You're gonna get busted big time some day.

[Red_Dazes]

...I hate people who talk about me like I am not there. Dont you? I mean, I'm standing 3 feet away and they talk about me like I cant hear them. Bothersome.

Or how about the person who walks up, looks into the bathroom because the door is open and asks "Is that the bathroom?"
No sweetie, It's a mirage, we put it there just to throw you off. There is no bathroom.

ANYWAY. The main point of this post, is that I am pissed. You see. We have a loss prevention guy.... whose main function in the store is to...you know.... prevent loss. But the kicker is, he is not allowed to search people's bags, even if we KNOW they took something. He can ASK to see it... but he cant actually do ANYTHING about it. Seems pointless to me.

So the story is. I have this girl come back to the FR...I'd say 12-14. She takes in 4 items. A Black shirt, and some swim suit stuff. I ask her to bring everything back out. As is my general spiel. So she comes back out with a wad of clothing, that is far to small to be 4 things. I ask "So did all four work for you?" Expecting something like 'oh no. I left the others in the FR' at which point I would have told her to go get them. but she says "uh, yeah!" and before I can ask to count the items, she books it.

Now I generally like to believe that most people are good... but every now and then someone proves old Dr. Cocks right... that people are bastard coated, bastards with bastard filling. So I say to myself.... Hmmm... not like THATS suspicious or anything. So I go check her room, because you know she went into one of the rooms that is with in my eye line, so I saw which one she came out of. Well, there is a grimy old tank top that has been switched out for... something.
SO. I get on my radio and tell the LP guy all about it, and he follows her around the store.

My AM, god bless her, goes right up to this girl after we have been watching her for like 20 min and it is obvious she has SOMETHING in her bag. And flat out says "I Want my Merch. Back now!" at this point the girl gets really nervous and is like "what are you talking about" And my AM is like, "I'm not stupid sweetheart I need to see in your bag."

So the girl opens up her bag, kinda, she reaches in and pushes most of the stuff to the side so that our AM cant really see it. What my AM DOES see, is a bunch of stuff that this girl lifted from Nordstrom, Macy's and a few other stores in the mall. This does nothing to quell her suspicion.

About 10 min later, she is back by the FR, waiting for her friend to try on some clothes. The whole time she keeps turning and making sure her bag is NOT within my line of sight. I'm sitting there like "Real subtle honey"

So Our LP guy catches up to them at the front of the store and asks to see her bag, she opens it, but pushes some papers to the side, though which he can see a Ross tag, as well as the garment. BUT HE CANT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT! Cause she wont give him the bag. Fucker.

Anyway, in the end our AM told her, "You know, eventually you are going to get caught. And You better hope they dont decide to press charges when you are."

The girl freaked out and ran out of the store. ... So we lost about $30 worth of Merch. but we scared the FUCK out of her..... so I guess it evens out.


I hate shop lifters.... little thieves.




.....As a final thought.... does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name? I mean I know I have a name tag and stuff.... but it's still really creepy to me when they walk up and are all "Hi Red!" >< Just me...

[reirei]

.

I hate shop lifters.... little thieves.




.....As a final thought.... does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name? I mean I know I have a name tag and stuff.... but it's still really creepy to me when they walk up and are all "Hi Red!" >< Just me...

Oh God do I hate shop lifters. One time when I was working in seasonal, these two fourteen year old girls climbed under the platform the x-mas trees were displayed on just to stuff their pockets with thongs. Ewww.


I also find it creepy when random people come up and say Hay Reirei. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, lol.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The girl freaked out and ran out of the store. ... So we lost about $30 worth of Merch. but we scared the FUCK out of her..... so I guess it evens out.

That's about as good of an outcome as can be expected, I think.

ANYWAY. The main point of this post, is that I am pissed. You see. We have a loss prevention guy.... whose main function in the store is to...you know.... prevent loss. But the kicker is, he is not allowed to search people's bags, even if we KNOW they took something. He can ASK to see it... but he cant actually do ANYTHING about it. Seems pointless to me.

LP people get tied up like that by corporate due to liability issues.

What happens if LP detains somebody and they turn out not to have stolen anything from the store? Lawsuit.
What happens if LP chases a suspect and the suspect gets hit by a car or injured? Lawsuit.

[friendofjimmyk]

does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name? ...

When I was still in a job where I wore name tags, I did not find it creepy, however, it did throw me off at first. Someone would approach me and say, "Hey, heather, can you help me out a minute?" And for a second, I thought to myself, "Huh?! How do they kno....oh, yeah...name tag! DUH!"

[IvorTangrean]

.....As a final thought.... does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name? I mean I know I have a name tag and stuff.... but it's still really creepy to me when they walk up and are all "Hi Red!" >< Just me...

I wish, my name gets used maybe once or twice a day when I work. Most often I get you, boss, buddy or a wave. never mind that if they whistle they get ignored.

[Plaidman]

What happens if LP chases a suspect and the suspect gets hit by a car or injured? Lawsuit.

Totally worth it though. Especally if they fail in the lawsuit.

Judge: You stoled a Barney CD, and ran out the store and got hit by a car, and your sueing them? On What bases?

Idiot: Der, if they didn't chase me, I wouldn't have been hit! Their insurence would have paid for that DVD, it's only 4.99!!!"

Judge: Empty your pockets...

Idiot: *pulls out 5 dollar bill*

Judge: So you do have the money for it.

Idiot: ...

[Imogene]

does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name?

