They Tagged Themselves

I am working in the fitting room one night when this lady bustles in with a ridiculous amount of clothing that she wants to try on. Unfortunately, my store has just lifted the item limit for the fitting room, so I begrudgingly have to let her take everything back.

She proceeds to make a huge mess in the fitting room, leaving clothes inside-out all over the floor, tags ripped off of items, size stickers peeled off and slapped onto the wall… the whole nine yards.

After she leaves, I report the ripped-off tags to Assets Protection per fitting room policy, and I resign myself to cleaning up the mess she left me.

Then, I get a call from the manager. He wants me up at the registers to do backup. I have worked the registers before, but it’s exceptionally rare for me to get pulled away from the fitting room to do backup. Still, I don’t protest, and I head up to the register.

Guess who my first customer is? Yep, the mess-making lady from the fitting room!

The manager has directed her straight to me, and I can tell from the wide-eyed look of horror on her face that she realizes she has just been led into a trap.

She slowly begins to plop her items onto the conveyer belt and tries to make nervous small talk. At first, I assume she’s just feeling awkward about the mess that she left… but when I get a better look at her items, I immediately realize there’s something much fishier going on.

Her purchase consists entirely of women’s clothing, and I recognize most of the items as brand-new stuff that has recently come in — stuff that should cost full price — so when I see nearly every single item’s price tag covered with a bright red 70%-off clearance sticker, I realize that something’s up.

When I look down at the first item from her pile, my suspicions are confirmed: the item I’m holding in my hands is a woman’s Mossimo Black clothing item, but it has a bright blue Circo tag that belongs on infant boy clothes.

Busted! She’s switching tags on clothes to get a lower price! Not only that, but she’s so brazen (or stupid) that she’s used tags from the wrong department!

I don’t make it immediately obvious that I’ve figured out her scheme. Instead, I think fast. From my experience in the fitting room, I know that every item of clothing has a little white tag on the inside that has a nine-digit item code. So, instead of scanning the items, I proceed to type in each and every item manually, using the actual numbers inside each garment.

The woman watches this all unfold with a nauseated look on her face, as item after item rings up at full price. They’re running between $19 and $29, compared to the $2 or $4 price tags she has stuck on each item. As her total grows, so does the look of combined hatred and fear on her face.

Finally, she stammers something about “coming back later” and runs off toward the exit.

The Assets Protection guy watches her walk out and then comes over to me. He reveals that he was watching this chick before she even went into the fitting room, but he didn’t have enough on camera to approach her. Since I was the only team member working that night who was familiar with the clothing and tags, the manager put me on the register to check her out… literally!

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