A little background: as some of you may know, I work part-time as a cosmetician. It’s fun, I get to play with make-up and get paid for it, and I get a discount on my stuff. Excellent.
Saturday I was working. My shift was from 12:30 – 9:00PM. At around 1:00 PM the culprits arrived. Two 14 year old girls. They acted suspicious right off the bat so myself and the other cosmeticians were keeping a close eye on them. Each one of us approached the girls at least 3 times, referred to the stolen swag clearly visible in their see-through Suzy Shier bags and offered to ring the items in at the cash. Twice, I caught them ripping open packages to remove items and said I would take the package to cash so they could pay. The other cosmeticians did likewise.
Basically, the jig was up. These girls were made by at least 3 of the staff. We had a merchandiser tailing them. We would bust them, they would leave and then they would come back through another entrance and start trying to rip us off again. Finally, at 6:00 (yes, they had been back and forth for 5 hours), our plain-clothes security officer came on. I tipped him off. The ninnies in question left the store, and as he was about to nab them, they actually came BACK into the store and put more stuff in their bags. Finally they left, he caught them and hauled them back into the store. Their parents were called. The security guard elected not to phone the police because the girls were only 14. The combined total of the stuff they tried to steal was over $200. We’re talking about stupid $4 lip glosses, so you can guess how much crap they thought they were going to get away with.
When mom #1 showed up, I actually almost felt sorry for ninny #1. Mom came in and was so mad, she no longer had lips. All she said, through gritted teeth was “I’m here to pick up the thief.”
So – to the girls:
You two are obviously morons. Just a tip – once you’ve been “made” by at least three members of the staff of the establishment you’re trying to rip off, it might be a good idea to find a different target. If you don’t, not only does it make catching you really, really easy, it’s rather insulting to the staff to assume we are so stupid that we won’t recognize you the 4th time you come in the store.
Crying does not make us sympathetic to you – it just makes us want to slap you silly. You’re lucky that the security dude we had on was one of the nice ones. Most of them call your parents AND the cops. And yes – for crap over $200 we WILL press charges.
Finally, understand that your photos have been circulated to all the other retailers in the mall, as well as to our other store locations. You are banned from our “totally cool” store for the next year. If you are caught again, charges will be pressed.
Now (non-snarkily), to ex-shoplifters (or current ones if you’re feeling wacky) – what’s the motivation? I can honestly say that I have never ripped anything off. As a youth, it never even occurred to me to do so until the local MP’s (I grew up on army bases) gave my grade 5 class a “Don’t shoplift” talk. Not only was I shocked that people stole from our local store, where all the clerks were really friendly and nice, even to kids, I was so scared shitless by the talk even if I’d wanted to after that, I was too frightened to do so.
I don’t get it. I had a friend in high school that used to steal shit. Her dad was a Dr. The crap she took was stupid stuff she didn’t need, usually not even in her size. The girls on Saturday took stupid stuff too – 3 eye pencils the same color. Pens. 4 makeup brushes exactly the same. They obviously weren’t trying to outfit their makeup cases, they were just stealing for the hell of it.
So? Anyone want to ‘fess up? What’s with that?
BTW – other “stupidest shoplifters ever” stories are welcome.
I’m sitting in my favorite gaming/hobby store. A not-exactly-inconspicuous fellow wanders in, accompanied by various smells, that make it immediately obvious that the guy has:
(A) Smoked enough ganja to kill a small yak.
(B) Forgotten how to use toilet paper.
The guy tried to make a grab a few times, and each time, the clerk just gave him a really, really, really hard glare. Eventually, he ran off, clutching his genitals.
Heh. I sort of wish we had the rest of the story. I bet she’s grounded until she’s 39.
When I was a teenager, I shoplifted a couple of items. A deck of cards in one store, and an eraser in another store. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could get away with it. I felt so guilty afterwards that I went back to the stores and snuck the items back on the shelves.
I remember I was in Toys R Us several years ago (I was pretty young) and it was around Xmas time. This teenage boy got in line next to his mother, and obviously had either a puzzle or board game under his t-shirt. No jacket and he really wasn’t even trying to hide it. My mom tipped off the security guard, but he said he couldn’t do anything until he tried to leave. His mom made him go put it back, though, and she looked pissed.
