The Dear Man Returns

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 04 March 2004 00:03:16

Larry-the-Boss came back from his vacation. He had me in Men's Denim that day.

We'd had a pretty quiet time with him gone, actually. Kind of nice to float along on autopilot, doing what has to be done. But then it was nice to have him back, too. Some stuff you just don't want to waste time tackling until you ask the one ultimately responsible how HE wants it done.

Heh. I guess the shoplifters had been resting, saving up their energies.

Larry gave me some particular assignments, heavy on the handling-of-$12-T-shirts, which of course left me being polite to the customers but not necessarily dancing along at each one's elbow quizzing him about what he needed.

The idiot shoplifters zipped into one end of the long Denim area while I was on the other, and shoved a shelf of Sean Jean T-shirts into a big competitor's shopping bag. Over $600, that pile of shirts --- THEY we certainly not reduced! I say "idiot" because of course anyone who would come steal stuff I am pretty much responsible for IS an idiot... And also because their actions were fully recorded on security video! When will they learn? That amount of money is felony theft! They were apprehended in the parking lot.

So Larry comes to me grinning with the bag, a wad of clothing in it the size of a 27" TV, and tells me "this is YOUR merchandise". So, would he rather I hand-hold the customers and forget his grunt-work with the sale shirts? Maybe so.

After that was some sort of smaller flurry of activity. More fun for Larry.

Then security calls me to "watch" a customer - that is, to go serve him personally and sort of kill him with kindness, y'know? He went into the fitting rooms with certain items and came out with fewer. The room was "clean"... he had stuff on him, hidden. So here comes Larry, in a race to apprehend the man before he can get back to the fitting room to innocently drop the items he had squirreled away upon his person.

Doesn't help him any. He's on tape going in and coming out and me to witness that he'd left nothing.

So he's back in my fitting rooms cursing Larry, and the little couple I'm with at the cash register is taking it all in. I hear the disturbance boiling over and I hiss at them "Hold still!"... I had horrible visions in my head of them trying to duck and dodge and the culprit and Larry tripping over them. Broken legs or necks or something. All over one idiot's greed.

The man was not starving , he was well-dressed, he had not even a questionable semi-reason to steal my stuff. He just wanted the high-priced designer jeans and wildly over-priced T-shirt, without paying for it, and he didn't care who he had to knock over to get away after he was caught.

Larry got him though. It was after that he told me that two guys had tried to mug him while he was home on vacation. Heh. Emphasis on the "tried". I guess ol' Larry didn't need to enter the military or police force for excitement. He gets himself a good workout in his old hometown and right there on the job.

A man might be coming to work security for us whom I remember from working here years ago. At that time he was in the store, shopping, and a shoplifter stole something-- rolled it up and hid it in his shoulder bag-- right in front of the man. (He later told me that made him madder than the theft itself - that the fellow assumed he would not "tell", would condone the theft, because the thief and the witness were both "persons of color", as we say.)

So anyway, this potential co-worker, he grabs the shoplifter and slaps him down across my counter, right there in Junior Women's Formals! (That was another oddity -- the fellow was swiping women's clothing.)

He had his cuffs on him from his day job -- I think he was a city cop then - - so he slams the idiot down on my counter and cuffs his hands up uncomfortably behind him! Good. I enjoyed watching a professional doing what I wished I could.

That was years ago, before we had the cameras in place. Now the man is worried he'll be all bored and never get to grab thieves and cuff 'em, if he comes to work for us.

Ah, well. Maybe Larry could use his help. I can just see them, sprinting off in tandem across Menswear, leaping over Daniel Cremieux and Austin Reed, sliding around the corners on a Perry Ellis silk. <grin>