[quote name='Captain Wrong']Customers rifling through the unshelved/unpriced merchandise was a huge no-no at our store. It's also very against company policy, IIRC.
And anyone who doesn't realize that employees get first crack at the best deals in any area of retail, especially when it comes to used stuff, is a bit naive.[/QUOTE]
Don't get me wrong, I knew employees did that, but to have it shoved in my face like that is something else. A big selling point on their commercials around here is finding those hidden gems amongst the shelves, and here I had an employee telling me to my face that it's actually not usually worth the effort because even when something high demand makes it into the store the employees take it first.
I do, in fact, find fewer "steals" at that store than at others, though they're much larger. I don't know if the employees at that store just care less about not leaving anything for the customers or if it's just a function of them being so big (and thus having more employees with wider interests). At other stores (for instance, when I found FF7 yesterday, or when I once found4 pristine condition Dresden Files novels), I often have the person checking me out say something like "man, I knew that wouldn't last long, I wanted to buy it myself!" That's only happened once for me at that store in the almost 4 years I've been going to it (when I found the three core rulebooks for D&D 4th edition a week after they were released).