Back when I was a freshman in college, both my roommates were hardcore shoplifters. It was their hobby. They shoplifted from Walmart exclusively, their rationalization was that it’s an evil corporation, they deserve it, blah, blah, blah, plus I think they got a thrill out of it. They would go on daily trips and come out with copious amounts of utter crap crammed under their clothes, mostly from the craft section. There was an article in the newspaper about a rise in shoplifting at Walmart, most remarkably in the craft section. I feel pretty confident that much of that rise was due to the roommates. They were very proud of their accomplishment. :rolleyes:
Now, I was young, impressionable, wanted to fit in with the new roommates and have them think I’m cool too, so I participated as well, despite huge guilt (Mom was a store manager, it was drilled into my head from a very young age that stealing is very, very, very, very bad). Got caught once, and after that, I went to Walmart alone. Never shoplifted again. My only motivation was sheer peer pressure. Soon after that, I came to the realization that my roommates were assholes (for more reasons than the shoplifting) and moved my ass out.
I also have a stupidest shoplifter ever story. Back when I worked at the Kum & Go (chain of convenience stores mostly in Iowa), I had a teenage guy come in to the store in the middle of July wearing a big winter coat. He spends some time back at the magazine rack, then comes up to the check-out with a can of Coke…and approximately 5 inches of porno mag sticking out the bottom of his coat with his arm clutching the front to keep it from slipping out.
Now, if he’d just skipped the buying-a-Coke pretense and left, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed, I was alone, and it was pretty busy.
I thought about letting him walk out the door, then running out and stopping him and calling the cops, but it was so pathetic, I really felt sorry for the guy. Besides, the impending embarrassment was going to be punishment enough.
So, I just sort of looked at him, eyebrows raised, eyes moving down to the magazine, then back up to his face. He says “what?” and I said, “come on, dude,” and he looks down and turns bright red and pulls it out and starts stammering, “I…I…I’m gonna pay for it!” and I say, “okay, can I see some ID?” "I…I…it’s for my brother!’’ So I said, “sorry, no ID, no porn.” He threw down a dollar for the Coke and fled, leaving the magazine on the counter. Then the rest of the customers and I had a really good laugh.
This is why I can’t stand petty criminals. I mean, not only did it take them 5 hours to make $200, but they let themselves get dragged in by a plain clothes mall cop. I mean, what the hell kind of criminal scheme is this? They do shit more hard core than this on kids’ cartoons. I mean, if you’re going to go on a multi-state shooting spree after knocking over a bank, at least you’re putting some thought and effort into the whole thing.
I’m not a former shoplifter, but a few people I knew back in high school were. Several in fact. None of them ever grabbed things that were worth money, or that they’d actually want. Not that they had a moral code, the wheels just weren’t spinning too fast upstairs. I think it’s just a way for the unimaginative and chickenshit to feel like they’re bucking the system.
Whereas I was a real rebel. I used to wear a lot of black and I grew a beard senior year. That showed the man. But hey, that’s what high school’s for. Not knowing crap about anything.
I knew a guy who shoplifted… he actually got some pretty expensive books that way.
He explained it all to me. He would go to the local Comic/RPG store and place an order for a book they didn’t have in while his friends would pick out books they wanted and set them in such a way so he’d know which ones they were. The friends would all leave and he’d go around picking them up and walk out right past the front counter with them. With his hand on the door to leave he’d get told “Thanks for coming” and then walk out with hundreds of dollars worth of books. (Ranging from $20-50 CAN each)
He was a very blatant thief. The night I met him he bought us drinks then tried to walk out on the $70 tab… with thousands of dollars in his pocket from his student loan. That night he was caught though. I never let him pay for everything after that unless I knew he was actually going to pay for it.
The store I work at is one of a very large chain. Occasionally, I’ve been told, the owner (franchisee), when she’s in (she’s a pharmacist) will go into the back where the shoplifters are kept while we’re waiting for the cops. If they’re young girls, on the verge of crying, said owner, who’s tiny, and sweet faced and nice, has been known to go up to them and introduce herself and say “I’m the person you’re stealing from.”
