I have been observing this for the past several years (4.5 years) since I live in Hamilton that retail businesses in the area use uniformed guards at the entrances such as Walmart, Value Village etc. I would consider this unusual because when I used to work at Sears (Canada and USA) or and other retail chain stores (or even as customer) , security in normal clothes was used to monitor sales floor/merchandise remotely from somewhere in the back of the store called Assett Protection/Loss prevention using CCTV. Security used to come out if theft was detected, even than in normal clothes, no uniformed guards were used. So what is this culture of using uniformed guards in retail businesses or libraries and why ? Is it to scare users of these places or to make them feel more protected. Published by the undersigned: KHALID MAHMOOD (m0168.org) Hamilton Ontario L8V1V3 www.m0168.org