Tales of Shoplifting

Chris mentioned that I have a ton of stories, stuff I have done, saw, or experienced. He also mentioned that I would be the one to tell them, so what the hell. Why not dig into that smoldering pile that is my life and write about something stupid to fill the time. See, right now, my wife is putting the baby to sleep on the couch. That leaves me either sitting in the kitchen watching “Trading Spaces” or sitting in front of the Mac and keyboard.

Back in the mid-eighties, I was working for a local drug store that also sold auto-parts. My dad worked in Parts in whole life for a local shop, and that was where I had my first summer job, stocking shelves and checking in the stuff that came on the truck. It pretty much sucked. It was also the summer I was taking drivers education, which rocked.

So the next year, my dad talks to a friend of his at the drug-store auto-parts place, Perry Drugs. His buddy there, Mike Henry, was a really cool guy. In fact, I think I have a picture of him here somewhere… Ah, here is Mike!

As you can see, Mike was cool. Big guy, could be really fun. He was the manager of the auto-parts side of the business. Why a drug store wanted to sell auto-parts, I don’t know. We did good business, though.

So anyway, Mike asks me if I want to make some overtime. The last time the store manager, Barry, asked me that, I ended up working the liquor counter for eight hours. Nothing like selling Mad-Dog 20/20 to thirty-five year old single women who look like they are in their eighties, prematurely wrinkled with blister-red noses. Anyway, Mike tells me it would be working the mirrors.

The mirrors is shoplifting duty, the most prized overtime job you could pull. Basically, there is a catwalk about the pharmacy counter with mirrors, from which you watch shoppers. I had never actually done shoplifting duty before, nor had I seen anyone ever catch a shoplifter, but I had heard all the stories the older guys liked to tell during their smoke breaks.

I came in early Saturday morning, dressed in jeans and my Perry Auto smock. (I hated that thing.) And for the next five hours, I spent the most boring time in my life in the cramped, stuffy, hot (this was in September!) dusty, smelly crawl space you could imagine. It was horrid.

Shoplifting duty sucks…

All you do is sit there, watching little-old ladies decide which size can of Geritol to buy. No one steals anything.

Then, it happened.

We had, the night before, set out the Halloween stuff. And after five hours, I see two guys walk in, and head for the candy, plastic masks, and fake blood. I dunno, there was just something about those two guys that made me suspicious. It may have been the fact that they were, like, a hundred years younger than anyone else in the store at the time. But I watched them.

One was small, a little smaller than me. At the time, I weighed in at about 120 pounds. The other guy was pretty tall, but he had to weigh about 200, easy. And as I watched, sucking back yet another can of frosty Mountain Dew, I saw it! The big guy stuffed something down the front of his pants.

Holy CRAP! I live one!

I quickly scampered down the rickety latter, bound my way to the phone, and paged Mike. I told him what was up, and what he wanted me to do. Mike told me to keep an eye on them from the floor, but not to spook them. Don’t make a scene, as there were a lot of customers in the store at the time. He would go out the back door, and I would follow them out the front, where we would pin our shoplifter in the vestibule. Sounded like a plan to me, so I headed out to the checkout lanes to flirt with the cashier until our thief made his exit.

I did not have long to wait, which was good because we only had one checkout lane open with a lot of people in line, all of whom were giving me dirty looks that said “Hey, Flirty-Boy, why not open another lane instead of standing around talking, ya moron!”

As the two guys left, up close I could see that the big guy was actually much larger than I was. But hey, I was a professional, so I did my duty and followed him out.

The gig was up, though. As soon as I opened the first exit door, they tried to bolt. The little one cut to the exit door to my left, the big guy with the goods hidden in his pants to the right. Yelling “Security! Freeze!” I pounced on the larger, but much slower, big guy. I caught him by the belt, and gave a mighty tug back.

And then another yank. And another. He is pulling or all he is worth to get to the door and freedom. But I am not to be denied. Besides, Mike should be here any moment, right?

Another tug, and the big guy falls back, slamming us both to the ground. I am up first, once again grabbing his belt. He tries to crawl away, but I have the leverage, and I begin to slowly drag him back to the first set of exit doors, back into the store. He starts crying, begging me to let him go. He is, like, twice my size! All he has to do is knock me aside, and he is gone. But in his shoplifting panicked mind, all he can think of is to try to crawl away and cry.

Somehow, I get him to his feet, and he once again lunges for the door. Instead of trying to hold him back, which is what he expects, I let him go forward, but steer him not out the exit door, but the metal door jam between the Enter / Exit door. He brains the door jam pretty good, and the last of his resistance is gone. Like a bounty hunter, I force my now limp and whimpering captive back into the store. Where, amazingly enough, MIKE is standing eating a friggin’ candy bar! And, of course, around ten customers in line, all looking horrified at me.

I ask Mike where the hell he was, that he was suppose to be waiting outside to catch the bad guys. The half-eaten candy bar in one hand, he eyes the size of a tea-cup saucer, he stammers out that he thought they were still in the store, and was waiting for me to let him know when they left.

How the hell can he be outside waiting for them if he needs me to tell him they have left?

We get the bad-guy shoplifter to the back office, where Barry is waiting having already called for the police. My adrenaline starting to fade, I take a smoke break, and wait for the cops to show.

Once they show, the shoplifter tells the cops that we roughed him up, and beat him to get him back into the store. The cop asks how many of us beat him up, and the shoplifter, now standing, points to me. “He did it” he says, pointing to me. The cop takes one look at me, then at the big guy shoplifter, and laughs. He actually laughs!

Later, as I am leaving, the cashier tells me that after I had dragged the guy back in, and then to the back of the store, a lady in line says out loud “I know I ain’t ever gonna steal anything here, ever!” and every customer in line all nod yes, very soberly.”