Not Only Do You Lose Your Freedom, You Lose Your Kid!

[Mike Taylor]

We had this royal gem of a woman try to shoplift from us at The Big Yellow Price Tag last Sunday. She tried to make off with $1800 worth of merchandise: 2 laptops and 2 cameras. LP was really on the ball with this lady because she'd swiped from us before. The tragedy is that she had her toddler with her, who was a sweet little kid.

Long story short, she gets nabbed. Cops are already there at the front of the store before she's even done stealing. Child protective services gets called in to take the child because there was nobody willing to come pick the baby up from the store. Afterward, we discover the cops found drugs in her vehicle in the parking lot... and later concealed in her anatomy (effectively smuggling contraband into a jail) as she was being processed for lockup. Three felony offenses in one night.

[Kristev]

That's bad. Bad mom award.

[Tama]

2 laptops? How the heck do you fit that anywhere...? I swear, if you're going to steal a laptop from the big yellow price tag, don't try to steal more than one!

I always say, if you're going to be stupid, be smart.

If you're going to shoplift, try not to have illegal things on you. Y'know. In case you DO get caught like this idiot!

[Jack]

She must be kind of dumb to shoplift there anyway. Anyone in the know knows the LP there is too good.

[fireheart]

2 laptops? How the heck do you fit that anywhere...? I swear, if you're going to steal a laptop from the big yellow price tag, don't try to steal more than one!

There are quite a few ways.
Booster packs (cages or something similar worn on a person and they can smuggle merchandise down them)
Pram boxes
Any sort of large box.

[Hanzoku]

I could guess her toddler's bedding had most of the merchandise under it if she brought a stroller.

[MaseMan]

Hopefully she never gets her kid back. She doesn't deserve to be a parent.

[Julesy]

That poor little kid.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

2 laptops? How the heck do you fit that anywhere...? I swear, if you're going to steal a laptop from the big yellow price tag, don't try to steal more than one!

It's easy. Put the two laptops in a cart and push it out the doors.

If LP can't watch you enough and you look like you paid for them already, nobody will think twice about it.

[draftermatt]

It's easy. Put the two laptops in a cart and push it out the doors.

If LP can't watch you enough and you look like you paid for them already, nobody will think twice about it.

Yup.

At Lowe's/Home Depot people will pull their trucks up to a pile of drywall and start loading, sometimes an associate will see them and offer to help them.

They drive off, no one checks/asks for a receipt. Whoops, they never paid.

My store had a previous store manager (so I've been told) load up a log splitter (that he had to unlock) that hadn't been paid for.

Guy was caught though, since it was on video.

[LadyAndreca]

Had a guy walk off with a gas grill a couple weeks ago. He brought it in because the igniter didn't work, so I refunded it and called a seasonal associate to help him pick another. Being the Sunday afternoon of Memorial Day Weekend, we were SLAMMED, seasonal especially, and someone couldn't get to him fast enough for his liking.

One of the store managers, K, walked by as he was ranting, waving his arms, and starting to storm out the door, so dashed over to diffuse the situation. Between her and the seasonal guy who eventually showed up, they determined that the old grill was not defective, the guy was just not using something or skipping a step or something (I was not paying attention at ALL at that point, since it was handled), and once they got it working they loaded the grill back on the guy's car and sent him on his way.

It was caught because they defective sticker I'd put on the grill came up missing in the RTV reports. I was quite honest about it when confronted because hey, not my mistake. I returned a defective grill, and didn't charge him for a new one just in case we didn't HAVE another or he chose another model. K and B didn't realize he got a refund (and missed the defective sticker, and the customer never said a word) and gave him his grill back. So he got his refund AND the grill.

[phantasy]

2 laptops? How the heck do you fit that anywhere...?

If the child was young enough to fit in a stoller/carseat, then it's possible to fit things in there.

Once, I had a mother come through my line with a carseat on the top part of the shopping cart. Only, it was covered with a small baby blanket. Naturally, I assumed that there was a baby inside, and the mother didn't want anyone to coo at her baby (I would do the same, but with a kind of lacey cover)

Turns out, the woman stuffed steak in the carseat so no one would notice. Security stopped her in the door, they saw her take the steaks on the security cameras.

[Mike Taylor]

I could guess her toddler's bedding had most of the merchandise under it if she brought a stroller.

No, she was pushing around the bog standard Best Buy shopping cart and the baby was sitting upright in the basket seat. She was trying to be sneaky by stuffing things in her large purse. The kicker here is that her baby dropped a shoe when she was stealing one of the laptops and it landed next to the empty packaging. She didn't even notice the missing shoe.

[PepperElf]

the sad thing is... i can just imagine the woman logging in to M3C or PFB to write a complaint about Best Buy for pressing charges on her...

i hope the baby is very safe and very well cared for

[Mike Taylor]

the sad thing is... i can just imagine the woman logging in to M3C or PFB to write a complaint about Best Buy for pressing charges on her...

i hope the baby is very safe and very well cared for

I don't think she's going to have unrestricted computer access for a very long time.