Starsky & Hutch

Or, why you shouldn't chase shoplifters.

With more than 1.6 million workers in the United States, and another 500,000 worldwide, Walmart is the largest U.S. employer.

In fact, if Walmart were a state, it would rank 37th in terms of population.

That's why it's big news when Walmart announces far-reaching employee policies, or even when one of its workers gets involved in a story that's part of a big trend.

And it's why I think the tale of a 67-year-old Walmart front-end associate in Colorado named John Zalesky — who says he got stabbed last month while trying to stop a shoplifter and that Walmart fired him for his trouble afterward — grabbed people's attention.

"In 10 months, I stopped well over 100 people [trying to shoplift]," Zalensky told the New York Post, adding that he was given a "Shrink Buster of the Month" award earlier this year.

He and a work colleague even nicknamed themselves "Starsky & Hutch," according to the report, because they were so enthusiastic about stopping theft.

(Quick timeout for readers under say, age 50: Starsky & Hutch was a 1970s TV cop show.)

As Zalensky tells the story that led allegedly and ultimately to his lack of employment, he chased a woman shoplifter into the Walmart parking lot, and opened the door to her car, only to have a man inside stab him in the arm.

The shoplifter and her knife-wielding compatriot got away.

"It was probably three-quarters of an inch wide, nothing big," Zalensky said. "I don't worry too much about it. I mean, if it was serious, I'd have taken it more serious."

But, he added, a week later, he was taken aside by a Walmart assistant manager and told that his employment would be terminated for violating a policy against following shoplifters outside.

Don't people love to share these stories?

They seem, at first blush, like a big, impersonal company retaliating against an employee whose main offense might be that he was overzealous about his job.

But, take a minute, and you can easily understand why nearly every company that faces alleged theft like this insists that they never want employees to chase suspected shoplifters or confront them physically.

It's not just Walmart; we've seen this over and over. A few examples:

• A 7-Eleven worker (also in Colorado, as it happens), claimed he was fired from his job after chasing two shoplifters down a street.

• Home Depot reportedly fired a 70-year-old employee who threw a paint roller at three men he suspected of stealing tool sets.

• A Lowe's worker who reportedly chased a shoplifter out of a store in Georgia last year and wound up with a black eye for her trouble was fired -- although the company rehired her after news reports and a GoFundMe made the rounds.

• Two Lululemon workers say they were fired for chasing masked robbers out of a store and calling police.

• A Safeway supermarket worker was fired after a 22-year-career for confronting a shoplifter (apparently without going outside or touching the person), but later won a legal claim that at least gave her unemployment benefits.

There's a saying that hard cases make bad law. It's probably also true that hard stories make for bad legal conclusions.

I have empathy as someone who used to work some boring jobs, and who used to hope that something, anything would happen -- to liven up the day.

Heck, now it can be told: When I worked summers as a lifeguard at a state park as a teenager, we used to expand the roped off swimming area in the hope that people would venture too far and need to be rescued.

We lifeguards thought we looked cool rushing into the water to save them. Also, it broke up our days.

I'm not saying I'm proud of it, of course. Just that I can understand why some employees in boring jobs might relish the chance to run after an alleged thief.

But, as satisfying as the thrill of the chase might be, the let-them-go rule is the right one. Anything less than a ban can turn relatively safe jobs like retail associate into more dangerous ones -- with serious potential practical and legal implications.

Frankly, employees should be happy that they're not expected to do this. I mean, even in the examples above we have one employee (Walmart) who managed to get stabbed, and another (Lowe's) who wound up assaulted.

There's the very real possibility of an employee making a mistake and chasing the wrong person, whether for purely innocuous reasons or otherwise, or else causing harm to innocent bystanders.

Heck, depending on the circumstances or the jurisdiction, even an employee who assaults or detains a real-life, legitimate shoplifter might land themselves or their employer in legal trouble.

All for what: a few hundred dollars worth of stolen merchandise?

It's ironic. Employees who have training in combatting shoplifting are sometimes called "loss prevention."

But the potential loss to a company as a result of a mishap after chasing a suspected shoplifter is much greater than any single shoplifting incident -- or maybe even a whole bunch of them.

Retail theft is a problem. But, untrained employees chasing suspected bad guys out the door isn't the answer.

Sorry, Starsky. Those are the rules.

Much like the swim ropes, they're actually there for a reason.

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7 other things …

• Witnesses on Monday reported the first Israeli airstrike in central Beirut in nearly a year of conflict, hours after Israel struck targets across Lebanon and killed dozens of people as Hezbollah sustained a string of deadly blows to its command structure, including the killing of its overall leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Earlier, Hezbollah confirmed that Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of the militant group’s Central Council, was killed Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. They include founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades. (AP)

• More than 2.1 million people remained without power Sunday across the Southeast in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, including more than 460,000 in North Carolina, where the storm pulverized homes, trapped residents, spawned landslides, and submerged communities under raging floodwaters. Nearly 70 people have died across multiple states since the record-breaking storm hit Florida's Big Bend as a Category 4 hurricane with 140-mph winds Thursday, before moving north through Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas and weakening to a post-tropical cyclone. The death toll is expected to rise. (USA Today)

• Thousands of longshoremen at ports from New England to Texas are set to strike early Tuesday in the first walkout of its kind in almost half a century, freezing commercial shipping on a massive scale and disrupting the national economy weeks before the presidential election. A strike would be the biggest disruption to the flow of goods in and out of the country since the height of the pandemic. Each day a strike lasts could cost the U.S. economy up to $1 billion, according to analysts. (The Washington Post)

• CBS News says it will be up to vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz to check the facts of their opponents in their debate tomorrow. Scheduled for 9 p.m. Eastern, it's being broadcast from a Manhattan studio that once hosted the children’s program “Captain Kangaroo,” and will be moderated by outgoing “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan. (AP)

• Former President Carter, who might have been one of the least popular presidents during his administration but later became an admired ex-president, turns 100 years old tomorrow. President Biden gave a tribute ahead of time: "Mr. President, I admire you so darn much. Your hopeful vision of our country, your commitment to a better world, and your unwavering belief in the power of human goodness continues to be a guiding light for all of us." (The Hill)

• A historic new study out of Scotland shows the real-world impact of vaccines against the human papillomavirus: The country has detected no cases of cervical cancer in women born between 1988-1996 who were fully vaccinated against HPV between the ages of 12 and 13. Published on Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the study is the first to monitor a national cohort of women over such a long time period and find no occurrence of cervical cancer. (Stat News)

• Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Saturday that would have required new cars to beep at drivers if they exceed the speed limit in an effort to reduce traffic deaths. California would have become the first to require such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state starting in 2030. The bill would have mandated that vehicles beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph. The legislation would have likely impacted all new car sales in the U.S., since the California market is so large that car manufacturers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply. (CBS News)

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Thanks for reading. Photo is basically a fair use screenshot from a 50-year-old promotional shoot, so I hope we’re OK. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!