You can't shop for anything these days.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/9144

In the cartoon, the main character (and her comic is a humorous look at her own life...slightly exaggerated) is buying things that she needs. Gloves since her husband is packing so they can move as soon as they can find a better place, Zip Ties to keep the tomatoes standing with the supports, and duct tape since she ran out at the last con she was at.

The final panel has the clark calling for security when she sees these three items.

And that's the trend. If people are seeing someone buying a group of items that do not seem normal to them, they have an unholy freak out. I've seen similar things in my daily life.

A case in point is the man in the Walmart who was wandering around with a package of little girl underwear with some cartoon character on it (might have been My Little Pony...I didn't look that intently). A woman came out and confronted this man and started giving him the unholy whatfore for being a pedophile, a creep, a sexual deviant.

Her rant was cut short when a little girl came running up just ahead of her mother hollering "Daddy! Daddy! You found them! You found them!" indicating that the man was not a sexual predator and was simply a father looking for his daughter's favorite undergarments.

The woman mumbled something under hear breath that may have been apologetic (judging from how red her face was and the look of "Oh God did I just look stupid" on her face) and slunk away.

And we've all heard the news about the household that had two people doing shopping searches for two different items and law enforcement got involved seemingly because a google search for "Backpacks" and Pressure Cookers" was a mite suspicious to them.

Going back to the first example, Gloves, Zip Ties and Duct Tape as a grouped purchase is not that strange to me. I'm in the SCA and this is pretty much a standard shopping list for a heavy fighter.

Gloves to protect the hand from the armored gauntlets (the metal can get a bit pinchy and it's better to tear up a $10 pair of gloves than one's hand).

Shields are usually edged by a garden hose to protect the shield if it's made from plywood or to protect other people's rattan (type of bamboo-like material) swords if they're made of thin metal. Zip Ties are the preferred method since unlike the more period-looking cording, it's a hell of a lot easier to replace a pranged Zip Tie than it is to re-cord the entire shield.

And Duct Tape? Well beyond the fact that it's the real-life avatar of The Force (light side, dark side, holds the universe together...) it's used for emergency battlefield repairs and to coat the rattan swords to both protect others should they splinter, protect the sword from damage, and an off-color strip marks the "edge" of the sword and differentiates it from the "flat" of the sword.

So if there's an active SCA chapter with a heavy fighter group in any given area (and it's pretty damn common) then these three items are going to be flying off the shelves. Hell the week before the big Pennsic War and you're going to be hard pressed to find any left until they restock the shelves.

And this problem is so commonplace that it's frequently a Facebook Meme Game in which people are asked to think of the most "WTF" collection of 3-4 items to select and take through the checkout to see the cashier's reaction.

Spray Paint is another area where things are getting weird to buy. What with the problems with tagging (graffiti) and huffing, more and more areas are starting to have you scan a driver's license and keep track of how often you buy it. A person on a Tear Drop Trailer forum reported that when he underestimated the amount of rustoleum he needed and went back for more so he could repaint the trailer frame he was building on...they refused the sale.

He had to go to the next state over (10 miles away luckily) to get what he needed.

Anyone else noticing this trend?

[fireheart17]

Yup.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but some stupid person thought it was a brilliant idea to drink vanilla essence/vanilla extract straight from the bottle and passed out cold. Because of the alcohol content, they temporarily put a restriction on that and food dyes for over 18s. I only ever had to card one customer for it and they found it amusing.

Cough medicines down here are another one. Because of the pseudo what have you, they keep track of how much you're buying at any one time. The same goes for certain cough medicines now for some bizarre reason (and its not because teens are using them to get high, it's the baby cough medicine).

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Yup.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but some stupid person thought it was a brilliant idea to drink vanilla essence/vanilla extract straight from the bottle and passed out cold.

Oh fuck! That sounds a hell of a lot like the Vinegar Boy sage on CS.

Retards are screwing it up for the rest of us.

[s_stabeler]

Yup.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but some stupid person thought it was a brilliant idea to drink vanilla essence/vanilla extract straight from the bottle and passed out cold. Because of the alcohol content, they temporarily put a restriction on that and food dyes for over 18s. I only ever had to card one customer for it and they found it amusing.

Cough medicines down here are another one. Because of the pseudo what have you, they keep track of how much you're buying at any one time. The same goes for certain cough medicines now for some bizarre reason (and its not because teens are using them to get high, it's the baby cough medicine).

IIRC, cough medicine is an ingredient in cooking meth. So, if you are buying large amounts of it...

