Keep Yourself Safe and Sound This Blogmas

Burglaries, drunk driving, and assaults all rise during the holiday season. These bleak facts can be frightening, but your chance of being a victim is small. Today’s blog aims to give you the tools to decrease this likelihood even further.

Out and About

First up, we’re going to look at ways to keep yourself safe when shudder we have to brave the mall crowds.

Parking garages have a lot of recessed and hidden areas. 10% of property crimes occur in parking lots and garages. Even more seriously, my alma mater has an ongoing year-round issue of sexual assaults in its parking garages, despite cameras. (UCF, at some point you have to start caring about your female students’ safety.)

Avoid becoming a victim by parking near the entrance and under lights. Keep your keys in your hand as you walk to and from your car–maybe it’s not the ideal weapon, but it will do in a pinch (you can also attach weapons to your keychain, depending on local laws). The best tip of all: shop with a friend.

Stay fed and hydrated. One of the scarier situations I had to deal with in my years of retail management was the time a customer fainted and blocked the fitting room door from being opened. She was fine after her blood sugar leveled out, but there were still frightening moments when she couldn’t be roused.

People make better decisions when their physical needs have been dealt with. Don’t get into the “I’ll just get Aunt Ginger something and then I’ll stop” trap. That’s how you end up giving the poor woman a nose-hair trimmer. Listen to your body. Keep glucose tablets on hand, if necessary.

Bear in mind that lines are longer this time of year. Don’t take your hanger out on the cashier!

Don’t nap in the display beds. Okay, I know I just told you to listen to your body. But if you need a rest, head home.

For starters, those probably aren’t real beds. They’re short mattresses laid on top of wire frames. Lots of jerry-rigging and zip ties are involved. Smart stores have them at a vertical angle.

So keep off and keep your kids off, because they do collapse under weight.

Keep your kids close. Earlier this year, a baby in Melbourne, Florida fell out of her shopping cart and headfirst onto a concrete floor. The 15-month-old shattered her skull and has a hard road ahead of her.

Her mother was busy paying at the register. Ensuring that your child doesn’t stand up in the cart is easier said than done, and shopping with someone else isn’t always possible. But either of those things would have prevented this tragedy.

Older children can dart from their parents’ side and get lost in a crowd within moments. Teach your child to find a person wearing a nametag and stay with them. Depending on the child’s age, you can teach them your name, phone number, or just a code word.

If you lose your child, ask an associate to get the manager to call a Code Adam. This process has been formally adopted by many retailers, but all stores will have a similar protocol.

The protocol includes stationing employees at all entrances and emergency exits. While these employees ensure that all customers are checked on their way out, other associates will comb the store for your child.

Ask parents before you give. This is especially important if you don’t know the child well or haven’t had a child that age yet.

There are many reasons for this. Some parents are uncomfortable with smart toys that can possibly record the child. Some children put toys in their mouths and parents have to remain vigilant about materials (such as boron in slime kits). Some parents just don’t want any more plastic tchotchkes floating around. Ask their folks before you give something that will go straight back to the store.

Let it go, don’t engage crazy. Someone cuts in line? Takes something out of your shopping cart? Politely tell them to undo their wrong. Maybe they’ll be shamed into behaving well.

But if they aren’t? Let it go.

Vent on social media. Ask corporate if they can help you find the special item that got swiped. But please, whatever you do, don’t try and knock sense into the person who wronged you. Don’t escalate the situation by shouting or videotaping them.

This goes for traffic offenses, too. There have been several tragic road rage incidents in 2018 already, like the three-year-old shot in Port St. Lucie, Florida. We already have crazies out there shooting people for no reason other than gender, so mitigate what risks you can.

Drive defensively. Be aware of your surroundings at all times. If someone rolls down their window and starts yelling, don’t make eye contact.

If someone is driving erratically, try to pull into a well-lit area and call the highway patrol. If that isn’t possible, take a different route.

