I wanted to share this story that happened to someone I am very close with yesterday.
My friend (we will use the name Sarah) works at a retail store in a mall in the US in a pretty dense urban area. She is regularly pushing the most volume at this store and does a great job, but unfortunately shoplifting is a bit of an issue since the mall has tons of foot traffic. This company likes to blame their in store employees for shoplifting and tells them it's on them to prevent it.
Yesterday, Sarah was working a shift from the afternoon until closing. All seemed normal and in the middle of her shift she was helping customer pick out some items. When Sarah turned her back for a brief moment, the customer grabbed the items and quickly headed towards the exit and out. Sarah followed her quickly not to apprehend but perhaps loudly request she come back or make sure mall security saw it, which AFAIK isn't required by her to even do. When she exits the store and turns left, she sees a pile of approximately $2000 worth of items from the store just on the floor outside the store, along with her manager, the customer (who turned out to be a manager from another store that Sarah had never met), and a member of mall security. They started laughing when Sarah saw this and realized it was fake. Sarah was very upset as she felt like she got tricked/bullied into thinking people were robbing the store right out from under her. Her manager tried to claim he was 'testing' her. She reached out to the district manager to see if this was something he know about or approved and informed him it's probably not the best way to evaluate employees. Apparently the mall security guard was asked to stand near the heist pile so no one would actually take the items. I find this pretty ridiculous behavior from a manager and seems to amount to bullying or even abuse.
Just wanted to share this, thanks for reading.