Well, calling me by the name on the tag doesn't always work... see, I collect names. If someone in the foodcourt, say, called me 'Sweetheart' during my lunch break, I'm more likely to respond to that than my real name until the end of my shift.
Hell, I don't respond at all to my full legal name. Woe betide the person who tries to find out my full legal name just so they can call me it. More than likely in that case, you go straight to the bottom of my nice list, I actually will start shoving you for that offense.

[Bosch]

I know how you feel. We can only scare the shit out of them too.. And now that the swin suits have shown up the teenage shoplifters will be out in force. What gets me is that they think we are sooo stupid. You understand I take your stuff from you count it in my head hang each item in the fitting room for you and make you bring out each item too me complete with hangers so I can count them. Yes I am being a bitch to all my other customers since you feel entitled to leave your shit in a pile on the floor, but you are NOT going to be stealing shit out of my fitting room. Go ahead and complain I don't really care you snotty ass bitch.

My best story was a girl that we had known was stealing for a while, we just couldn't prove it. You know she would walk in once in a while walk through the store really slow poke and examine merch but never bought anything. Well one night it was hella busy, and my coolest manager who was all of 21 but sharp as a scalpel(I miss her since she transferred) was helping me in the fitting room, and we are processing clothes to go back and we know this chick is in trying stuff on(since she was announced over the radio that she was in-store) we hear noise like sicissors cutting stuff and thief walks straight out leaves her crap in the fitting room and all the tags stuff into a purse that she brought in the room. I follow her out on the store floor, manager goes through the bag finds all the tags stuffed in there. Other manager meets theif in the middle of the store asks her for all the legit stuff in her hands and tells her straight out - You set foot in here again the police will be called and you arrested for tresspassing. Don't try to lie you and I both know you are stealing consider this your ONE warning and ONE lucky day to get out of here without an arrest record." We have never seen her again.

[blas]

Those girls were actually quite smarter than most of the shoplifters at the Deb shop. My dear gosh.....some of those girls made me wonder....

We had what we called "redline" merchandise. Stuff that was on clearance and dirt cheap. I'm talking $1 underwear, $3 bras, shirts for under $10, jeans for $10-$15, jewelery for less than $5. There was always at least 3-5 racks of redline stuff.

Now, another factor into my speil. Stores like Hollister and American Eagle Outfitters tend to have very large paper (or paper-like) bags for when you buy jeans or other forms of outerwear. Remember this.

What was the most commonly stolen items? REDLINE bras and panties. Not regular priced bras and panties. NOT full price party shirts (super thin material tanktops and halters that are easy to fold into tiny squares and tuck and hide).

Guess where we always found their shit? Stashed in giant Hollister paper bags! You can tell the difference between Deb and Hollister. Deb is not name brand and has no logo like Hollister does. Everything from Hollister says Hollister, Cali, Renondo Beach, etc etc on it. Deb doesn't sell stuff like that.

When we DID catch theives, it was always large groups of tween/teenage girls stealing $1 underwear and other random cheap shit. Yeah, we were so dumb we'd never notice huge groups of 5+ girls splitting up and trying to distract the associates or crawl under the fitting room doors....

[wagegoth]

Recent finds:

Target: I opened up a purse I was looking at and found a slew of torn-off tags in it. I gave it to an employee who was straightening nearby.


Borders: Opened a package (it was made like a book, with the book on one side and a deck of cards on the other, and was not sealed) to look inside and the deck of cards was gone. Gave it to the nearest employee.

Opened a similar item from Dover books that was a Celtic symbols kit to find that someone had ripped open the sealed section and stolen all the small booklets inside that contained stickers and temporary tattoos. Gave that to the service desk.


The number of thieves I dealt with when I worked at Nordstrom is what really turned me off of retail. They took great advantage of the fact that Nordstrom would take anything back, new or used, with or without tags. Then, because of the boot-licking attitude we were supposed to have, they would actually complain about us to Admin when we didn't give them their stolen money fast enough when we were stalling them waiting for LP.

However, the person who pissed me off the most was in LP. We had a code name we would page if their was a thief in the department. It meant LP was supposed to book it up to our department. Did he come right up? Of course not. Then called and argued with me with the thief standing right there and me having to cover up what we were discussing. Jerk.

[raije]

I always wonder what other stores think when someone presents stolen/damaged merchandise to them. I do that a lot, never stopped to ask or give it a second thought. I have had a handful of people bring me things that they find in the last two or so years, but that's it.

I have an eye for seeing things that are out of place (tucked away, too) and it bugs me so much. Mostly if I'm in big box stores and there is no one in the department, I'm not going to walk around with an empty package that I pulled out from under a counter or from behind the towels - doesn't look good, haha.

[AmethystSquirrel]

does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name? I mean I know I have a name tag and stuff.... but it's still really creepy to me when they walk up and are all "Hi Red!" >< Just me...

What creeps me out more is when they call me by name and I don't have a tag on!

[NightWatch]

LP people get tied up like that by corporate due to liability issues.

What happens if LP detains somebody and they turn out not to have stolen anything from the store? Lawsuit.
What happens if LP chases a suspect and the suspect gets hit by a car or injured? Lawsuit.

In America, thieves have rights. In parts of the Middle East, they just cut off your farking hand.

[Pagan]

.....As a final thought.... does anyone else find it creepy when customers call you by name? I mean I know I have a name tag and stuff.... but it's still really creepy to me when they walk up and are all "Hi Red!" >< Just me...

If it's once, maybe twice, in the conversation, not so much. We have this one lady though, that over uses it. Like at the end of every sentence or question. That is not only a bit creepy, but grating as hell. Does she think I'm not going to be able to figure out who she's talking to?

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

In America, thieves have rights. In parts of the Middle East, they just cut off your farking hand.

And you know there's a part of that "tough love" law I find very appealing.