[jstarfish]

> Michigan

> Doctor visit style. You go in, wait in a lobby, one patient at a time

This has less to do with pretending to be medical and more to do with physical security. It's a cash business; think through how you'd rob a dispensary. If the employee escapes and you're the only customer in the room, you aren't taking hostages. The "examination room" is a mantrap.

If they're starting to not do this anymore, I'd take that to mean they finally found insurance to cover their more-substantial losses.

[pests]

I don't think it has anything to do with security. These places have always had a fully armed guard(s) and lots of concrete columns, metal gates, etc.

The store near me had a lobby about 10x100ft. There was a simple glass door separating it from the shoppping area which was just counters around the perimiter and pegboards on the wall.

The shopping area at this location sometimes had more than one employee working, sometimes they would handle two patients at a time. Perhaps 3 people at most back at a time.

They just removed the wall and pushed the counters and pegboards up into the lobby. From outside the building you look inside and every wall and shelf is filled with product.

I really do think it was just above moving more product.

[jstarfish]

I'm telling you the old way was for security.

The shopping-in-captivity experience is not shared by any other business-- not your bank, not your pharmacy, not your doctor. It's inefficient as hell, yes, because if you picked out $5000 worth of product and tried to snatch it and run, you wouldn't make it through that door-- they have to buzz you out. Mental hospitals and prisons work like this, being high-security facilities.

There's nothing in the room at my local dispensary that you could throw through that glass, assuming it's even glass at all.

For a while, they couldn't even get payment processors to take cards for them, so they'd be sitting on mountains of cash. They couldn't get insurers to cover cash losses from robberies.

My dispensary's guards used to be armed. They no longer are. They stopped carrying around the time the place started taking debit card payments. Liability for guards shooting civilians over property crime is not a risk anyone accepts willingly. (I don't even think my bank's guard carries a sidearm. Retailers are told by insurers to give robbers whatever they want to make them go away without further incident.)

[pests]

The ones around here accept debit via doing a ATM widthdraw of the exact amount at the counter. Exactly the same steps as a regular payment, they just warn you about ATM fees from the bank.

I have never seen a buzzer or any way to stop people from leaving these secure rooms. They were just privacy - the swinging glass door I mentioned above I don't even think locks.

You wouldn't be doing a snatch a run before or after - guy at the door still has a gun.