CONTENT WARNING: Blood, Serious Injury (Mentioned in passing)
 

When I was nineteen, I worked as an attendant in a laundromat in a very poor neighborhood. I dispensed change, cleaned up, did drop laundry, and pressed military uniforms. Although the owner had a chain of stores, he did not treat them all equally. Because the store I worked in was in a poor neighborhood, even though it was very busy (and therefore profitable), the owner neglected this particular store. There was no air conditioning, and in the summer, the indoor temperature reached 120 F (48.9 C), a third of the machines were broken, and the place was generally a dump.

However, because it was a military town with many soldiers and wives of soldiers willing to work for minimum wage (at best), employees had little choice; the job market there was chronically depressed.

Then, the paycheck I was depending on bounced (four days after my employer bought a new boat).

Two days later, I was given my pay, but the damage was already done. Because I had deposited my first check in good faith and then paid my bills, my checks bounced. Everything from my rent to my gas, water, and electric bills was returned with fees. My employer’s bad check cost me over 400 dollars — 400 dollars I could not afford.

I had been making an attempt to be fiscally responsible and had not accepted any of the crazy high-interest credit cards being offered to young people in the 1980s, but under the circumstances, I took a card from the pile of junk mail and got a cash advance to cover the fees my employer had saddled me with. As a young person with a very low income, it took me a long time to pay that card off.

Of course, I couldn’t quit right away; I had too many bills and Lawton, Oklahoma has a terrible job market. In the end, I moved to New Mexico to get away from the minimum wage economy.

On my last night on the job, someone was stabbed at my laundromat. I vividly remember my employer chiding me not to leave until I cleaned the blood off the sidewalk.

I heard from friends over the years that he continued to bounce payroll checks.

Today, my former employer sits on the City Council.

I’m an electrician. I was working in a grocery store replacing all 1,956 fluorescent lightbulbs with LED bulbs. I was packing a cart of old bulbs to the back to dispose of them.

Woman: “Hey, you!”

I ignored it until I heard it again. I looked around and saw a woman storming up to me.

Woman: “Yeah, you! Pick that up!”

She pointed at an ice cream container broken on the ground, her voice full of entitlement.

Me: “I don’t work here.”

I thought that would explain everything.

Woman: “Well then, what are you doing here?”

She was clearly irritated that I had dared to contradict her.

Me: *Wondering what her problem is* “I’m changing lightbulbs.”

She grabbed my shoulder, brought her face an inch from mine, and growled:

Woman: “That means you work here, so clean it up.”

I then realized that I was dealing with a crazy person, so I just said, “Okay,” to make her leave me alone.

An actual worker at the store saw the whole thing, waved me off, and cleaned the mess, while I went on with my day.

The whole experience was weird.

I work in the produce department. Once in a while, I will find a small container of cut watermelon without a price tag. Right now, the average price is $1.25. We just assume it was missed in production.

One night, I am cleaning a lower shelf and I hear a ripping sound. I look over, and a customer is putting a large container of mixed fruit in her cart. These average around $8 at the time. I walk over and find the watermelon container without a price tag. I call over the store manager.

Me: “I think I know who’s been ripping off the watermelon price tags. She’s putting them over the price tags for the mixed fruit containers and getting them for $1.25!”

Manager: “Did you see it happen?”

Me: “No, I just heard it.”

Manager: “Hmm, we can’t do anything as she could just claim we mispriced it. Who is she?”

I point her out, and his eyes go wide.

Manager: “You ever see those real estate ads downtown on the park benches?”

Me: “Yeah, but why…”

Then, I realize.

Me: “Oh, wow! It’s her!”

She’s a well-known real estate agent.

The next time she comes into the store, I call the manager. He focuses the produce department cameras on her, and we catch her doing the same sticker switcheroo.

Manager: *Approaching her* “Ma’am, we have you on camera switching the price stickers.”

She denies it and leaves.

The next day when the real estate agent goes to her office, the store manager is in the owner’s office with the tapes.

Manager: “Now, you can either repay the store [estimated cost], or the store can press charges. Want to risk losing that real estate license?”

She paid.

I am sixteen, starting my very first job in retail as a Saturday employee on the deli counter in the food section of a large department store.

One rather slow day, I have just measured and wrapped a rather large quantity of bacon for a small, hunched over, frail-looking little old lady. As she walks toward the checkout to pay, another sales assistant irritates me by remarking:

Coworker: “I wonder what such a lady is going to do with all that bacon?”

The two of us idly watch the customer slowly hobbling away.

Me: “It’s wrong to make assumptions about someone just by looking at them. She might not be a lonely little lady going home to her empty house. She could be anyone! She might cook for a huge, four-generational family in a busy home!”

However, just as I had gotten to the magic words, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the lady picked the packet of bacon out of her basket, put it smartly into her handbag, and made for the door.

My friend and I pursued her; I initially did not really think that we were apprehending a shoplifter, but rather that we might be assisting a frail person with a memory problem.

However, her pace was incredible. Both of us girls were young and fairly fit, and she really didn’t have much of a head start on us. However, for a little old lady, she hurtled out of the store and ran off up the road like Usain Bolt. There was no possibility of our overtaking her.

I never could work out if she really had been an elderly lady who had realised that she could get away with this kind of thing with impunity, as she had been a world champion sprinter in her youth, and liked to keep herself in trim, or if she was a young, incredibly fit shoplifter who went to all the bother of disguising herself, just for the sake of two pounds of bacon. 

My friend certainly learned not to judge a book by its cover, though. Actually, reading this back now, I hope that I did, too.

I worked for the electronic surveillance side of our very large store’s loss prevention after I got out of service. My job sometimes involved the physical side, and I was trained in both.

By far the craziest things I saw were people absolutely destroying something and then returning it. I have seen riding mowers that have absolutely been beaten to h*** returned after eighty days or so. Chainsaws, bikes, you name it.

One of the funnier ones was a guy who would buy a new rifle and scope combination for deer season and then return it after the season was over. As firearms sales are final unless there is a defect, you really have to work hard to bend something on a rifle and make it look like a manufacturer defect. They said he did it every year.

Returning clothing is easy at our store; basically, you can return it for any reason as long as it isn’t torn or stained. But people have wonderful stories that they feel they have to tell about how the size changed or the color is now different.

I saw a guy who was wearing a bulky coat with what at a glance appeared to be hands hanging out of the sleeves. Suddenly, two hands appeared out of the zipper opening and grabbed and hid the merchandise they tried to steal.

People try and hide merchandise under their babies in child carriers; that happens a lot.

I think the wildest, most unbelievable thing I ever saw was when a woman brought three boys between seven and eleven, and as they got inside the store, she told them right next to me (I was in civilian clothing so I didn’t look like security or an employee), “Destroy the place however you want.” And they tried to do exactly that. As she started shopping, they took off in different directions with the intention of causing enough distractions so that she could shoplift a few items.

Now when people say to me, “Thank you for your service,” I ask them, “Military or retail?”