Steal From Me?

 

I spent a number of years in the retail hardware business. 

If you spend any time in the retail world, you will come to understand just how many dishonest people there are in the world, and the lengths they will go to be dishonest is simply amazing.  I took all of that pretty personal.  Did you know that retail theft in just 22 major retail chains in 2008 accounted for over 6 billion dollars?  That means that every man, woman and child in America had to spend an extra $20 at those stores alone just to make up for what someone else stole.  Figure how many stores there are in America and you can readily see that a family of four honest people are spending hundreds of extra dollars each year just to pay for the stole goods.

Once in a while a retailer catches a thief.  Usually the courts at most give them a slap on the wrist and make them promise on their honor not to do it again.  Give me a break, if they had any honor at all, they wouldn’t be stealing.  I mean, many of these people work harder at stealing than they would at a regular job.  Don’t think so?  Let me tell you a story.

One Saturday at the hardware store I managed a clerk paged me and when I answered they told me that they saw a guy putting some tools in a large box in his cart.  So I headed over to the area the clerk was in and we watched.  The thief had cut open a box for a roof vent, carefully cutting one side “flap” open.  He removed the vent and proceeded to fill the box with tools, Roundup weed killer, and an assortment of anything else his sticky little hands came in contact with.

Then, he carefully rolled the very heavy box over in the cart so that the flap was down.

Up through the register he went, the young gal running the register couldn’t budge the large heavy box, but it was a large box after-all, so she looked at the price tag, conveniently located on the topside and rang up the sale.  Collected the $45.00 or so due, and sent him on his way.

I followed him out into the parking lot, intent on grabbing him and having him arrested for stealing what had to be well over $ 1,000 worth of goods.  Just as I was getting close behind him, he pulled a set of car keys out of his pocket. 

I don’t know where the idea came from to be truthful, but I suddenly realized that if I waited a bit, I would have him in a more advantageous position.  Worked out better than I could have imagined.

He approached a car, slid the key in the trunk lock and popped the trunk.  Just then I bellowed out “Hey, I want to talk to you”.

At the time I was just about 30 years old, tipped the scale at about 225 pounds, and nobody who looked would have thought any of it was fat.

He started, looked my way and saw me bearing down on him; his wits panicked and fled from the scene, with his body right behind.

But, what didn’t go with his wits or his body, was his car or his keys.  I let him run.  I knew I was gonna hurt him a lot worse that way.

 

I waved an assistant manager out and we started going through the car.  It took us 12 shopping carts to empty the trunk and the back and front seats of all the merchandise in that car.  There was stuff from 5 different stores in our chain.  There was stuff from 13 other retail chains as well.  None of which were in the same small town we were in, but all of them in San Jose just about 20 miles north.  All told, there was over $16,000.00 in merchandise in that car.

I mapped it out, and assuming that he stole all of that in one day (and I cant believe he left his car full of stolen merchandise on the street overnight) then he had driven 83 miles minimum that day from store to store before he got to mine.

The staff was grumpy after we got the car cleaned out.  You see, we caught a glimpse of the man every few minutes, peeking around the corner of a store down the way, waiting for us to leave his car alone.  Thinking about it, gave me another idea.

 

I posted a clerk out in the parking lot to lean up against the car, looking towards the corner the guy was hiding behind.  I changed clerks out very hour or so all day.  The guy kept peeking, so I kept someone there just to make his life uncomfortable.  The day wore on.  The clerks were happy to do it, they could feel the retribution of keeping the guy isolated from his car all afternoon.

End of the day came, my team was unhappy.  They figured that as soon as we all left, the guy would get in his car and leave.  They wanted to try and chase him down.  I told them I had a better idea.

As soon as the parking lot cleared out, I called a towing company and told them I wanted to report an abandoned vehicle.  Then I went outside and locked the keys in the trunk and waited for the tow truck.  About 10 minutes later, the tow truck was there, verified that I managed the store and could therefore report the vehicle as abandoned, and towed the car off.

 

I smiled and waved at the thief as he stood and watched it all happen.  Figure he found himself stranded, some 30 miles or so from home, getting full on dark, and with a car that had just been impounded in a city other than where he lived.  It would be Monday at the earliest before he could get it back. 

Bus ride home, bus ride back, towing fee, 2-3 days of impound fees; figure he was going to be “out-of-pocket” for at least $500 or more and three days lost proceeds from stealing. 

 

I did tell you that I took steeling from my store pretty personal didn’t I?

 

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved