SoapZone Community Message Board

On Thursdays, it's just "B" (Big Grandma Energy) and me from open to close. Most Thursdays are moderately busy (we have one big spender who comes in almost every Thursday and casually drops between $1-2K on clothes, and she specifically comes in on Thursdays because she knows it's the store manager's one day off and she doesn't like our SM), but business almost always dries up by 4:00 PM, 5:00 at the latest. Not today. Today we had a steady flow of store traffic from open to close, though not everyone bought something (the Thursday Big Spender did...and yes, spent almost $2K on a pile of clothes AFTER all her coupons and discounts).

A little after 5:00, I had a mom and daughter come in. Mom was looking for pants; daughter is a serial returner. She orders online, buys everything she likes in two sizes and returns the sizes that don't work for her. She doesn't come in often but when she does, it's always with a minimum of 5 items, and usually closer to 10 items. I was doing her return while also keeping an eye on her mother (who wound up buying nothing), plus we had another woman come in who was trying on pants in a dressing room I'd set up for her. The computer was having trouble recognizing one of the returns, so I was trying a number of things. Meanwhile, three middle-aged women came in and approached B. One claimed none of them spoke English; she would hold up an item and ask "how much?" When B would try to tell her the price, she would claim to not understand so B was writing prices down for her. Meanwhile, the other two were wandering around but I couldn't really see where they were going...

Why B and I suspect this trio of "ladies" were shoplifters (but can't be positive):

- the one kept distracting B with questions about prices and claims of being unable to speak English so we couldn't really keep track of the other two. Unlike most of our stores, which are big, open rectangles, we are a small, narrow store with two hallways that go out on either side of the back of the store. When you're behind the register, you cannot see what's going on down the left hallway.

- the "ladies" decided to purchase a jacket and two bracelets; the bracelets were on a display on the counter right in front of the register. Minutes before, they'd been rifling through the bracelets, of which there were many, and then leaving them on the counter instead of sliding them back on the display.

- one of the "ladies" dared to come behind the counter and start pawing through a box of jewelry I'd been sorting earlier on the counter behind me that is against the wall. I was back there though and when she saw me watching her, she immediately put down what she'd been holding and walked back around the counter (I checked; the contents of the box were all accounted for).

- after much confusion in which B first thought the "ladies" were asking for a gift card, then thought they were trying to sign up for the new credit card, the one finally told B--in suddenly much improved English--to hold on to the jacket and bracelets while they went out to supposedly get their son or brother or some other dude who had a credit card that they would use to pay for their purchase. Of course they didn't return.

- after everyone but the lady trying on pants in the dressing room had left, B pointed to a display we have high up in a niche on the one wall and said "Weren't there two watches up there?" I told her I honestly didn't know. I knew I'd not sold a watch but I don't really look at that niche and couldn't have said if there was one watch or two in it when we came in.

- B then pulled a necklace off the display on the wall and said "is this missing part of it?". Sometimes we sell necklaces that you can either wear all together or wear separately. The tag was still on this particular piece, so I looked it up online and yep, it was supposed to be a double strand and now one of the strands--the one with a turquoise disk on it--was missing.

- Now concerned, B went to the bracelet display and claimed "a bunch" were missing. It was already a super crowded display with multiples of many of the styles, so I couldn't really tell if any of them were gone. But...

- I stepped into a dressing room at the end of the left hallway and found a bunch of price tags, all for bracelets, cut off and lying on the floor. B had helped a customer in that room only about 20 minutes earlier so I asked if her lady had bought any bracelets and then asked for scissors to cut off the tags. I was about 97% certain she hadn't--I didn't even think she'd bought any jewelry at all--and B confirmed that no, the customer bought no jewelry, just tops and pants.

I feel terrible for B. She was alternately furious and shaken, at one point saying she "felt violated" and "how could those ladies do something like that?" I pointed out that we didn't have proof they did anything...but there was some pretty d@mning circumstantial "evidence". Not to mention they'd all been acting a little squirrely. Next, B was verbally beating herself up for "letting" this happen on "her watch". First of all, she and I are of equal ranking (though she has more experience) so it wasn't exactly her watch, and second, she didn't LET anything happen. The "ladies" were the ones who made it all happen...if anything happened at all. I told her it wasn't her fault. I also told her they didn't take much (if they took anything at all), probably less than $300 worth of merchandise. And I told her that it was shoplifting...we didn't get robbed at gunpoint.

I'm off tomorrow but I'm pretty sure I'll get an earful from SM Saturday on "letting" this happen on "my" watch. I'm hoping that the cameras SM swears are all over the store, but are not visible to the naked eye (at least not mine), caught something, NOT because I think these "ladies" could be found and punished (IF they did indeed shoplift) but because I just want to know for sure what happened.

On the plus side, at least I came home with a small baggie of crack...Christmas "crack", that is B usually makes it at Christmas but didn't have time this year, so she whipped up a batch for anyone working this weekend. Borrowing a trick she learned from her Jewish SIL, she substituted matzo for the Saltines (essentially she used this recipe ). I had a piece at work from the "communal" baggie and then came home and made myself sick by eating three more pieces. My tongue regrets nothing...but my stomach has a few regrets right now <g>.