Beeland Co-op Over Run With Shop Lifters

FTLComm - Tisdale - Saturday, April 6, 2002

In 1995 we had a choice, where did we want to live? Our choice was to find a place where civility and pleasantness would be the order of the day and we selected Tisdale. Fabulous young people, grumpy and often rude old people but all in all, a place were you can be at peace and feel unthreatened. My world was disturbed back in November of 1998 when Zellers had guards at their door and my peace was even more shaken when Zeller's replacement store Best Value in March of 1999 installed antitheft detectors at their doors. But I explained all this to myself by figuring that Zellers and its big city owner Hudson's Bay company have an attitude and just assume that since they make it a practice to rip folks off then perhaps the good people in Tisdale may go after them. By the way, I have never once heard of Zellers trying to steal from its customers, I think its a good outfit but suspicion builds suspicion. I figure that those people who are most concerned about security and others stealing from them have some inside knowledge and since they don't trust, perhaps they too, can not be trusted. Last summer some bird watchers discovered that the birds who are most likely to steal eggs from other nests were the most cautious and were the most careful in protecting their own nests. I figure if birds are like that, so it is likely that people will act about the same. Now with Zellers and its anti-shoplifting devices in place and their automated systems squawking so often and in every case I have seen them go off, it has been a false positive response. I am of the opinion that devices like this show a horrible lack of trust in those very people whom the business is attempting to provide services and products. Until Thursday I was comforted to think that our very own, member owned and operated Beeland Co-op was such a fine place, treating its customers with respect. After all, almost everyone is a co-op member and it would seem foolish for someone to steal from themselves, yet there they are. Bold as bloody brass, door monitoring sentinels to detect magnetic marked merchandise. This is Tisdale, the place I choice for its civility. The place I thought was better than others, the place that does not have bars on business windows and . . . . well you can see I am very disappointed.

Timothy W. Shire