A FRUSTRATED shopper has spoken out after facing difficulty purchasing a simple item at a popular retailer.
The individual was just looking for some staple clothing items when anti-theft measures got in the way.
Derek, @deluxderek on TikTok, posted a video on the social media site, airing his frustrations.
“Even basic Items locked up now!” he captioned the video.
His video shows a wall of Champion brand athletic basketball shorts locked up with security tags.
“So I’m just heading down to the Fred Meyer to get myself a nice new pair of underpants and look at this,” he said, displaying the clothing.
“Thye got everything locked up.”
The issue Derek takes with this anti-theft measure is not that the store is trying to dissuade theft, but that they are doing so with relatively low-worth items.
“This isn’t even anything fancy either. We’re talking about Champion brand basketball shorts,” he cried out.
Then Derek signed off of the video with a resigned conclusion.
“This is just how shopping is in Washington state now. I guess we all got to get used to it,” he said.
Commenters sympathize with him, sharing how they would face the issue.
“Dude I wanted to pick up some cheap work shirts like $3/shirt and they were in glass cases. Walmart in California bro so dumb,” wrote one user.
“Sad. I’d move to a better neighborhood or state county,” suggested another.
Derek’s outrage comes after the President of Fred Meyer spoke out last year about increased security measures at their stores.
“It may not look identical to a Costco style, but we’ll employ measures where we will check receipts as customers leave the store,” said Fred Meyer president Todd Kammeyer.
The store promised to increase the number of security guards to check customers’ receipts at the door and intended to complement its increased security corps by investing in “innovative security technology.”
While at the time of the announcement, Kammeyer did not divulge the specifics of this technology, the locks adorning basketball shorts in Derek’s store appear to be such a measure.
“We’re always looking for different, efficient ways to monitor our stores and what’s happening inside of them,” Kammeyer said of the store’s tech proposal.
Fred Meyer did not immediately respond to the U.S. Sun’s request for comment.