I worked at Best Buy during college, and if you closed you'd have to wait for a manager to unlock the door for you and check your stuff.
If I had to wait more than a minute or so, I'd fill out a time correction for the time I was spent locked in the building. Anytime someone said anything about it, I said if I'm stuck in the building I'm under the company's control, so I should be paid. Eventually managers just started getting there faster when I paged them.
A while later Best Buy was sued for this and lost.
I worked for Best Buy (Geek Squad) as well, about 12 years ago. I had the same experience. Even if they were going to pay me for the time, it felt wrong that they told me I was not able to leave. At times you could be waiting for 15 minutes. It was my first job at 16 years of age, and I didn't have the care or confidence to correct the time punch. At my store they would have to approve time punch modifications, so it would have been obvious if you did that every night.
The one person who did get fired for stealing was simply grabbing laptops, removing them from their box, and casually walking out with them.
Reminds me of reading an article talking about how Walmart used to lock people in who worked the night shift like stocking shelfs. Seems like Walmart was doing this in the early 2000s, there's an article from 2004 in the New York Times. Didn't know that there was a similar thing at Best Buy, wonder what year that was.
If I had to wait more than a minute or so, I'd fill out a time correction for the time I was spent locked in the building. Anytime someone said anything about it, I said if I'm stuck in the building I'm under the company's control, so I should be paid. Eventually managers just started getting there faster when I paged them.
A while later Best Buy was sued for this and lost.