If they weren’t crying before that, they were always crying after.
Once, about ten years ago, me and a buddy stole a couple of packages of fake crabmeat from a supermarket. Before that, in high school, my friends and I occasionally stole things, although not from a store per se. We’d steal small street signs, traffic cones, stuff from hotels. Stupid shit, really. And it wasn’t like I could walk into my parents’ house with a big orange cone or a brass lamp or something, so most of the stuff just got thrown by the side of the road before the night was over.
Why’d we do it? I don’t know exactly. We were usually drunk. Sometimes we thought it would be funny; you know, we’d see a sign with the name “Butts” on it or something and decide to take it (yes, we were quite the witty bunch, my friends and I). There was a bit of a thrill to it as well. I don’t recall ever feeling like I was “sticking it to the man” or fighting corporate hegemony or anything. I was just a dumbass kid for the most part.
Anyhow… Eventually my friends and I just grew up and stopped stealing stuff. We never got caught, for some reason.
Before I was 10 I stole candy. I wanted to eat it and I didn’t have the money to pay for it, that was my motivation. I never took anything but candy. I was caught one day and my mother was called. I was spanked in front of the store personnel, spanked at home, I had to write a letter expressing my sorrow and asking for forgiveness, and I had to walk to the store each week for two months and give them my allowance.
I have not stolen anything since then. Well, technically, I have stolen from my employer and several stores by taking pens, but I have not * intentionally* taken anything since I was 8 or 9. I think my parents handled the entire affair brilliantly. I hope that the parents of your two shoplifters react as well. The mother of one of them sounds like she will do a good job of it.
I once stole a book from my high school library. We had gotten a big lecture on their security system and how we couldn’t steal anything. When I spotted a flew in their system, I had to take advantage of it.
I was a freshman when I did my shoplifting. 14 when I got started and 15 when I got caught the second time.
Reasons? First, I really wanted “cool” things. I didn’t take stuff just for the heck of it; I took stuff I really wanted. I remember a dress that looked absolutely stunning on me, that my mom never would have bought, or let me buy…It is hard to resist when you’ve found what seems to be a way of making things happen for yourself, and you have no other.
Which is pretty much the second reason. I couldn’t find any other way to…assert myself, I guess you’d say. I know every ninth grader thinks their parents are too strict, but mine really were. At 14, I was still having to live under the same rules as when I was 10. Since I wasn’t allowed any of the normal avenues for establishing independence (I wasn’t allowed to join a church youth group, frex), I felt I had no choice but to do something really bad.
Although it was originally my friend’s idea, I wouldn’t call peer pressure. I could have said no. I had said no to some other stuff she’d wanted to do, but I wanted to do this. My choice, my consequences. She was bolder than I, though, so she averaged three items for every one I got.
The first time I got caught was actually after the fact; a store employee recognized me from the security video recorded on an earlier visit. Well, my mom went ballistic, much like Mom #1 in the OP, and that put me off it for a while…but there were still a lot of unresolved issues between us. I know how it sounds to talk about “fair” when I was the one who broke the law, but I never felt that she handled the situation fairly. To her, it was not about the crime itself, but about the fact that I wasn’t going along with the plan she had for me.
So one day, about a week and a half after school let out, “Wendy” decided to go on a spree. First we got a bunch of stuff from a boutique, then went down the street to her mom’s office and left it in the trunk of her car. This turned out to be a wise move, from our perspective. After that, we went to a department store and asked for a shopping bag (I referenced this in the Wal-Mart bag Pit thread a few days ago, in fact!), then headed to a record store (remember those?) and proceeded to fill it with LPs.
Yeah, I know.
Anyway, my life started to change the moment a salesclerk said, “Excuse me…would you girls like to step over here?” Incidentally, we weren’t anywhere near ready to leave the store, but they detained us anyway. We were in Illinois, if that explains the discrepancy between that and what alice and liirogue saw.
