I can think of few things that disgust me more than a thief. I’ve been working in retail for almost 20 years now. I’ve managed stores in Arizona, California, New Jersey, and Maryland. I’ve seen just about every type of shoplifting or scam you can imagine, and some you can’t. believe it or not, if you work in retail for a long time, spotting the shoplifter becomes quite easy. You learn to recognize the signs… the body language. You learn to look at the merchandise people are carrying around the store, and whether or not that is typical for a shopper.
Back when I started in retail, shoplifting was quite a rare occurrence. Usually if you caught someone, more often than not it turned out to be a misguided kid, or a senile old lady on a fixed income. In today’s world, it’s a whole different ball of wax. Stealing amongst teenagers it seems is considered a “Hip” thing to do, fully acceptable by their peers. Drug addicts are constantly trying to refund scam you at the check-out for a quick $50. Then you have the most worrisome group, the “Professionals”, these are the people who make a living (and a quite good one too) from “Wiping Out” entire categories of high ticket merchandise. They use foil lined bags to fool your security pedestals at the door. I suppose they have a buyer somewhere for the goods that they steal, or perhaps they just sell it on the internet, who knows?
To complicate matters even more, the society we live in today is very dangerous. Trying to “apprehend” these low-lifes could very well get somebody hurt. A very good portion of these scumbags will shoot or stab you without giving it a second thought. For this reason, most retailers are no longer about apprehension. We would prefer just to scare them from the store without their booty. The term we use is called “Spooking” the shoplifter.
Anyhoo, all this ranting I’m doing is leading up to something that happened tonight on my shift. It was just after 5p.m. and I was walking from the back of the store to the front. A tall skinny lady in her late 20’s was standing ahead of me in the aisle I was walking. She snaps her head around to look at me with a mixed expression of fear and surprise on her face. (ok, this is hint #1… she is more concerned about me than doing her shopping). As I get closer, I notice she has a baby stroller parked beside her. As I pass, I notice in front of the baby stroller she has a shopping cart that is just JAM-PACKED with baby formula. Now a woman with a baby stroller and a cart with formula is not unusual in itself, but the amount she had in her cart was simply insane! These were the powder type formulas that run $15 ea. for the small cans and $25 for the large ones. By now, I have all the bells and alarms going off in my head so I amble on up into the office to check her out through the two way mirror. As it turns out, she had a “Partner” helping her. He was in the next aisle over gathering stuff as fast as he could and returning it to her shopping cart, then I’d see her look both ways to make sure the coast was clear and unload the contents of their cart into the stroller. She had draped a baby’s blanket over the top so as to give onlookers the impression that there might be a sleeping baby in there. At this point, I had seen enough so I got on the store intercom and LOUDLY announced that I needed security to check the camera on aisle #7.
The very best part of this job for me is to watch peoples reactions when that moment comes and they know the gig is up…. they’ve been “busted”. I almost wish I did have a camera on aisle #7 to record the event for posterity. Heck, I could probably win money by submitting these clips to “America’s Funniest Videos”. The first thing they do is wildly look around to see if anyone is coming for them. Next, you can almost feel their mental turmoil as they cast about this way and that for an idea of how to handle the situation. This dynamic duo chose to wheel their cart and stroller to the checkout. I then decided I would further their angst by getting on the store intercom again and loudly announcing that I needed store security to come to the front. The girl just walked out of the store at that point, the guy actually went to the checkout, unloaded both the basket and the stroller onto the counter, then made an excuse to the cashier that he forgot his wallet….. how lame!
I then went downstairs and ascertained they had about $700 worth of stuff they almost made off with. Somebody needs to tell my job I earned my paycheck tonight!
