What Staff Should Do When They Suspect a Theft
The correct response is deliberately unheroic: keep serving, stay visible, note what can be seen without following anyone, and pass it to the person authorised to act. Store colleagues do not detain, do not pursue beyond the door, and do not accuse — three prohibitions that exist because the injury and liability risk of intervening exceeds the value of almost any recoverable basket.
Most retailers already have that policy written down, and most store staff will still improvise, because the policy is read once at induction and the situation arrives in seconds. What the training has to install is a default action, not a decision tree. What does not belong on screen is anything that teaches detection technique in public-facing detail: camera coverage, concealment methods, and audit thresholds should stay in internal loss prevention material only.
The response is laid out over eight scenes: two on the safety-first principle and why the store does not intervene, two on observing without following, one on using normal customer service as the intervention, one on what to record and when, one on escalation to a duty manager or authorities, and one on what to do after an incident.
