Hey, we survived Christmas mayhem and now we’re back to business as usual. Which, of course, doesn’t mean people are any more pleasant, but at least they aren’t hurrying around to buy last-minute gifts anymore. But one side effect of the post-Christmas atmosphere is that people are broke. And what do broke people tend to do? They try to shoplift.
I arrived at work today in a fine mood. Clocked in and grabbed my box cutter, ready to throw some freight and clean the store. But instead, my assistant informs me there’s a couple shopping that has been in the store for over an hour and they give her a weird vibe. Not to mention all the bottles of water they’ve been drinking and leaving all over the store.
So, we follow them a bit and watch what they’re doing. They’ve got a small basket with random items in it. They pick stuff up, put other stuff down. Basically, they’ve left a trail of destruction all over the store. The woman asks for the bathroom, but it’s out of order so they keep wondering around.
My assistant approaches them about one of the empty water bottles she’s found, and this is the last straw for the man. (Because we’ve observed his growing frustration every time he turns a corner and one of us is standing there and he can’t shove anything into his pants or pockets.) He yells that we’re “crazy bitches” and throws the entire basket of merchandise on the floor. They run out the door and drive away. My assistant yells, “and don’t come back!” on their way out.
Excuse me while I roll my eyes for a moment. I just love when we’re the ones at fault because we wouldn’t let someone shoplift. Or argue about prices.
Because that’s the other incident today. A woman tried to get an air freshener set for $3.85 because there was a reduced sticker on the barcode. The item is in fact $10. And besides the fact that anything with a reduced sticker would automatically ring up that price, we would never put the sticker on the back of the product, or over the barcode.
Now, some could argue that a different customer tried to move the sticker and this woman just happened to come across the item. Except that this particular woman seems to always come across these “mislabeled” items. And when you try to confront her about it, she claims to not know enough English to understand us. Sigh.
And to think, I came to work today not sure what I was going to write about for this blog post. Thank you, general public, for having annoying habits that turn into amusing stories.