Forerunner: The secret Apple code for "This man will rob us"


So what the heck is going on here? A young man named
Owen JJ Stone
went into an Apple store to buy a Macbook at the Santa Monica Apple store and requested a MacBook Pro. He was in a hurry and said so and suddenly one of the people helping him touched her ear and said “Forerunner.” Bingo. That was the signal for a security lockdown.

The Apple folks then proceded to bring over a black man to complete his purchase – Owen is also black – and security essentially surrounded him until he picked up his item and left.

“The girl looks at me and she says, “Oh would you like me to show it to you?” And I said, “No, I have a Macbook, I had one, I have an iMac, I know what I want. If you could just get me one, that would be great because I’m kinda in a rush, I’d appreciate that.”
So, the girl looks at the guy and says “forerunner.”

[…]

When she said, “forerunner,” the gentleman touched his ear, and uh, then the security guard came up to the middle of the register, two people went and stood by the door, people were standing around me, and I’m like “Dude, do think I’m gonna steal this Macbook?”

And he’s like, “Oh, no, no, no.”

So what’s going on here? Perhaps the store had something in place due to a rash of robberies with the same MO. However, you’d think they’d have figured out a less obtrusive method to ensure folks don’t gank MacBooks like, say, vigilant without being like Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire when he hears a balloon pop.

UPDATE – General consensus is that she actually called over a “floor runner” and that she was concerned about credit card fraud. It sucks but it’s true.

via Consumerist