Scott Glenn
He is vice president of asset protection at The Home Depot, where he has run loss-prevention and security since 2018.
“I'll trade the shrink for the safety of the people every day of the week.”
Odd Lots · Money & Markets · September 2026
Context
Tracy Alloway had asked about the liability of sending staff after someone walking out with a full cart. Glenn, who runs asset protection for Home Depot, says the retailer has had people injured and killed in these incidents, and that organised crews often send in homeless or addicted people to do the actual theft. Shrink is the industry's word for inventory lost to theft and error; he trains 400,000 store associates to let it go.
Transcript
almost impossible to put it in a store at a Home Depot store. We have eight separate entrances in and out of our building.
…not you want your employees, even your security guards, going after people who might actually fight back and be dangerous. And I'm sure we've all seen, you especially, Scott, the videos of some guy who just fills a massive shopping cart and walks out of the store with the security staff looking on.
…pull away from those situations when they start there. But we also have 400,000 store associates who are very passionate. They don't like to see stuff stolen. And we train them very clearly on like, you don't get involved with these things. You back away, and we do give them the same, you know, a slightly different but different, but still de-escalation type training because that's the problem. I'll trade the shrink for the safety of the people every day of the week. And my leadership team and our board would back us on those decisions all day long. We are never ever going to put people in jeopardy. Our associates and our customers are the number one priority.
I've been hearing, we've been hearing about RFID tags for 25 years now. I would have assumed that the price of this hardware would have come down dramatically, such that you slap a little tag on, and if it like, you know, it's not very easy to remove. And then by the time you go through some gate…
No, I can't. I don't understand it. It's your lips to God's ears, right? Like it's one of those things where I'm with you. And I will say a Home Depot environment, a little different. We are a hardware store with basically a Faraday cage of steel throughout our stores. We do a passive RFID does not…
explain that it does not work in your stores? Actually, I don't know anything about this. Can you clarify that?
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