Neither of us cried. I kind of had a panic attack, and I think I made them nervous that I was going to bolt. Wendy was 17, but lied and said she was 16. She had to be bailed out; I didn’t. We both had handcuffs on for the trek from the store to the security office. (My mom was absolutely beside herself with glee to hear this later. “You just love this, don’t you?” I asked, and got my face slapped for it. But she really did seem like she was enjoying it. Self-fulfilling prophecy for her. See below.)
Now, the store where I currently work has the security office right by the employee entrance to the parking garage. I’ve overheard (not as in hanging around and eavesdropping, mind you) stuff like a woman whose purse had been stolen while she was trying on clothes*, and, of course, detained shoplifters. Once, I heard this from a guard:
“Look, I know you guys are scared, but it’s not gonna help anything if you don’t calm down. I just need a number where your parents can be reached. I want to get this over with just as much as you do…”
Would that the guard who processed us had been as humanitarian. I got the definite impression that if there hadn’t been a witness—the store employee who called him—we would have walked out of there with bruises and bumps. He did ask us if we’d been ripping off other stores earlier, and seemed frustrated to get a negative response and to be unable to send us to the women’s prison at Stateville. But as I mentioned, we’d stashed the stuff we’d taken earlier, and no one at those stores made the connection AFAIK.
So it ended with us banned from the mall for a year. I complied with this, though Wendy did not. And there was a very bad, very protracted scene at home with my mom. She broke the microwave; let’s leave it at that. My dad was out of town at the time, and I’m fairly certain that to this day he does not know.
After my mom calmed down (two days later, no exaggeration), we did finally have a talk and clear the air. For a long time—hell, since I was five—she’d been overreacting to everything: stuff that wouldn’t even register with a normal parent was seen by her as a clear indication that I was either going to “be a hooker or work at the five and dime”. Was she really surprised that it had come to this?
So the rules were relaxed somewhat. I know that sounds backwards, but you didn’t live in that house. Also, Wendy’s mom came to the house for a summit conference, and I think that had some influence as well. Her attitude was that there was no undoing what had been done, so let’s talk about where we go from here. Must have been a novel idea for my mom, whose usual MO was to never, ever allow a chance for reprieve or to live anything down.
Interesting coda, though. Wendy’s family moved away that fall, and before she left, I went to visit and say goodbye. I really was making an effort to turn my life around. I knew I’d been on a collision course, and it was time to stop being destructive and start building. To this end, I had joined the school newspaper. So my mom sent me out the door to Wendy’s with a list of dire predictions as to what would happen if I got in any more trouble, and her parting shot was, “And I’ll make you quit the paper!”
“Great,” I thought. “Take away my biggest motivator and leave me with nothing, just like I was before.” But nothing happened, and after about a year, I’d finally accrued enough positives that she let it go.
Oh, and laigle:
We weren’t thinking that far ahead. I remember my mom mocking me for allegedly thinking I was “smart” and “knew better” than people who were “trying to make a living”, but it wasn’t any kind of criminal scheme. We were teenagers, and that’s how teenagers think. I wanted books and clothes; Wendy wanted music and batteries, and we both wanted to do something on our own. Another factor I should have mentioned already is that both of us kept house while our parents, moms and dads both, worked. We’d been proving that we were responsible…but got treated like criminals no matter what we did. So what was the point of trying? We didn’t want to be Thelma and Louise, if that movie had even been out yet. If anything, we wanted to be Cher, from Clueless, though that movie was even further in the future…but we didn’t have her carte blanche, let alone her allowance. So we made our own opportunities.
*Now that’s something I really don’t understand: crimes against the person. Yes, I know, as alice pointed out, that stealing from a store is also against a person. But a store proprietor’s not gonna lose stuff like family photos and her address book; just the merchandise.
I worked as a “floorwalker”, a plainclothes retail security guard, at Sears when I was in university. I had to walk around the store, pretending to be just another customer, and catch shoplifters. I can definitely say that, without exception, none of the people I caught were in any way “needy”. From time to time, professionals would hit the store, but the everyday run-of-the-mill shoplifters were bored teenagers… and retired men!
