stupid theif pushes luck too far with co-worker

[Crafty1289]

I work at a small convenience store in England. We have a lot of unknown loss (shoplifters). A lot of the time we dont see the theifs come in and leave, they are very quick, and the shop is so small and busy that staff are always pre-occupied and a lot of time the place is crowded with people queueing and shopping, this makes life very easy for theives. Even if we are behind the counter and see a theif, often we cannot get out from behind the counter to catch him/her quickly enough. Recently we have had a guard on at night times, 3pm-10pm when we close. He stands by the door and watches for trouble outside and inside.

We have also had a big problem recently with one particular theif, who would come in EVERY DAY and take 4 packets of bacon. He is the quickest of them all. He would come in behind another customer, so we couldnt notice him from the checkouts, and go straight to the bacon (about 15 feet from the front door unfortunately), grab 4 packets and leave. My manager followed him once, to his house. Nobody answered when he knocked though.

Last week, we were dealing with a delivery on the shop floor and one of my co-workers, richard, spotted him. Now, Richard is a big guy, 18 stone. He followed the theif outside and rugby tackled him to the ground and threw himself on top of him Richard then gathered up the 4 packets of bacon and calmly went back inside. What a cool guy. Strangely, we haven't seen this guy for a week or so now.

Richard has tackled shoplifters outside before, and come off worse. He had to have stitches once because the shoplifter got the better of him. So i really do respect him for what he did! I would never dare do something like that! Luckily for Richard, the CCTV wasn't recording!!! Though i would love to watch it again!!!

[Barefootgirl]

Nice one Richard ! Although, had the shoplifter turned nasty, and he'd got hurt, I would have bent his ear a trifle on the subject of allowing oneself to get hurt for the sake of 4 packets of bacon....Getting hurt defending other people is worthwhile, getting hurt defending bacon is just stupid.

I hope the thief has learned a (squashed) lesson from that encounter, though. With any luck, he won't be back.

[Rubystars]

I work at a small convenience store in England. We have a lot of unknown loss (shoplifters). A lot of the time we dont see the theifs come in and leave, they are very quick, and the shop is so small and busy that staff are always pre-occupied and a lot of time the place is crowded with people queueing and shopping, this makes life very easy for theives. Even if we are behind the counter and see a theif, often we cannot get out from behind the counter to catch him/her quickly enough. Recently we have had a guard on at night times, 3pm-10pm when we close. He stands by the door and watches for trouble outside and inside.

We have also had a big problem recently with one particular theif, who would come in EVERY DAY and take 4 packets of bacon. He is the quickest of them all. He would come in behind another customer, so we couldnt notice him from the checkouts, and go straight to the bacon (about 15 feet from the front door unfortunately), grab 4 packets and leave. My manager followed him once, to his house. Nobody answered when he knocked though.

Last week, we were dealing with a delivery on the shop floor and one of my co-workers, richard, spotted him. Now, Richard is a big guy, 18 stone. He followed the theif outside and rugby tackled him to the ground and threw himself on top of him Richard then gathered up the 4 packets of bacon and calmly went back inside. What a cool guy. Strangely, we haven't seen this guy for a week or so now.

Richard has tackled shoplifters outside before, and come off worse. He had to have stitches once because the shoplifter got the better of him. So i really do respect him for what he did! I would never dare do something like that! Luckily for Richard, the CCTV wasn't recording!!! Though i would love to watch it again!!!

While I don't have any sympathy for shoplifters, he should be very careful, remember the guy who got killed at Wal-Mart and then his family sued?

[protege]

While I don't have any sympathy for shoplifters, he should be very careful, remember the guy who got killed at Wal-Mart and then his family sued?

What about the idiot who tried to steal Coke from a vending machine by tipping it...and who was crushed to death when it fell on him?

[Becks]

I keep meaning to ask...how many pounds (lbs.) does a stone equal, so I can do my weight conversions in my head...

[Kiwi]

Are the liability laws the same in England as they are in America?

You should get your guy a t-shirt that says....

" I foiled the bacon theif"

[PuckishOne]

I keep meaning to ask...how many pounds (lbs.) does a stone equal, so I can do my weight conversions in my head...

14 pounds....Brits, please correct me if this isn't so. I'm rather proud of my little case of Anglophilia.

[Rapscallion]

I have this effect on the ladies...

Rapscallion

[Luna]

A manager I worked with at Borders stopped a known thief once. She was a woman who'd come in with old Borders bags in her pockets, fill them up with book when we were busy and then just walk out with bags of books.

