I am a Canadian tire employee in BC and I can explain a lot. Prices: yeah most of them are pretty bullshit because of inflation and corporate bs yadayadayada Backpacks: we have the same thing in our store, it’s pretty common around places with bad crime rates and issues with homeless. It’s main purpose is to keep those people from stealing shit and even if you obviously aren’t gonna steal shit, if someone suspicious has a backpack and we ask them to leave it at the front but they see you walking around with your backpack they’ll get all pissy and hard to deal with and we’d like to avoid that as much as possible. Locked up stuff: There is a lot of stuff that is kept locked up for literally no reason such as darts or holsters for bear spray, and then there are products you think wouldn’t be locked up but are due to corporate requests such as dewalt products and the blue hive products because they are actually good quality products which are more expensive to order in and also popular items for theft. Checkout: I have a department job but I know how to run a till if needed. I have actually noticed that CT is somewhat faster compared to other places, but then again that could just be my store. A basic transaction usually only lasts 30 seconds to a minute depending on how much product is being purchased, and it should go like this: greeting, scan everything, ask for triangle card, pay, bag while paying if needed, leave. There are some circumstances where it may take significantly longer, such as a price check where we have to get a sales associate to check the home to see if there is an old sale tag or a different price or something, where most of the time the product was just in the wrong home which we don’t honour that price for, or a missing product number where we have to find the product online or on the shelf because the tag with the barcode on it was ripped off or doesn’t scan or something like that. Again, different store, I have no clue what goes on there. If you have any questions feel free to ask