Don't Sh1t Where You Eat

Guys, something bad happened today.

Not horribly bad, not earth-shatteringly bad. Thank heavens, my family and friends in the path of Hurricane Matthew are all safe and accounted for. My kiddos, visiting their father in Arizona, are having a good time (so far.) Life, in general, is fairly normal in the Teens & Other Wild Things household.

At work, however... Well, not so much. Work is a frigging mess.

Have you ever experienced that weird feeling of devastation, like the world is falling apart around you, but nothing's moving? 

I work for a small store. There are five of us- A store manager, two assistant managers, and two cashiers. I know that sounds like a lot of managers, but there must always be a "key holder" in the store- so they need to split up the hours the store is open between the Store Manager and the assistants. We're a small, fairly tight-knit group. Right now, our Store Manager is out with an injury. She's unlikely to come back any time soon. Fortunately one of our assistants is experienced and well able to take the store over. We talked about it, and thought, hey we can do this. We've got a good manager, and we can pitch in and get 'er done. No worries!
Great, right?

Hey, no worries! We've got a great team, right? He's got this. 

Well... Not so great, because today I learned that the second assistant was arrested yesterday. It was a gut-punch. I literally felt breathless when I got the news. I teared up. I didn't want to believe it. I've worked with this guy for a while. He's funny. Goofy. A decent manager. Just an all around good guy to work with. I wanted to believe it was a misunderstanding. A false accusation. But no... I saw the evidence with my own eyes. He was definitely stealing.

I just don't understand. WHY would anyone steal from their own store? It just makes no sense. There's an old saying: Don't shit where you eat. It's basic survival. In this case, it translates to; Don't steal from the people who pay your bills! You idiot.

Now, I'm no angel. I don't mean to come across as a sanctimonious holier-than-thou finger-pointer. Stealing's not just wrong in a moral sense; it's goddamn stupid because you will always get caught, eventually, and nothing you could gain is valuable enough to weigh against your reputation, your conscience, and your future employment prospects.

A reputation is a terrible thing to waste. 

When my kids were small, they each went through a common stage- the pocketing a package of gum at the grocery store stage. When I caught them, in two separate incidents, I did what my own Mom did when I was about that age and pulled the same stunt- I marched them right back into the store, made them pay for the gum, apologize, and throw it away. Mean mommy? Maybe. But I pray I have instilled in them some sense of right and wrong, and that I will never get a call from my child seeking bail because they were foolish enough to believe they could steal from their place of employment (or anywhere else for that matter!!) and get away with it.

It shouldn't even have to be said: Stealing is never ok. :(

I don't know what else to say, guys. I'm sad. I'm confused. On some level, I even understand- I know what it's like to scrape for every dime on paychecks that never go far enough... but still, I'm having trouble realigning my view of this person to include the idea that he's been blatantly taking advantage of the trust of the entire team. Oddly enough, even though I'm only affected indirectly, I'm hurt. I trusted this guy. Thought he was one of the "good" ones. I'm disappointed and sad.

Goodnight, Friends.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Hopefully it'll be a better one.

All we can do now is clean up the mess and move on.

Sticky Fingers Rant

Dear Jerkwad-

Yes, we're on first-name terms now. I hope you don't mind. I figure that cleaning up after your little "prank" this afternoon has earned me the right to call you by your given name.

Did you think it was clever, opening five separate beverages, drinking about half of each, and leaving them behind the shampoo on the shelf for me to discover when I recovered my store tonight? Normally, recovery consists of making the shelves neat and pretty again after a long day of being shopped. Shoppers are notorious for making a mess of the shelves as they peruse the product lineup. This is normal and expected.

Open bottles of pop on the shelf, stashed behind the shampoo? Not so much.

Coke creates a sticky mess on a retail shelf.

So, dear Jerkwad, I hope you'll understand if I am less than amused by your shenanigans, and if I happen to catch you leaving your ill-gotten (stolen!) beverages behind, I will surely rain down the terrors that only a provoked Mama Bear, who has spent far too many hours scrubbing, cleaning, and straightening over the years of raising her own offspring, and more recently earning minimum wage and cleaning up after thoughtless customers (which is surprisingly similar to cleaning up after children,) can unleash.

You don't want to make me angry.
You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. :-p

There may be bloodshed. Or, at very least, a call to the local constabulary. At any case, be warned. Your days of pop pilfering and vandalism are limited. Next time you come shop(lift)ing at my store, I'll be waiting.

