Letter Re: Learning from an OPSEC Failure
Hello Mr. Rawles,
The shopper who had a badoperational security (OPSEC) experience at the grocery store is not alone. Here in Canada I had the same thing happen to me in a slightly different way. It was a tax free weekend at a major store and I stocked up on everything subject to both provincial (state) and federal sales tax. Big (12%) savings on every item that wasn’t food. I provision a family of seven, I wait for these weekends. For the first time I noticed I was stared at by other shoppers by hour two of my shopping trip. No matter the deals, I still need to count each item and decide for value against my budget and current inventory.
In Canada we tend not to comment so much, but four times !!! I had people mention about my big load, two even had the audacity to say my shopping trip looked expensive. Most of the expensive items were little: sunscreen, toiletries, cleaning products, etc. The bulky items: sacks of rice, 5 gallons of oil etc were relatively cheap. As to the comments, where I live that is simply not done. There were a lot of half full carts around me, but I was the only one filled to the top. I live in one of the most expensive towns in Canada, it was shocking to me. In general, to me it feels like the nerve of people seems to have changed slightly in the past two years.
To increase OPSEC I hve been switching to online shopping, scheduling ‘in person’ shopping for more than twice per week, and taking my inventory planning even more seriously. If it is on sale I will now consider two or more trips split between my husband and myself to stock up. If hubby can’t shop and I do take two trips to the store to load up on specific items I will make sure to split my visits between morning and evening to lessen the number of times shift staff sees me, and I will vary my methods of payment, debit, cash and credit card. I will also, of all things, switch between wearing a suit, high heels, make up and ‘done’ hair for work, and my ‘shlubby’ clothes, a pony tail and a very casual look. Most people never notice dressing option 2, and clothing option 1 may be noticed but consigned to ‘working Mom’ category. If people need to label me, I’ll take advantage of it.
Those are my best options for being invisible in a crowd at the grocery store. I would love to hear of other options from other preppers.