Loblaws recently installed 7 foot high Plexiglass barriers that funnel people out of the stores. They claim it will stop theft and make people safer.
Many people have voiced concerns about these barriers possibly being a fire hazard, in the sense that they might create a bad bottle neck in the event of an evacuation. Many people panic during an emergency. However, I have also seen many people stating that it’s not technically against the fire code.
In your opinion, is this a hazard? Do you think it’s fine, or do you think that this could be one of those situations that ends up causing new regulations to be added after casualties happen? Do you think that people are too worried, or do you think that these concerns are valid?
https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2024/04/ontario-barriers-exit-loblaws-store/
It’s just training for the human livestock corral. Nothing to see here, moooove along
Some pictures would probably help.
Is only the plexiglass new? The railings were already there? Railings like that is pretty common in the US. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Now they have both.
When I still shopped there, it wasn’t uncommon to see people bump into those railings. This one lady tried to go through the same piece of railing four or five times before she realized that it was there lol.
Make people feel safer… right.
Self check outs basically transferred the labour from an employee supplied by the grocer to the consumer, resulting in lower employment costs for the grocer and greater time and effort expenditure for the consumer.
The deliberate programming choices of the self check outs at loblaws are especially annoying :do you want to donate to charity on our behalf? Accidentally scan an item twice? Gotta wait for someone to come cancel it for you. It takes like 5 clicks to get to paying these fuckers.
Then they want to surveill everyone on the way out like they don’t trust you, after they transferred all the labour to you?
Ya fuck that, no wonder people get pissed. Like seriously fuck off. And on top of all that you get absolutely gouged.
Went from shopping there weekly to never stepping foot in that god awful store, spend your money elsewhere.
I just assume everything loblaws does to be evil now.
Personally I don’t see any inherent problems with these small jumpable gates at first glance. But I’m sure there’s something sinister and evil about them and that I’m not seeing, because loblaws is literally Satan.
Loblaws recently installed 7 foot high Plexiglass barriers
You can jump 7’?
Oh. I went by the pictures and I didn’t see the glass added on top. I’m big dumb.
But I was right, loblaws is doing evil.
If your only defence for a thing is “it’s not technically against the fire code”, then it’s a fire hazard. Like, if I say “I technically didn’t steal your watch”, then you would say “give me back my watch”.
This reads like a phrase from Half as Interesting.
they keep customers safe
Lol from what? Bugs?
If the concern is safety during an evacuation, just make them breakaway at a certain amount of pressure. They could just fold down and fall flat or something.
Think this through, add some smoke, panic, and broken panes of plexiglass.
If they’re worried about people stealing they should stop price gouging so hard that people can’t afford their groceries.
That looks awful, but in a fire situation you could absolutely bust them. Plexiglass is super brittle.
But the question for me is why? Like do they have so much theft that 3 foot barriers are pointless? Maybe they need to hire some door people? They’re making people less safe for no reason.
Looks like they added this to existing barriers. I swear people will get mad at anything.
All I could think of, was the Bob Loblaw law blog.
You, Sir, are a mouthful!
Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog Lobs Law Bomb
I hate them. The stores clearly weren’t designed with them in mind, and all it does is make getting from point A to point B 10x harder if those points aren’t exactly where they expect you to go. Need to get to customer service or grab a paper after you’ve entered the store already? Good luck, now you have to go ALLLL the way around the store, fully exit, and then you can get there. Before it was a 2 second walk, now it’s 5 minutes.
Being rather familiar with american fire codes, this would be followed here by a fire marshall showing up and asking if they wanted to take these down or have the building closed.
