Guard Duty, Donkey Kong Style: How to Shut Down Shoplifters Like Pest Control

Picture this: it's a Tuesday afternoon, the fluorescent lights are humming, and somewhere between the energy drinks and the lip gloss, a shifty-eyed character in a hoodie is eyeing a rack of sunglasses like they're planning a heist. What do you do? You channel your inner Donkey Kong; beat your chest, own every level, and make it absolutely clear that this scaffold has a guardian.

Shoplifters are pests. They're opportunistic and they always think they've found the easy path. Your job is simple: be the gorilla who makes that path a nightmare.

Claim Your Scaffold

Kong's entire strategy starts with presence. He doesn't hide in a corner hoping nobody climbs. He shows up, chest out, ready to hurl barrels at a moment's notice.

Make eye contact. Say hello to customers. Be visible, be friendly, be you and be everywhere. The moment a would-be shoplifter clocks a security guard actively patrolling, nine times out of ten they mentally cross that store off their list and move on. Your mere existence is a deterrent. Use it.

Know Where the Barrels Roll

Kong doesn't just throw randomly; he controls the geometry. You need to know your store the same way. Where are the blind spots? Which aisles don't have camera coverage? Which exit gets the least foot traffic? Those are your barrels, and that's where the action happens.

Read the Players

Here's where the fun begins. Professional shoplifters are basically running a video game of their own; scoping the level, timing their moves, looking for the gap in your defense. Your job is to be better at the game than they are.

Watch for the Lingerer; the person who's been in the same aisle for fifteen minutes without putting anything in a basket. A cheerful "Finding everything okay?" usually sends them packing. Watch for the Concealer; odd body posture, a bag held open below hip height, a suspicious crouch behind the display. Watch for the Distractor Duo; the classic two-player scheme where one person charms the staff while the other goes to work on the shelving. And keep a mental note of The Returner; someone who pops in, leaves, and circles back again. That's not indecision. That's reconnaissance.

Power-Ups: Use Your Tech

Even Kong could have used a few upgrades. You, fortunately, have them. Cameras, EAS alarm tags, radio communication, and incident logs are your power-ups, and ignoring them is like jumping over barrels when you could just take the hammer.

A quick radio tip to your teammate covers twice the ground at half the reaction time. And your incident log? That's your game history. Patterns live in there. Learn to read them.

The Final Boss: Keep Your Cool

Here's the thing they don't put in the job description: the real boss fight isn't with the shoplifter. It's with your own adrenaline. The stores that handle loss prevention best are the ones with guards who stay calm, professional, and almost annoyingly polite;  because calm and professional wins every single time.

Wait for a clear, witnessed act before making a stop. Follow your store's protocol to the letter. Identify yourself, stay composed, and leave the dramatic takedowns to the action movies. Wrongful stops are expensive, embarrassing, and entirely avoidable.

The best version of this job isn't catching people; it's being so good that catching people rarely becomes necessary. Make the store a hard target. Be the Kong nobody wants to mess with. The pests will find somewhere easier to be pests.