Pint Size Carving Knife Hijacker and Other Drama.

[ralerin]

Here I was thinking it would be a nice, quiet, boring Wednesday, me stuck at the front all day and being bored to death. Haw haw haw.

I'll start with the less dramatic one, it's one that makes me mad.

Depends Lady

She comes up to my register and asks if I can exchange X Depends for Y Depends (basically same price except smaller package). LP Guy comes flying up and asks what I'm doing. When I say she's exchanging these depends, he says "No she's not." He gives his usual speech and checks her receipt and then frowns at her and tells her that next time she needs to come up to exchange those, first thing. I'm apologizing to her and she accepts it and seems humbled.

30 seconds later, I see LP guy carting her off towards another aisle, I'm assuming to apologize to her. About half an hour after that I go to the bathroom and see the bag of Depends plus 2 eye masks sitting on the LP console table. Lady did steal the Depends after all and also stole 2 eye masks on top of it. I was STEAMED when I found out.

Pint Sized Knife Hijacker

Aid of Rite sells electric pumpkin carving knives, looks like a bright orange electric steak knife but smaller. The thing goes at an incredible speed and makes lots of noise and, obviously, is VERY sharp.

9 year old boy was caught stealing one. I was at the register and all of a sudden this kid SCREAMING at the top of his lungs and begging LP guy and group of managers around him that he'll never do it again and let him go and I swear and I need to go home now and hyperventilating and crying and saying how his life was over and his parents would never let him out again and he would kill himself and his parents would kill him. He said he found the package opened and he wanted it but didn't have enough money for it. He screamed LOUDER when he was taken outside and LP guy was dialing a number into the phone.

However, kid wasn't arrested, he was taken back home by manager and delivered into the hands of his parents.

=/ Man, if he had gotten away with it? Expulsion, legal compensation on our butts?

[tropicsgoddess]

Hate to say it but the Depends Lady would've pulled a fast one on you if the LP guy didn't intervene. As for the kid, wow....talk about fear. I just wonder what his parents' reaction was to all that.

[ralerin]

Well, we didn't see him for the rest of the night...=/

[cinema guy]

Depends Lady

... and checks her receipt

Lady did steal the Depends after all.

How did she have a receipt?

[MelodiousBubbles]

See, with the kid freaking out like that, it means there will be repercussions at home, which I would view as a good thing since half the kids who come into my store flat out ignore their parents and run a muck.

Kids hate trouble. They'll do anything in their power to get into it, but the second they're caught and know they're going to be punished, by either a parent or someone else in authority, they break down and act like they didn't know what they were doing was wrong. Half the time, they do know it and were just hoping they'd get away with it.

[Shalom]

How did she have a receipt?

Found it in the trash can in the parking lot, probably.

We had a regular scammer/shoplifter at the store that rhymes with Tight Fade who would take stuff off the shelf and bring it up to the counter for "refunds". [Note that this may have been multiple people rather than one, it's a bit hazy when you work overnight.] He might have gotten away with this once or twice, but eventually they told him that they couldn't give him cash refunds anymore, only store credit. So he started exchanging them for cigarettes, which are as good as cash. Always had some baloney story, e.g. his nephew/brother/some other relative gave him these boxes of Nicoderm patches for a Thanksgiving/Birthday/Anniversary/whatever present but he isn't ready to quit smoking yet so can he exchange them for a carton of Marlboros, or something along those lines. Finally the night manager put his foot down and said, no refund without receipt. period. What does the guy do, he goes out in the parking lot, rummages through the garbage cans for receipts, then comes in, tries to steal the stuff on the receipt, and then return it. We told him to bugger off. He starts blustering, we have to give the refund, we should call 1-800-Ŕіťе-Άіԁ and they'd tell us we had to give it, the daytime manager always give him refund, yadda yadda blah blah. (This last was utter bovine excrement, as the SM is a right bastard and would have thrown him out so fast he'd bounce twice in the parking lot.) We reiterated that he should bugger off, and come back and talk to SM in the morning. Of course he didn't do that. He did keep coming back, though, and we did keep telling him to bugger off.

Oh, once he shoplifted glucose test strips (~$110/box) at the Chain of Verylarge Stores and tried to return it to me at the pharmacy counter. I told him he never bought that here, I don't care what receipt he had. How did I know? Well, we never sold the 100+20 bonus size. Besides, the СѴЅ security sticker was kind of a giveaway...

[EvilEmpryss]

However, kid wasn't arrested, he was taken back home by manager and delivered into the hands of his parents.

Man, you need to tell your LP not to go driving kids home anymore! As a parent I appreciate what he was trying to do by not calling the cops on the kid, but he should have either let the kid go with a warning or called the parents to come get the kid. Forget that the kid is a little thief who tried to shoplift something... all he has to do is claim that the LP touched him or propositioned him on the ride home and a stolen novelty knife would be the least of the store's problems. Practice defensive management.

[The Grim Shipper]

How did she have a receipt?

Could easily have purchased them the previous shift/day, brought the receipt and grabbed a set off the shelves to "return".

[XCashier]

Man, you need to tell your LP not to go driving kids home anymore! As a parent I appreciate what he was trying to do by not calling the cops on the kid, but he should have either let the kid go with a warning or called the parents to come get the kid. Forget that the kid is a little thief who tried to shoplift something... all he has to do is claim that the LP touched him or propositioned him on the ride home and a stolen novelty knife would be the least of the store's problems. Practice defensive management.

Excellent point, EE. Why did your manager even bother to drive the kid home when he has a store to run, and any amount of crap could happen in the half hour or so that he was gone?

[NateTheChops]

Excellent point, EE. Why did your manager even bother to drive the kid home when he has a store to run, and any amount of crap could happen in the half hour or so that he was gone?

Trust me. If management and LP were hired for their brains at the Aid of Rite I'd have been CEO by now.

Doesn't say much about the fact that I was a supervisor for a little while but it should say more about the fact that I gave up being a super after three months.

[Hyena Dandy]

Found it in the trash can in the parking lot, probably.

Damnit... I was hoping that you could get receipts for stealing things, Discworld style.

[Soulstealer]

Damnit... I was hoping that you could get receipts for stealing things, Discworld style.

I prefer being an assassin rather than thief.

http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/

[dalesys]

Damnit... I was hoping that you could get receipts for stealing things, Discworld style.

And collect from the sewer ants...

[ralerin]

Excellent point, EE. Why did your manager even bother to drive the kid home when he has a store to run, and any amount of crap could happen in the half hour or so that he was gone?

Because it was a female assistant manager who moonlights as backup LP. She walked him home 2 blocks up the street.

[EvilEmpryss]

Because it was a female assistant manager who moonlights as backup LP. She walked him home 2 blocks up the street.

And as the teachers in Florida are showing the nation, pedophilia isn't a Y-linked chromosomal disease.

But hey, when a teenage girl gets felt up by an older guy, she's a victim. When a teenage boy gets felt up by an older woman, he's lucky, right?

Besides, it doesn't take anything to actually happen to have a pair of A-hole parents try to distract from their precious boy's thievery by playing the pedophile card. I'm just saying that in these sue-happy times, I wouldn't be unchaperoned with a strange child if there I had an option.