Russian Lasers

Have you ever been in a thrift shop, in the book section and seen someone with a smart-phone device?  We call them Russians as it seems the vast majority are from the old Soviet Union bloc.  They use a device like an ipaq or palm or whatever with a laser attachment.  They download sales figures from Amazon, I think, and the laser devices read the UPC codes on books and they are "pinged" if the Amazon sales figures are above a certain level.  I don't have a problem with that, of course, but it is annoying when they arrive at a store grand opening.  They'll grab the books off the shelves by the shopping cart load, pull them to the side and sort through them.