Store Thieves

[emax4]

When I worked night turn at my local grocery store, I was the only cashier from 1-6 or whatever. Eventually though, the nighttime manager had to come relieve me when I went to take my lunch. I start exiting the breakroom heading towards the front of the store when I see the stock guys holding some thief.

I didn't know what happened, but out of nowhere the thief says, "yeah, he said I could get them myself.."

Huh?

The office where you can get stamps, cash your check, lottery tickets, etc was near the entrance, and that was where we were keeping the condoms when the pharmacy would close. Apparently he tried using the counter for leverage and jumping over to steal a pack of condoms.

As he was being led away in cuffs I joked to the night manager, "I guess you could say that HE'S the one that got screwed..."

[AccountingDrone]

As far as I know, they never caught them, either. That's about as low as you can get, stealing from a charity at Christmas (every cent of the money in the kettles was used to make up boxes for the poor - food, especially for a proper festive meal, and little gifts for any children in the household, - pay for the workers came out of other church funds, not the donations).

When I was very young and working my first job there was a very nice guy that worked in the warehouse. He had a large family [at the time 6 kids] and he was on the list of families that got holiday dinner boxes from the local VFW. [He also used to supplement the family chow by poaching deer and rabbits. I thought it was nice the local cops and game warden didn't bust him for it.] We had just dropped off a box on his porch [nobody was apparently home, or not answering the door] and as we drove away we saw his neighbor jump the fence and grab the box off the porch. Luckily there was one of the town cops driving past, so Dad flagged him down and sent him over to get the box back and get it back to Art's family. What a jackass

[Rainman]

Never thwarted any thieves on the job, but I DID accidently stop one while I was a customer at a Meijers years ago. I was just walking in when this kid, couldnt have been more than 16, was walking out. A woman stepped in front of him and identified herself as Meijers loss prevention. That was all it took, he managed to get around her, the rather large male employee she had with her, and then just bowled into me, lol. Im a big guy so he just kinda bounced off me and landed hard on his butt, dropping maybe 3 bottles of various liquors. They took him away and I was rewarded with a 50 dollar gift card which I immediatly bought a bottle of Grey Goose with, it seemed appropriate, lol.

[Argabarga]

I don't get any shoplifters, so I just have to live vicariously through those "worlds dumbest criminal" shows where someone is caught failing at shoplifting on a security camera

My all time favorite was a guy who tried to steal several of something, can't remember what, but whatever it was, the box it came in was about 5 foot long, 1 foot tall and 1 foot wide, kinda like the dimensions a closed beach umbrella would have...

Anyway, he grabs at a stack of these things and then bolts for the door. Considering he made a clumsy grab, and something that's almost as tall as you are isn't easy to get a firm grip on, well, about 3 or 4 of them immediately went spilling all over the place, alerting the LP guy to make his move, who HAD to be watching him the whole time, so the thief decides to make a break for it with only one of these boxes, the only one I guess he got a good grip on... and as he made it to the door, he tried to run through it with the box held LONGWAYS in front of him and effectively clotheslines himself, feet flying up and everything as the box, well, kinda refused to go through the door oriented that way....

I think the LP guy was on top of him before his heels even hit the ground, fun stuff

[CarcinogenCrunchies]

At the grocery store we had a special "Moonlight Madness" sale, which was of course held on the night of a full moon. This is only important for one reason. AM was following a guy toward the doors, and when AM called out to him he started walking faster. Unfortunately, his pants were too loose to hold up the bottle of liquor inside them, so when AM grabbed the shoplifter and he resisted, it all came down. We were treated to a little more "full moon" than we were expecting! I feel sorry for the shoppers who were coming in the door - they had to witness this display from the front.

[Raveni]

Had a manager get suspended pending the completion of a Loss Prevention investigation. He was stealing like crazy...

Boss lady delivers the suspension letter in the office with me as a witness. Guy starts giggling like a lunatic on Joker juice... He grabs the letter, crumples it up, and EATS it. Then tries to take off running. I'd have just let the guy go, but the security guard at the front of the store acts on instinct and starts to block the door, so he runs off to the back of the store.

<THUNK>

A loud bang echoes through the whole store. We come upon the manager lying unconscious flat on his back, in a corner of the store. Later, we watch the video of him running head-first into the emergency door and knocking himself out (the door only opens if the handle is pushed in for a few seconds first). Actually, we watched it a lot.
:-)

[Zoom]

Friday was the day!

I had self-checkout duty, which is always a breeze (it's near the exit, which opens under the least provocation, such as when the door is closed).

A guy at the far end (big SCO unit with a conveyor belt) had a weight on the belt scale, but no item rung up. He looked at the screen for a minute while I tended someone else's order verification.

Next thing I notice is his cancelling the order. Guess he didn't want the item after all, right? No! He goes to the other end, bags the item, and walks back to his cart to put it in! (Italics mine.)

