copy, and when a guy comes along who doesn't care, give him the opened one and a dollar discount. Whole problem solved. *shrug*
Creston
Edit : Math = hard...
This comment was edited on Aug 14, 16:37.