Tales From Retail Pt.9

9.It’s a common shoplifting trick to steal something, bring it back to another store, and plead “Gift” when trying to return it without a receipt.

One man who eventually got foiled at this was a fifty year old Mike Tyson lookalike who rolled into store one day in a wheel chair, jerking like he had a car battery taped to his behind. The store manager advised me to stick to this guy like a magnet – he’d stolen $300 dollars worth of DVD box sets (walking them out in foil lined bags), and attempted to return them to another store, which had phoned us and asked us if our inventory for those movies was one off (it was). Oh yeah, and he had been walking at that point, so we’re fairly certain the wheelchair was either a ruse or a cosmic spank for leading a life of crime.

So where was I?

Ah yes, Mikey rolls into the store with a friend. His friend is about the size of a refrigerator, has the stature of a bodybuilder, is covered in tattoos, and dresses “ghetto rich” if you know what I mean and I think that you do.

According to the manager, Mikey’s new shtick is to roll to the back of the store, ask people to look stuff up on the computer, and then stick DVDs under his legs.

Mikey does not disappoint in the lookup department, and I’m kept running back and forth between him and the computer. I return the final time to find him and his…bodyguard?…having a one-sided conversation. One sided because all the friend can do is grunt.

Though I’d never had chance to notice before, I believed (at that moment) that this was because of the mass of scars covering his neck. Not only is he grunting, but he’s also playing with the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and down. He’s not retarded or anything, it looks like he’s trying to A. Reassure himself that something’s in his pocket, and B. Cover it up.

On one of the up-tugs of his ridiculously expensive football jersey, I notice metal in his pocket. And leather. And…good God, this guy has a freaking bowie knife in his pocket!

Now, I’m not one to be talking about preventing people from carrying whatever it is they dang well please. I’ve always got a knife close at hand, and at that moment was trying to figure out how to deploy it and which parts of his anatomy to stick it into should he pull his knife.

But quite frankly, it scares me when a guy covered in gang tattoos, with knife wounds on his neck starts flashing a knife.

They did leave, eventually, without incident. But every employee we hired from then on, and all the ones on staff were warned to stay at least 10 feet away from these guys. I hate shoplifters. Theft is an affront to God, and I suspect if they’re also criminally engaged, the weapons they keep are not for defense.