Then he prepares to push off with the cart as if it had an outboard motor, when I walk right up to him and ask, "Did you pay for that?"

"Of course I did!" he replied. (Italics his.)

"Well, can I see the receipt?"

Astonishingly, though I expected he didn't have one and would simply admit to trying to steal the item, or something, he reached into his pocket and got out a "receipt"!

It said, TRANSACTION CANCELLED, PLEASE COME AGAIN

And he handed it to me!

Needless to say I let him know it didn't count as a payment.

Seriously. How could he have NOT known he was cancelling payment? Did he really think his payment somehow went through even though he never even bothered to slide a credit card?

[Merriweather]

I don't get any shoplifters, so I just have to live vicariously through those "worlds dumbest criminal" shows where someone is caught failing at shoplifting on a security camera

I've seen a few episodes of that show (I might watch it more if it were just the videos, and not the dumb comments from the others - or maybe if they got some commentators who were actually funny). Anyway, the one that cracked me up was three (I thnk) guys, handcuffed together, trying to escape from a police van - they end up on the ground when they tried to run and ran on opposite sides of a pole

[fireheart]

I've got a couple of stories from my time at iPod rip-off logo.

-There was the guy who stole a single chicken wing from the deli and caused half the store to go chasing after him. (turns out he'd also stolen some batteries but in our mind it was funnier with just the chicken wing)
-Then there was the famous flying leap. Some guy tried to walk off with a carton of Corona from the liquor section. My manager was trying to get involved in the chase but couldn't because the gate to the service desk was blocked. So he decided to do a flying roll over the service counter which we all got to watch for free on the security camera later
-We also had a shoplifter who sadly got away, but in the process lost a thong. (the shoe kind)
Quite amusing watching the guys who chased him come back wielding just a thong.

Aaaand like Argabarga, there was also a story from The Force (cop type show): some guy stole a bottle of $8 cough syrup from the company he worked for (and I also worked for them). He got banned from the shopping centre for some time. Of course he then rung up his boss and asked "so I confessed, can I still keep my job?"

[TruthHurts]

We had a teenage girl try to slip a bag of Fritos into her backpack. The backpack was made out of a see through mesh material. Naturally she got caught pretty quickly.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

We had a teenage girl try to slip a bag of Fritos into her backpack. The backpack was made out of a see through mesh material. Naturally she got caught pretty quickly.

Reminds me of the dumb criminal story with the guy who robbed the bank while wearing a CLEAR plastic bag over his head.

[freeatlast]

I used to have a part-time job at a liquor store. Normally, we had 2 people working on Friday night, however, the other girl said she was sick and left me to work alone on Good Friday. Most people had that day off and since the weather was beautiful had been out and around all day. Of course, they then had to stop off at our store to get alcohol to complete their lovely day off, so it was really busy. I had not had time to stock the beer cooler, so when a customer asked for a case of Bud Light I ran back to push some through the chute. While back there I went ahead and filled it, which only took a couple of minutes. The customer had taken his case, and I assumed he would be waiting for me at the counter to pay for it. When I got back there, another customer asked me if he had paid for it, as he had gone straight out the door with it. Without thinking, I ran out the door and stood behind his car and yelled at him to get his ass back into the store and pay for it or else give it to me. He got out of his car and followed me back in, making excuses about how he just forget to stop and pay. I told him I was in no mood for his bullshit and that he needed to take his shoplifting attempts to one of the other stores in the future. He then paid and left. After that, the customer who had alerted me came up to pay for her purchases. She was laughing about my chasing the guy down. The next time she came in she was teasing me about the incident. She said that she told the story at the party she was shopping for on her previous visit and that all of the guests said they would be sure not to try to shoplift at our store

[FenigDurak]

1+1= Fish *laugh*

I hated that book as a kid! That was the only math I never understood.
Edit: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidew...Wayside_School

[Nashida]

I've seen a few episodes of that show (I might watch it more if it were just the videos, and not the dumb comments from the others - or maybe if they got some commentators who were actually funny). Anyway, the one that cracked me up was three (I thnk) guys, handcuffed together, trying to escape from a police van - they end up on the ground when they tried to run and ran on opposite sides of a pole

I think it might have been two. But it's still fantastic.

[Syriilord]

First I want to apologize..thanks to the title .. had visions of somebody coming up with a bunch of semi's putting chains around the store, and trying to make off with the whole store...

Hehe. That reminds me of an episode of Eureka, where Carter was delighted to find out someone had committed a normal crime and robbed a bank, only to turn up and find the whole building was missing.

Anyway, the only memorable thief I've encountered was a supervisor at my store who was caught stealing money from our charity boxes. Not sure what happened to him.... but whatever it was, it wasn't enough.