During my lovely two-year tenure at a certain mall clothing/music retail store, I and my coworkers had a very interesting experience.
The story begins just before 10 PM, so we were right about to close and the last customers were going on their merry way. A group of three 20-somethings walked in and were advised by myself that they had but a few moments before closing, to which they replied something to the effect of "just looking".
Everyone was busy with closing duties so nobody noticed when a particularly meatheaded-looking member of this group slipped a ring into his pocket. Little did he know that the company had just started embedding sensors into the packaging of jewelry, so it goes without saying that when he tried to walk out and the alarm went nuts, a series of conflicting emotions twisted his already displeasing face, including shock, anger, and confusion.
Coworker A who happened to be right next to the door asked him to empty his pockets, whereupon a $4.00 plain silver ring was produced. The average story of "I was gonna buy it…" "I dunno how it got in there…" "I must have accidentally put it in my pocket…" ensued, and my manager asked him to stay right there while she calls mall security.
Up until this point, the guy was just your average pilferer, but right when the word "security" was mentioned he reacted as if that word triggered a series of repressed childhood memories of extensive sexual abuse where his drunken stepfather would put on a security costume and rape him and he FLIPPED OUT. He looked from side to side, trying to find an escape route, and upon not finding one, as it was being blocked by my manager, he started screaming expletives directly at her and making like he was going to cause her some sort of bodily harm. Coworker A and I ran up to the front of the store and positioned ourselves around him so he couldn’t run and we all tried to distract him long enough for mall security to arrive while simultaneously giving each other non-verbal cues to the effect of "if he lays one fucking finger on manager A you come from the left, I come from the right and we take him down".
Right on cue mall security showed, a yelling match ensued and he was escorted out of the mall and told he was banned.
A couple days later, I was working an afternoon shift with one coworker I was particularly fond of. He’s a complete space-case, makes "blond" comments that will make your head spin, and is generally a great source of entertainment in a stressful work environment. The phone rings and he picks it up, with the average greeting, "Thank you for calling cipoT toH this is __ how can I help you", whereupon he paused for a few seconds to listen to the caller speak, twisted his face in amused confusion and said with a defeated giggle, "huhhuh, alright…." and hung up. I inquired, "what was that?" to which he responded, "huhhuh, I dunno, it was like some dude, and he said some shit like, on (insert date) were like, all gonna die or something, huhhuh."
After mentally beating my head against the wall at said coworker’s cluelessness, we notified the manager, who was the same one who was working the night we caught that guy stealing. It was obvious we were dealing with that same person and it wasn’t a random prank call, so we had no choice but to call the police. The main thing that was worrying us was that the costume jewelry thief was quite obviously military, so he may easily have access to guns or other weapons. Also, we knew that he was prone to fits of rage, and if he was even just a little bit crazy, there may be some weight to his threat. Not to mention, he said a specific date, which was about a week from the day of the phone call. We were all kinda freaked out.
Needless to say, we all filled out statements and were advised to not park in the same spots we usually do or use usual routes walking into work. We received one more phone call a couple days later with the same message, but when we tried to get him talking he hung up. The grand schedule switcheroo was pretty fun; nobody wanted to be anywhere near that store on the day mentioned in the threat. I volunteered to work, which to this day makes me question my sanity, but I digress. On D-day the police set up a secure parameter and everybody was on the lookout for anything suspicious, but he never showed. I was almost hoping he would. In my head it went down just like this: crazy guy comes in the store and points a gun of some sort at my manager, I jump over a fixture and wrestle the gun from his hands, he begs for his life. That would have been sweet.
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