AIBU to think staff shouldn’t be searched after work?

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My 16 year old son has got himself a little part time job at a discount clothes store, beginning with M. Pay is dreadful (£4 odd an hour,) job is mind numbing, but he’s sticking at to gain experience. I’m sat waiting to collect him at 9pm last night and I wondered what the delay was for 5 mins by the door.
I witnessed the manager searching all the bags of the staff leaving. My son didn’t have a bag, but still had to wait to be let out afterwards. He said this is standard practice each shift.
I am already disgusted by the pay, finding out he wasn’t paid for his induction and chasing 8 hours pay he’s not received, to now witness this! Utterly appalled that they would treat their staff this way.
I am trying To convince him to resign but he wants to find another part time job first.

£4.81 an hour? Wow. I didn't realise minimum wage was so poor for younger people. I got paid £4 per hour when I was 17, but that was 25 years ago! What a joke. Good for him for having a great attitude and work ethic, hope he finds something better soon.

It shows a complete lack of trust and respect for the staff who are already paid rubbish wages

It really doesn't its a sensible measure to deter theft. The problem is staff who can't be trusted spoiling it for everyone else not the employer trying to prevent it

You struggle to believe it? Ever worked in retail? When I started my Saturday job in a shoe shop, I was shown the system for stealing shoes on the first day. Stock was brought up and down stairs from the cellar stock room; the staff room
was also downstairs and used boxes were broken up and put out the back door ( by stockroom and staff room) so the chosen shoes went out there too and were picked up in a break or after work. Shoes were stolen on a daily basis. I didn’t dare tell the manager but my mum did.

Was that also an environment where there may be a lot more temptation to steal too? It may be a little more surprising in a clothing shop but some work places where valuables are dealt with it would be negligent not to check.

It used to happen to us when I worked at Brantano. They never did lunchtime checks so some girls used to hide shoes outside on their lunch breaks and then take them home.

Pay was also shit. £3 something an hour!

Your son sounds as though he has a great attitude. Once he's got a bit of experience he stands far more chance of getting a job elsewhere.

I worked in retail management in the 80s and 90s and as well as bag searches it was also company policy that staff had their purses, wallets and loose change locked away in a safe too.
At the start of their shift they’d count the amount which would then be written on a form and signed for and they had to be signed out if needed on breaks and re-counted and signed back in afterwards.

i assume the people clutching their pearls about this have never worked in retail? Honestly, compared to some of the behaviour low-paid staff have to endure, a bag search is nothing.

I can't believe the pay!! I got nearly £4 an hour in the 90s working in Woolworths.
We did get searched occasionally - turned out the security guard was the theif though.

I work in retail. I open my bag for my manager to look in before I leave and I look in hers. It’s all totally relaxed and not at all humiliating.

Even the high end stores have policies to prevent staff theft. The Irish equivalent of Harrods doesn't allow staff carry a handbag - but a see through bag (like you'd use for your liquids when flying but larger) is allowed if you don't want to leave your wallet and phone in your locker. But they must stay in the bag when in the shop floor.

Happened when I worked in retail years back, and the supervisor would check the Managers bag too.

B&Q do it too. Its standard practice I think. Where I work now doesn't but we don't sell anything small enough to walk out with.

It wasn't just the sales staff either, we'd pick out of a bag of doorknobs and whoever got the shiny one checked everyone, including the managers. We all got treated the same in that respect.

Are there any hotels near you? Dd16 gets £10 pH plus tips

Exactly 😂 Honestly, you can tell the one's who have never had to work in such an undignified job 🙄
Management have their bags checked too fgs it's just a standard process

It’s awful. I know it’s “standard”, and have worked in jobs where I was searched as a youngster myself, but it’s still an appalling way to treat human beings. Pay them an absolute pittance and then treat them all like thieves who can’t be trusted. I worked at a well-known garden centre as a teen and our cars were searched at random on the way out.

As an aside, I wonder if thefts by retail staff would reduce if corporations paid a genuine living wage? One that can actually support a person to house and feed their family.

My first job was as an A level management trainee in House of Fraser, this was a common occurrence. I remember some staff being caught and asked to leave.

This!!!

Probably because the wages they're paying doesn't exactly engender a high amount of trust on either side. If you watch someone do a course, you know they've done it.

As you say, you work in an environment where trust is the default starting point. Retail is different.

We were searched after every shift/before leaving the shop for breaks. Also used to get our lockers searched randomly.

If we were on the tills, we would take our float up to a special barricaded room, hand it over through a hatch in the door and wait outside while they counted it. I think we had a special knock to tell them to open the hatch and they did a special knock to tell us our float was correct and we could leave.

If we had bought something from the shop, it was generally best to not wear it to work for a while. I you did, either keep the receipt or show that you were already wearing it as you came in.

It isnt anything new. I'm old and I had a Saturday job in a large store many aeons ago - it was normal that at ramdom intervals someone checked bags. We just held them open showed the contents as we left (all staff, not just the Saturday ones).

More recently I've had large bags searched for laptops when working in an office and occasionally the gate men would check car boots to make sure no IT equipment t was being taken.

Yep, it's common in retail. It's one of the reasons I left the retail sector. When I worked in Sainsburys they had a (toy) machine where you pushed the button for either a red or green light. If you had the wrong colour they would have someone jump on your checkout so you could be taken out of sight and searched.

I hated it, I found it disrespectful and humiliating. They are approaching the security issue by assuming that all staff are thieves rather than most people are honest, we need to be alert to the shits that aren't. I don't think it's a good way to build a trusting relationship between management and staff, and that reflects itself in other areas whe management try to implement change.

re the pay B&Q pay all there staff the same basic wage, regardless of age, they had a load of students when I worked there. Obvioulsy specialists (gardeners/plumbers) management etc get more.

Just because something is standard practice doesn't mean that it's ok. I am with you OP, it's wrong. It happened to me in one Saturday job I had, but only with an arsehole manager. It didn't happen in any of the other retail jobs I had, because they treated their staff with respect.

For me, it's just a symptom of the contempt in which retail staff are held, by employers, and indeed all the MNers on here saying it's ok.