Sincerely,
The Fed Up Cashier at Your Local Shop

To Catch a Thief...

Some of you may know that I've recently taken a part time job outside the home.
It's the first time in over 15 years that I've worked away from home, and the first time in over 20 that I've worked retail. It's been quite an experience.

This looks more familiar to me than the computerized register I use now.
It's been awhile since I've worked as a cashier!

First, I'm not giving up writing. I'm still a full time freelance writer and editor. I still feel that my teens need me more than the corporate world, and prefer my home-based work for full-time employment. This job provides supplemental income, but I'm not seeking a potential career, even though there are numerous opportunities to move up within the organization. Retail can be an excellent career path for those who are willing to work hard and who enjoy both the challenges of business and customer service. To be perfectly honest, I enjoy both. Yes, customer service has its moments, and we all like to groan now and then and share horror stories from the trenches about unreasonable customers or the ridiculous situations we find ourselves in, but overall, our regulars will be some of the nicest people we know.

Unless they're not.

There's an ongoing situation at my store right now that is surprisingly exasperating, and, I suspect, is representative of the root of most retail resentment. Our store is  being plagued by a thief. Not just any thief. We have the usual spate of children, teenagers, and even adults who think nothing of opening a package, pocketing the contents, and leaving the tell-tale trash tucked behind some product on a shelf. What they don't seem to know is; we'll find that trash within hours or even minutes of their theft. Every time.

Is it worth it? Seriously? Dude that DVD costs $2. Grow up. 

This particular thief has proven to be more nervy than most. He or she isn't just pocketing the items. They are consuming them in the store. While it's not technically "stealing" if you open and take a sip of your Coke before you get to the register, it's generally considered improper shopping etiquette. A lot of internal eye-rolling goes on in retail, but we stifle it. As long as the customer pays for their items, even if they're doing some illicit sampling first, the customer is always right.

Seriously. Nobody cares about a couple sampled grapes, or an open soda- as long as you're
not actually opening packages, taking a bite, and returning it to the shelf. 

The Ensure Bandit, however, does not bother with trivialities like actually paying for the items they steal- that's why it's stealing and not just bad manners. This person has apparently decided they are above petty considerations like the law, courtesy, or just plain common sense. They've been coming into our store every single day, and stealing a single bottle of expensive supplements- the kind that were designed for cancer patients and the elderly who have trouble getting enough nutrition from normal meals. They simply take one bottle from a 4 or 6 pack, leaving the opened package behind. They then drink their stolen loot while walking around the store browsing or shopping, and simply stash the bottle behind things on the shelves. I've worked there for 2 weeks and I personally have found four of these bottles. My manager tells me they've found one every single day. Since each package costs between $6-10, that's a hefty hit for a smaller store like ours to take.

Added up over time, thieves cost our store thousands. Not just in stolen
merchandise, but in extra personnel for security, as well as those expensive, annoying
little security tags that set off the alarm when you're walking out. 

Here's one of the things you might not know about retail- we're constantly checking shelves. It's called "recovery" and it's a big part of my job. I go around every day and straighten the product on the shelf, bringing things forward when someone's taken the first one on the shelf, moving things back to their proper space when someone's changed their mind and tossed it carelessly down.
(A hint for shoppers- if you've carried something half way through the store, and change your mind, bring it to the register when you check out. Never leave it out of place- it creates more work for the employees. We don't mind putting rejected items away, we all shop, too, and have changed our minds. We roll our eyes a LOT, though, when we find things out of place due to laziness. It's frankly a pain in the butt.)

Those annoyances are minor, however, compared with the anger that bubbles up when we find those empty packages. We tag everything with security tags for a reason. We are not amused when the tags are circumvented by "clever" thieves who think they're hiding their crimes by stashing the evidence behind product on the shelves. And we do find it. The theft never goes more than a day without being discovered.

We do inventory frequently. It's the only way, in a mid-sized store like ours, to ensure that we have enough of popular products on the shelf, and we don't over-order things that haven't sold. Even with today's electronic inventory systems, these counts are necessary for accuracy. We WILL find the empty package, and we will wish the fleas of a thousand camels to infest the thief's crotch and their arms be too short too scratch.

So beware, thieves. We know about you, and we are plotting your downfall.
Especially you, Ensure Bandit.
You're going down.

Pretty sure they don't serve Ensure in jail.