Community supermarket loss prevention officer - back-door exit checklist; supplier returns hauled away, cardboard and foam, returnable crates, promo teardown props - everything leaving through the back door gets checked against paperwork, an exit without a slip is a delivery without inspection

You are a loss-prevention trainer for a community
supermarket. Build me a back-door exit checklist
that hangs by the door and gets ticked in the
moment, for day-shift and night-shift officers.
The situation: things leave through the back door
almost as often as they arrive, yet nobody has
ever managed exits the way receiving is managed.

Five exit classes, each written in a fixed format:
check points / what counts as a fail / who may
authorize release / how the paperwork is kept.

1. Supplier returns hauled away
- Check: count the return slip against the actual
  goods item by item - name, spec, carton count;
  open a few cartons to confirm contents match
  the slip
- Fail: goods exceed the slip; goods present but
  not on the slip; the slip is handwritten with
  no store seal or manager signature
- Release authority: [return approver] signature
  plus the driver signing off
- Keep: store retains one copy, annotated with
  date and plate number

2. Cardboard / foam / empty-bottle recycling
- Check: before it leaves, dump the load on open
  ground for a look-through - goods hidden inside
  cardboard, small high-value items pressed among
  bottles
- Fail: the collector is not on the [approved
  collector] list; rainy-day bales (wet cardboard
  is heavy and the classic place to bury goods);
  refuses to be dumped out for inspection
- Release authority: the officer personally, but
  every release goes into a log: date /
  approximate volume / collector / plate number
- Note: a load that cannot be dumped out does
  not leave. No exceptions to this one

3. Returnable crates and materials back to the
   depot or supplier
- Check: count the crates; spot-open a portion -
  only empty crates leave
- Fail: goods inside crates; count does not
  match the collection slip
- Release authority: backroom manager writes the
  slip, officer verifies the count
- Keep: one slip copy pasted into the logbook

4. Promo teardown props / equipment / demo units
- Check: match the teardown list (what returns to
  the vendor or depot after the promo) against
  the actual load; nothing off the list leaves
- Fail: no teardown list; off-list racks, demo
  units, or freebies mixed into the truck
- Release authority: [teardown approver]
  (usually the store manager) signature
- Keep: photograph the teardown list for the
  archive

5. Staff personal items leaving
- Check: goods the employee purchased today need
  that day's receipt; for staff exiting via the
  back door after clock-out, match receipt to
  goods once
- Fail: receipt present but goods exceed it; no
  receipt plus the claim "bought online / brought
  from home" - non-store goods may leave, but
  goods in store packaging do not leave without
  a receipt
- Release authority: the officer personally, one
  line in the log; no interrogation on the spot;
  if it stalls, call the duty manager
- Note: the rule here is "match the receipt,"
  not "suspect the person." One fixed line:
  "back door means we check receipts; front-door
  purchases don't get checked"

Format:
- One A4 double-sided tick sheet; each of the
  five sections gets a box for "exits today /
  passes today"
- One bold line at the bottom: **failed items do
  not leave; wait for the approver; the officer
  never gets into a confrontation**
- No company names, no brand names on the sheet

Forbidden:
- No "raise exit-management awareness" - every
  line must be tickable or croppable
- No elastic wording like "spot-check as needed" -
  ratios are fixed (cardboard always dumped,
  crates spot-opened at [crate-opening ratio])
- No detaining people or vehicles; the single
  move for a standoff is: call the duty manager

Why it is written this way

Store loss prevention instinctively watches what comes in and what gets stolen, but more goods flow out through the back door inside legitimate processes than climb over any wall - because the whole journey looks normal: paperwork, people, a truck. So the checklist's premise is to raise "exit" to the same status as "receiving": goods entering must match the delivery slip, goods leaving must match the exit slip; missing either side leaves half a defense line.

The five classes deliberately get different checking depths: returns counted carton by carton, cardboard always dumped out, crates only spot-opened - because risk and frequency run in opposite directions. Returns happen once a day but a full truck can vanish at once; cardboard leaves twice a week but hides little. Allocating checking effort by risk is what keeps the checklist executable; write everything at maximum strictness and it dies within three days. "Only empty crates leave" and "cardboard always gets dumped" are the two zero-exception lines, written in stone because they are the most exploited seams in the book.

The staff-personal-items section is the easiest to ruin - framed as "guarding against thieving staff" it becomes an adversarial checklist nobody cooperates with. So the standard is fixed as "match the receipt, not the person": receipt matches goods, release; mismatch means a log entry and an escalation, never an interrogation. The closing line - "front-door purchases don't get checked" - preserves staff dignity: anyone who dislikes the check simply walks out the front. Transparent rules prevent more loss than harsh ones.

"No confrontation on the spot" sits bolded at the very bottom for the officer's own protection: failed goods not leaving is the floor for things; not blocking trucks or people is the floor for people. The only move in a standoff is calling the duty manager - the officer's job is preserving the paperwork and the facts; the conflict belongs to whoever has authority over it.

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