Your loved ones will understand if you’re late, but they can’t replace you if a drunk driver takes your life.

Shopping In Your Jammies

Does anyone else feel like they stick to the tried-and-true when mailing gifts? Err on the side of caution and don’t look anywhere besides Amazon? Well, don’t let me stop you from clicking my affiliate link and doing just that.

Look beyond the reviews. Paid reviews are out there. I found a company that pays reviewers $8 for each 5-star book review they churn out. It stands to reason that all merchandise on popular sites can experience these boosts.

So what can you do? Google company name + scam, model number + problems (broken, defective, sucks), or check out their social media. Someone’s bound to be tweeting them if the product is shoddy.

Read the fine print. I got my mom the same three magazines every Mother’s Day for years because I was never organized enough to figure out when they were going to charge my card.

Besides publications, subscription boxes and memberships are also autopay culprits. So if you give your sister’s family a zoo membership, make sure you make a note of the date that it will renew. Do this even if you cancel, in case you get a mysterious charge a year from now.

Have a dedicated email folder for all cancellation confirmations. But don’t rely on them to email you–add the confirmation number to your calendar entry.

(Bonus money-saving tip: The subscription will renew at the company’s regular rate. So if you decide to keep the subscription going as a future gift, make sure you shop around for coupons next year.)

Check out the company’s contact information. If you decide to go off the beaten path, you want to make sure you’re dealing with a person or company that keeps their word.

This is a good idea for bloggers who are approached by brands, too. A couple of months ago, I was approached by C-teyCo. (Name slightly changed.) They wanted me to buy a product from their Amazon, review it, and receive a check from them sometime in the future. But when I googled the company, they had a website which sold knockoff Bulgari jewelry.

So I went one step further and performed a WHOIS search. This tells you who owns a website, including their address. Now, it is possible to have your information redacted for about $18 for 2 years. But in C-teyCo’s case, they hadn’t done that, and I could see that “Joseph” was in China.

When asked to help, go beyond the surface. This time of year, GoFundMes are everywhere. And they all seem so deserving.

The downside of this is that you can’t really fact check situations. Hospitals won’t tell you if someone is a patient. News sites may not have articles about fires, wrecks, and other tragedies. And a lot of stuff is based solely on the word of the recipient.

There are a few tip-offs that a GoFundMe is a scam. For starters, check out the first few givers. They will be local, share a last name, etc.

You can also sleuth them a little bit. Recipient+Arrest (add their county or state if they have a common name) might produce a history of fraud and theft.

Google image search is your best friend. Scammers capitalize on every national tragedy and they use the same photo available to the media. Or, shockingly, they use pictures posted by grieving parents for their own gain.

If you are considering donating to a campaign, ask the poster some questions about how the situation is going. It is sometimes easier to gauge a person’s honesty in a message than it is a polished campaign.

At the Table

Finally, this time of year brings a set of extra dangers at the table.

When you eat out, keep your receipts. During the holiday season, restaurants are busier as many people decide to entertain outside the home.

When you pay for a restaurant meal, they actually place a hold on your credit card for a higher amount. This amount is adjusted later and will be reflected on your statement.

In the meantime, don’t toss your receipt. A coworker of mine took two direct reports out to lunch on the company card. He was later called in by HR and told that there was a $300 discrepancy between the receipt he had submitted and the amount charged. The server had changed the 1 to a 4 and quit after receiving the money.

That’s a fairly egregious theft and you’re unlikely to encounter it, but keep your receipts anyway!

People are much more likely to be victims of food poisoning than they are most of the other dangers on this list. Food safety gets a lot of airtime during the summer, but it is still immensely important to follow all proper food preparation techniques.

I hope that this post helps you to stay safe and scam-free this holiday season! Please comment below and tell me what I’ve missed, and don’t forget to follow and subscribe to my email list for more Blogmas posts! This post contained affiliate links and all images were from Pixabay.