My first arrest was a 74-year old man. I watched him put a set of dogbone ratchet wrenches ($49.95) under his sport coat and head for the door. Technically, concealment of merchandise constituted theft, but my boss’ policy was to wait 'til they were out of the store to nab 'em, because it made a better case (Sears prosecuted all adult shoplifters).
So I followed him into the parking lot, stopped him and showed him my “badge”, retrieved the wrenches, and asked him to accompany me to the Security Office. He was shaking like a leaf! I had to stop three times; once to let him catch his breath, then to let him get a sip of water from the cooler, then to let him take his nitroglycerin tablet (!). When I worked the morning shift, retired men seemed to be the main shoplifters. My theory was that they had come to the mall with their wives, and were bored.
My “stupid teenager” story: He wasn’t really a shoplifter… more of a vandal. It was around Christmastime, and Sears had lots of kids in the store because they’d expanded the toy department for the holidays. I was watching these two boys (about 14 years old) because they’d been in the store a long time with no parents or purchases. They wandered over to the boys’ clothing department, and were browsing through the circular rack of flannel shirts. The taller kid leaned over and put his face down between the shirts, and then stood up. Both kids laughed, and then went back to the toy department. I checked the rack of shirts, and discovered that he had spit his mouthful of chewing tobacco and juice into the breast pocket of one of the shirts.
Sears’ policy re: juvenile shoplifters was to call the police and then the parents. We’d have to hold the kid until both the cops and M&D showed up. Major PITA. I was (supposedly) working alone that night, so I wasn’t too happy about catching a juvenile. When I took the kid back to the Security Office, I was surprised to find my boss, “interviewing” another shoplifter. I showed him what the kid had done with the shirt, and my boss just looked at the kid and said “How much money do you have on you?” The kid pulls $8 out of his wallet. The price tag on the shirt was $7.99 (this was in the '70s… and no sales tax on clothes in PA). My boss told me to take the kid to Customer Service and have him pay for the shirt. “I hope it’s your size.”, my boss said to the kid.
The very next night, I saw the kid back in the store, with his parents, wearing the shirt!
I’m sure it varies from state-to-state in the U.S., but I didn’t think that it was considered theft (under the eyes of the law) until the unpurchased merchandise left the premises. After all, cases could be made (thin as they may be) that the would-be thief absent-mindedly put the item in his coat pocket and was planning on paying for it the entire time.
I knew a person who, over the course of her time shoplifting, managed to walk away with one full computer and monitor, four separate laptops, three laser printers, under 10 but over 5 inkjet printers, 4 to 5 hard drives, numerous CD-ROMs and CD-RW burners, plenty of other supplies for the above, a pager (back when they were much more popular) and plenty of telephones. Never got caught, as I understand it, and just eventually gave it up because she said she grew out of it.
Two stories: I used to manage a small video store, and people were constantly trying to steal from us. Teenagers, boys in the 10-12 range, couples in their 30’s and 40’s, and males in their mid to late 20’s were always the culprits, and they all had different but equally ridiculous MO’s. The teenagers always tried shoving items in their pants, the boys always shoved them under their shirts, the couples always shoved them in the woman’s handbag while the guy hovered suspiciously, and the guys in their 20’s always shoved them in their jackets. Always. It was bizarre, like they’d all read some manual on how to be a half-assed shoplifter. They always got caught by either being noticed by a staffer actually seeing them steal or by setting of the alarms as they tried to leave the store. A surprising number of them cried and begged us not to call the cops. We always did though. I always felt like their true crime was being such abominably bad thieves.
I also used to know this guy who was some kind of “professional shoplifter”. He worked with 3 other people and they were dedicated- they had all manner of plans for stealing, for selling the items they stole, knowledge of store security, camera placement, etc. Except they never made any money doing it. They would steal things like microwaves and re-sell them for less than a third of their retail price. On the single microwave they managed to get out of the store at a time. I asked him once why they didn’t steal jewellery, since it’s small and easily concealable and usually worth money, but he said it was too difficult and that “nobody steals jewellery anymore”. This was years ago, and the last I heard he was in jail for robbing a sporting goods store.
