Monday, August 10, 2009

Mall Cop Ends Scavenger Hunt

mallcoplogo

Yesterday, we continued our Revolution Student Ministries Summer with a trip to Concord Mills for a game of Mall Madness.

We had the students divided into 5 teams with their sheets of 44 items to find and be back by 4:30.

Being a youth pastor that likes to be prepared and cover all bases...I called in July to get it cleared with Concord Mills.  The Lady on the phone gave us the full okay and said that some stores do not allow it, so have your students be polite and thank them and move on to another store.

So we get there and let the students loose in the mall and start the adventure.  An hour and a half into this, we are sitting down eating lunch as an adult staff talking about the upcoming year and we get phone calls from one of our groups.  They said they are being held by security on the other end of the food court and we need to come very quickly.



And then the Mall Cop on the Segway ended the Scavenger Hunt.

"Mall Cop" was trying to be serious....it was very hard not to laugh.
All the stores had no problems with the students...just the 3 mall cops that had to show us who was in charge by bringing out a folded sheet of paper that stated no scavenger hunts.
And told us the lady that we talked to to get permission did not know this policy...
So now we just add it to the list of youth ministry...

So my feelings....

I was a little mad since we had called ahead and got permission, but then were told that everyone doesn't know of this policy.  But I was more upset that the Mall Cops held two of my students like they had done something severly wrong so everyone passing by could see.  I have put in a call to the head of Concord Mills and am waiting a return to call.

All in all it was a fun day, we did get to continue to stay there and go around, just had to end the game early....

3 comments:

  1. yea it did make me pretty mad because like u said they made a pretty big scene out of it and everyone that passed by kept looking at me and corey like we had done something wrong so yea that wasnt to cool......i felt like i was just caught stealing or something really bad.

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  2. Man, it reminds me of the time the Baywatch patrol took the kid to jail in Daytona Beach for catching a frisbee. I would have called him "Mr. Blart" the whole time. I haven't been to jail in awhile...

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  3. Oh man. I feel sorry for you guys. Just last Saturday, some high school kids were at my mall doing a scavenger hunt. And they were running all over the place. Some of them even approached me for directions and I gave it to them.

    Yes, I am a mall cop myself. We just have a different policy at our mall, that's all. The management team believe that every person in the mall is a potential paying customer and we have instructions to treat them as such.

    I don't know about the mall cops at that particular mall, but generally speaking, security guards rank rather low on the company ladder and we are not given a lot of leeway to interpret management's orders. I was helpful to the scavenger hunters at my mall simply because I was given strict orders to treat everyone in the mall as potential paying customers and no manager has ever said 'no scavenger hunting'. So there you go...

    On the other hand, if they had given me simple instructions to prevent shoppers from racing around the mall etc, I would have done the same thing as the mall cops in your story. Not because I want to, or even because 'orders are orders', but rather because we as security guards are not given that sort of authority or leeway to interpret orders.

    And considering how easy it is to replace us, we try not to test the patience of mall managers who have the authority to fire us. I am not making excuses for the mall cops who stopped your scavenger hunt, but just trying to give feedback from the other side.

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