Took a while to catch on that the books were unpaid for b/c they were over 80 people working there total, mostly part-time so no one saw her more than twice and she only came when it was busy.

The manager confronted her, the woman dropped the bags and promptly stabbed the manager with a needle! I didn't see it, but hubby did (he used to work there too.)

Luckily the manager was okay. She was rushed to the hospital and had all sorts of tests done. A week later, maybe two - all new policies about chasing shoplifters were sent down from corporate and we were told we'd be fired if we did.

[Crafty1289]

We are told never to chase shoplifters - but Richard has been at this shop for 15 years, so he really does care about his job, and obviously feels the theives are, in a way, stealing from him. And most of our lifters are drug users, which is why I dont condone what Richard did, and would never do it myself, the risk of a needle or knife is too great. As i said earlier, Richard has been hurt before, he knows the risks, but obviously feels his job security is more important! He's a cool guy.

My manager, a really cool guy to work for, had been threatening to do all sorts of things to this particular theif for weeks! I think he would have done a more "thorough" job if it was him who caught him. My boss is a black belt in some martial art, so god help any theif who gets caught by him!

[CanadaGirl]

Bacon? What the hell...

Oh, and the stones/pounds thing:

1 stones = 14 pounds

[SuperDan]

Chasing shoplifters is one of my favorite activities at my store. We do have an LP staff, but lets just say it's not 24/7 LP coverage. The store manager and the five store-level assistant managers are all also trained in LP paperwork and have keys to the LP office, so even when nobody from LP is around we can process shoplifters, fighters, drunks, sexual harassers, etc. Normally the manager or LP person will make the stop, but quite often they will ask for a few people to back them up in case things get out of hand. There are also those rare occasions where we happen to catch someone, say walking out the front door with two cases of beer. In instances like these often the employee will make the stop but just hold the shoplifter there until managers or LP arrive.

In Indiana, state law prohibits shoplifters who resist capture from suing any employee who used reasonable force against them with the intent of stopping and detaining them. So our asses are legally covered anyway. In fact we have what must be a really masochistic shoplifter--a few months ago we caught him and he tried to run, and one guy punched him hard enough to knock him to the ground then another guy jumped on top of him. We discovered when we were doing the paperwork for him that about a year prior he had stolen from us and got his ass kicked then too.

There is always the possibility that a shoplifter will have a weapon of some sort, and that is a danger that any of us assume when we actively pursue a shoplifter. While we've had shoplifters with heroin syringes on them, we've not yet had one try to harm either an employee or a LP person as far as I know. We did have a purse snatcher try to shake off the employee that jumped on the moron's truck hood to distract him, but that's about it. Our company does have a policy of not chasing shoplifters beyond the front sidewalk, as you never know if the shoplifter will have friends waiting outside or will try to run you down with his car. This policy is bent on occasion.

My personal favorite shoplifter story involves two very crack-high women. I was getting ready to head home from a carts shift and I was talking to the guy relieving me as well as the maintainance guy who was returning our QuicKart2000 to us after doing some work on it. The evening cart guy noticed these two girls exiting through the entrance doors and pointed this out to me. This isn't all that uncommon as there is a bank branch inside our store and some customers prefer to check out then use the bank, which is near the entrance doors, then just leave through the entrance doors. Still, we decided that would be a situation where we probably should ask for a receipt. As we were walking toward the girls to ask for a receipt but before we got far, E., the crazy LP lady, and S., one of our store-level assistant managers, came outside and chased the girls to their car. The girls started resisting, so E. called us for help. The maintainance guy went inside to page our emergency code (which theoretically should have summoned every available employee to the front doors, I think two people actually showed up by the time we got the girls back in the building) and the other cart guy and I ran down to help S and E. S and I managed to get one girl under control and by the time we made it back to the sidewalk she stopped resisting so S went ahead to unlock the LP office and let the store manager and police know what was going on. Since she was smart enough to stop resisting, I was nice enough to change my grip to one less painful (but still one that wouldn't allow her to go anywhere and she knew it). The other one wasn't as smart and kept resisting all the way in. E and the other cart guy struggled with her all the way back. Another manager who was on his way out to go home and a customer followed us in with the two carts they stole. They were still scanning the stolen merchandise when I left, and when I asked S about it the next day he said even without alcohol, tobacco, or fresh meat they still managed to steal $180 in those two cart loads. I thought the one that resisted more looked familiar and it turns out I was right, as she used to be a cashier at my store. Ah, the wonders of what crack can do to you...

Catching shoplifters can be pretty rewarding, just be careful and be aware of your company's policies.