Not In Receipt Of The Regional Manager’s Face

The regional manager of the national chain I worked at had just announced his retirement and was taking something of a final tour of his stores to close out his tenure. Even though I’d worked the night shift the day before, I decided to come in early on my day off to see him speak. I accidentally showed up late and ended up standing in the back, where I could barely see him, but overall his talk — more of a town hall Q and A session, really — was pretty good.

Just as I was heading out, though, I bumped into one of my supervisors who asked me to cover a morning callout. I hadn’t hit my hour cap for the week yet, so I said yes, and ended up covering the opening two hours of the day as a greeter, aka the guy who checks receipts. Since we’d only just opened and there were barely any customers, it was an incredibly boring job, and I was pretty sleep-deprived to boot.

At maybe the hour-and-a-half mark, an older gentleman wandered past me with a large [Store] bag. I could tell from his body language that he was just looking at the displays, so I let him go about five feet or so beyond the security gates. When he started approaching the doors, though, I got antsy. He reached T-minus three feet from the exit bar, and my sleep-deprived brain yelled out, “Excuse me, sir. Can I see your receipt for the bag real quick?”

He turned around, shooting me a look of bewildered amusement, and I heard what sounded like the entire store bursting into laughter. I turned around to find not one, not two, but all twelve department managers, RSMs, and the general manager absolutely losing it behind me. They’d been giving the regional manager a tour of the building — the same regional manager I’d just gone ahead and receipt-tagged.

He was very nice about the whole thing, and he, in fact, had not just blatantly stolen from his own company. And I got a commendation from Asset Protection for representing our store’s security. I’m still embarrassed about the whole thing, and I’ve never worked morning shifts since.