This used to happen when I shopped at Costco. Like you, I was always waved through, while other people were stopped for a receipt check. One day, I was stopped for a receipt check. When I asked the reason, the clerk told me how the system worked.
As any retail worker can tell you, shoplifters watch a store, or stake it out, and know where employees and blind spots are located, etc. To combat shoplifters, retailers rely on random mathematics.
In the case of receipt checks, clerks are assigned a random number on a random schedule. One clerk will stop every third shopper, then two shoppers in a row, then every tenth shopper, then repeat the pattern, until they receive another pattern. No two receipt checkers have the same random numbers. Sometimes, instead of numbers, checkers are given specific items to stop, like big packages of toilet paper, or cooked chickens, or cases of canned food or a particular brand of dog food.
The day I was stopped, I was the fifth customer – which was the clerk’s number to check. She did not choose me. The system chose me.
Stores with unpredictable receipt checks are pretty good at combating shoplifters. Like algorithms and game theory, unpredictability is power.
I went through this lengthy explanation for a reason. In this essay, the author made assumptions about everyone else involved in this shopping trip – except himself. The assumption that the black receipt checker was carrying around “unconscious” psychological issues was out of line.
While I applaud people’s efforts to overcome racism, people need to decide if they want to be right, or they want to be effective. If you want to be effective, you have to conquer your own unconscious biases and prejudices first. In this case, the author was projecting his emerging understanding of racism onto complete strangers, based on the color of their skin (not his).
The effective response would have been to ask the receipt checker the reason she had NOT stopped you. That was the only fact, you knew for sure, so that is where you should have stayed. Speculating about the psychology of complete strangers helps no one, least of all ourselves.