[Ginger Tea]

And some of them are mixers, no idea if they are prescription of OTC.

I could look for it and link the image, but xkcd once had a panel where he would stand in the produce section musing whilst holding a tube of KY Jelly.

At work there was a packet of condoms and custard creams on the supervisors desk, shared by half a dozen people at any one time, so no idea who's or even if they both belonged to the same person.
but if it was the only items bought it would raise a perverse eyebrow but nothing much else.

[Cats]

Pseudoephedrine is what meth cookers use and is federally regulated and has been for years (and only sold behind the pharmacy counter in many states). Dextromethorphan is the ingredient you will find in the cough medicines on the shelf that may get your carded in some states; people drink it in excess and it gives some kind of high or something.

New ones on the federal watch list? Acetone and Iodine. Meaning you will now need your IDs scanned to buy freaking nail polish remover. I'm serious. My store has already run into several issues with it, partly because it's utterly ridiculous, and partly because no one freaking knows about it. Not sure if it's because of the law or just my company's policy, but you aren't allowed to by both together either; the system locks it out.

[Ginger Tea]

Nash of Radio Dead Air posted this to his FB wall

[MrsEclipse]

I could look for it and link the image, but xkcd once had a panel where he would stand in the produce section musing whilst holding a tube of KY Jelly.

http://xkcd.com/236/

[AccountingDrone]

Pseudoephedrine is what meth cookers use and is federally regulated and has been for years (and only sold behind the pharmacy counter in many states). Dextromethorphan is the ingredient you will find in the cough medicines on the shelf that may get your carded in some states; people drink it in excess and it gives some kind of high or something.

New ones on the federal watch list? Acetone and Iodine. Meaning you will now need your IDs scanned to buy freaking nail polish remover. I'm serious. My store has already run into several issues with it, partly because it's utterly ridiculous, and partly because no one freaking knows about it. Not sure if it's because of the law or just my company's policy, but you aren't allowed to by both together either; the system locks it out.

<shrug> I can make a dandy though very unstable explosive with ammonia and iodine - better if I have powdered reagent grade, but I know how to turn several 5 gallon delboys of iodine into enough grams of elemental iodine to be dangerous.

But then again, I used to work hazmat, and know a lot more dangerous combinations. I can probably make silver fulminate in my sleep. I know my husband can, he and his buddy used to make it for shits and giggles when they were teens.

[Rageaholic]

The google thing scares me since I like searching random things on google. I hope I'm not on any watch lists.

[Greenday]

The google thing scares me since I like searching random things on google. I hope I'm not on any watch lists.

I always wonder about those lists. I've done God knows how many searches on stuff but it's usually work related.

[fireheart17]

Oh fuck! That sounds a hell of a lot like the Vinegar Boy sage on CS.

Retards are screwing it up for the rest of us.

Except that the mum did not blame the company. She did take note however, of the alcohol content present in it and the fact that it tasted sweet. The restriction has since been lifted, it was more of a temporary thing to prevent potential lawsuits from cropping up.

The mum tried to campaign for a while though, but I think she gave up in the end.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Re: Watch Lists, you have to remember those are algorithms for the most part which aren't even being watched by human beings until a certain threshold is reached. There are millions of teenagers and college kids that do the same thing, so your spare to fair search might be logged but it's not going to get you a dedicated NSA agent.

It's... you know, when you start hanging in Anonymous chat rooms, have a predictable political orientation, and are searching for those things far more regularly. Essentially, whose getting watched is going to exceed the curious threshold.

Anything else would require too much manpower and include too much bad data.

[cindybubbles]

I saw the same thing in an art store and a store that sells marijuana and hemp supplies. For the former, I think you need to be over 18 to buy the spray paint, and for the latter, you need to be supervised at all times if you tried to visit their garden growing supply department.

[DGoddess]

Yup.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but some stupid person thought it was a brilliant idea to drink vanilla essence/vanilla extract straight from the bottle and passed out cold. Because of the alcohol content, they temporarily put a restriction on that and food dyes for over 18s. I only ever had to card one customer for it and they found it amusing.

Cough medicines down here are another one. Because of the pseudo what have you, they keep track of how much you're buying at any one time. The same goes for certain cough medicines now for some bizarre reason (and its not because teens are using them to get high, it's the baby cough medicine).

I'm suspecting somebody in my store is doing similar . . . I can't see any way that Daria is getting in damaged bottles of McCormick Vanilla Extract one truck every week . . . it's been roughly 6 within the last month or so that I've had to scan out and send back to Reclaim.