I’ve worn Levi’s for as long as I can remember. I stuck with them through the “Hard Jeans” debacle of 1998, but my patience with them has run out.
I went into a Levi’s outlet store (in the Great Mall in Milpitas, California if that means anything to anybody) and was greeted by a sign reading "Don’t even think about stealing these clothes"
Well, fuck you, Levi’s. If the first thing you think of when customers enter is that we are potential thieves, then maybe we should all just stay out of your store. Who the fuck do you think you are assuming that I have larceny on my mind, when you ought to be begging for my business? You bung-raping, shit-eating, bag-nuzzling jerkoffs can take your overpriced, pseudo-hip clothes and shove them up your clap-infested, pus-leaking, crust-coated corporate asses.
Perhaps it’s designed to appeal to the no-nonsense, in-your-face trend that’s currently going on. Kind of like Carl’s Jr.'s “Don’t bother me, I’m eating” slogan.
Or maybe they just get a lot of their clothes stolen. Of course, I suppose they’re just supposed to grin and bear it, huh?
A couple of weeks ago, i went shopping for some spring and summer clothes. I went to Gurnee Mills, somehow figuring that I would have more luck at the outlet mall, than at the malls closest to my house.
After looking round for awhile, I’d found that there were only two choices in clothes, Dress like Britney Spears OR dress like a little old lady in ankle length floral print dresses.
I got five bras, two sweaters, and a pair of shoes.
I make it hard on myself by refusing to wear DONE-TO-DEATH animal prints, floral prints, and ALARMINGLY SACCHARINE pastels. I know it is hard work to design four lines of clothing a year, but surely there is something more creative for summer than PUS-ENCRUSTED sugary floral prints. I don’t object to a an embroidered spray of flowers, but if all i see is cutesy printed flowers, I will walk out of the store with nary a second thought.
Spend some money on dyes, and stop with the pale kiddie colours,already, shitty baby pink and blue, disgustingly sweet pastel shirts, unoriginal pastel capris, lame pastel sweaters.
No wonder i dress like a bum, perpetually in tshirts and jeans, althogh it is getting harder to find shirts that have not got logos smeared everywhere.
Does anyone remember an ad campaign Dockers had a few years ago where they had an actual pair of slacks encased in a display…uh, case…and they put these things up around subways and bus stops and the like, basically counting on them getting broken into. Behind the pants (once stolen) was some blurb about how great the pants were, yadda yadda. I think they even went so far as to include the size of the trousers, something like 34x34 or whatever the most common size was at the time.
Levis makes Dockers, don’t they? It’d be ironic if the company that once encouraged the theft of their pants as part of an ad, on the street and in public, now harshly discourages the theft of their jeans from their own store and, presumably, in the privacy of a changing room.
[Hijack1]
Salesclerk, “May I help you?”
Me, “Where are your clothes that don’t have the brand name on the outside?”
[/Hijack1]
[Hijack2]
Everytime I see someone wearing a tie and Dockers I want to give to them a complentary seam ripper to take that tag off.
They look like a stock clerk with a tie and patch pocket pants.
[/Hijack2]
City Gent, you know what you should do? Go back to that store, march right up to a cashier, and just stand there, thinking about stealing jeans. That’ll show 'em.
You know, that’s a brilliant idea. 'Cuz I know exactly where you can go buy an elaborate security system (complete with cameras, central recording setup, and three security guards) for the cost of a single sign.
Outlet malls likely attract more poor people than rich, and,
If I recall right, Levi’s is the last -or rather, the only brand of denim jeans still made in the USA.
At the time I read this a couple months back, the company said they ad “no plans for moving production”. - Imported jeans cost less, due to foreign labor. So what the sign relly should have said was “If you’re going to steal some jeans, take the cheaper foreign ones. -Especially the giant-pocket gangsta ones, because normal people with money don’t want to look like project welfare gangstas anyway”.
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The clothes at Wal-Mart SUCK. It’s almost as if they use a special “Super-Shrink” fabric, that guarantees that the item will be two sizes smaller after the first time that you remove it from the clothes dryer. And if you buy it in 2XL, it still don’t fit right after it shrinks. But what do you know, *friedo, you probably wear cotton socks!!! - MC
foo!
Except that I believe that the sign will do nothing except irritate the honest customer. I don’t appreciate the idea that I’m a thief or the assumption that I would think about swiping their jeans.
Just picture the following scenario (done mainly because any excuse to write in Damon Runyonese is a GOOD excuse ;))
Jimmy The Nose: So we are agreed then. We will go into the store and Hot-Fingers-Louie will make off with the jeans, what we will sell to the Reds.
Sadly-Sorry Smith: This is, indeed, the plan.
Hot-Fingers-Louie: [sub]eep![/sub] I see a problem what was unforseen! I cannot swipe the jeans what we planned to swipe!
Sadly-Sorry Smith: Why would this be? Our Red source will be most displeased wit’ us if we do not come through as we promised. We may end up wearing concrete trousers on the bottom of the harbor if we do not come through.
Hot-Fingers-Louie: (pointing) We must take that chance. We can’t swipe these jeans! *They have a sign! *what says we must not even think about swiping the jeans!
Jimmy The Nose (hesitates): We could…uh…ignore…the sign.
Hot Fingers and Sadly (in unison): IGNORE THE SIGN?!
Hot Fingers (almost shrieking): Are you nuts?!
Jimmy The Nose: You are right. I do not know what come over me. We will pull our heist in The Gap where they do not have such a sign.
Actually, I agree with Fenris, but for a different reason. The seasoned thief or klepto doesn’t think about stealing, s/he just does it[sup]*[/sup].
The sign, therefor, would only be useful to thwart would-be start-up crooks, who would likely be caught and made an example of anyway.
In Pittsburgh, I occasionally bought clothes at Avalon Vintage Clothing (is it still there? On Atwood and Forbes?). They had signs in their dressing rooms stating “You think you’re cool/You think you’re clever/But steal our stuff/And your head we’ll sever!”
Eides, a media store, which I know is still there, very near to the Greyhound station on Liberty, and at another location that I can’t remember, had a reputation for collaring shoplifters and taking them in the back room to beat them senseless. I said a reputation, meaning I don’t know for sure that they ever really did that, but the staff certainly looked like they were capable of it.
My point being, prosecuting a shoplifter is a long, complicated, expensive process. Now, that may not be an obstacle for a Levi’s store, but for privately owned enterprises like the ones I named, a beating costs nothing, is much more to the point, and the threat is highly effective.
Eides may very well have built that reputation on word alone. But in any case, it seems to have worked. I’m sorry that you were offended, City Gent, but when you run a business, you cannot play. They did not put up the sign to intimidate you personally; they put it up as a disclaimer. And “they” may be the owners of that individual store, not the Levi’s corporation.
Just for the record, I shopped today at the Levi and Docker’s outlet store at the Sanibel Tanger Factory Outlet stores, and there was no sign there. I bought 5 shirts in solid colors with no logos for a little over $60. However, I couldn’t buy any shorts there, and when I went to the recently opened Gap store to buy some (hey, I had $75 in gift cards), the sizes were all jumbled. 34, 34, 28, 38, 30… Hello? They must have had 2 or 3 pairs of shorts in my size in the whole store. It was insane.
