Mall Crime

January 11, 2019

In high school I was given the use of my mom’s 1977 Chevrolet Nova when she got a new station wagon. This Nova had a weak straight six engine but was almost indestructible otherwise, as proven when I crashed into two other (much nicer) cars in my high school parking lot. Nobody was hurt but both other cars were undriveable. The Nova hobbled out of the lot even though the right front tire was knocked 90 degrees off kilter. The repair costs for all this required a part-time job.

An old friend got me a hookup at a regional department store called Rich’s. I worked there through high school and into college, eventually full-time, mostly as a “floating contingent.” I went to whatever department needed somebody to help customers and ring up sales. Clothing, kids, shoes, hosiery (i.e. ladies’ underthings), fragrance, rugs, furniture, kitchenware, stationery. Deliveries and inventory. TVs and stereos and phones and appliances, where I could hang out and cut up with my friend. Since I was still in school, I worked nights and weekends or weekend nights. Often I’d be the only person in a department where I knew nothing about the goods, and there was often nobody else around who did. I was as close to useless as one could get while still being able to technically sell stuff.

Even a useless salesperson is a mild deterrent to thieves, merely as a physical human presence with eyeballs and memory. As a mall department store we had three plainclothes security staff, but no more than two were on shift at a time. Usually just one at night. All they did was hunt for shoplifters. Sometimes they asked salespeople to help ID somebody passing a stolen credit card. I was terrible at this, never able to pick anyone out of a photo-book lineup except a kid at my school who’d ripped off a Visa and bought a Walkman from me. I remember he was the son of a circuit court judge. A rebellious youth.

The vast majority of shoplifters were casual, desperate, incompetent, or all of these. If these people got busted they were cut loose with a warning, and they were so flustered they didn’t talk back or return. We did occasionally get a pro—the class of shoplifter on a mission to acquire specific goods because they had a buyer already lined up, or knew where and how to fence properly. These folks were hard to catch and they had no fear of mall cops or salespeople.

Since I was often working when there was only one guard, and I was one of few men in the local department store salesperson ecology, sometimes I’d be asked to hang in the background when the security guard confronted a shoplifter. I would linger in the aisle, looking what I imagined to be tough but also fair.

I was only in nominal danger once, when a pro shoplifter whipped out a knife. She was in the back of a cluster of denim racks, and the security guy called her out regarding her beach bag full of purloined jeans. This woman was a repeat offender and something of a legend. I had seen security video of her taken outside a dressing room, where she quickly and adroitly used her teeth to gnaw out steel-pinned security tags in an armful of sport coats. Now she waved her knife and hollered at the guard, then hollered at me. The guard yelled back but retreated, keeping a clothing rack between himself and her. I did a fade to the next department and peeked around a mirrored column as she made a dignified withdrawal out into the mall, bag of jeans in one hand and knife casually twirling in the other. In such cases the real cops were called but, barring bloodshed or hostages, their arrival would not be particularly timely.

Somehow, more unwelcome than potential violence in these shoplifter confrontations was sudden, unexpected public kink. At least twice I was present when gentlemen who appeared to be absorbed in examining a particular garment were in fact masturbating into the merchandise, sometimes furiously. When confronted, such men cringed away, weirdly apologizing as they were chased out by security, who themselves maintained a hygienic physical distance while herding the perp to the exit. In one such case I witnessed, the violated garments were rightly disposed of, but in another, they were kicked aside for some ignorant unfortunate on the morning shift to restock.

Very rarely our store would be hit by a an organized criminal crew. I was dozing alone at my post near the end of a night shift in someplace called “moderate sportswear,” a large and ill-defined ladies’ clothing department. Lots of leggings, tops, sweaters, vests, blouses, and so on. The department bordered the row of glass doors that led out to the mall parking lot, dark then and almost empty of cars.

My reverie was interrupted by squealing tires. I looked over to see a red pickup truck had mounted the curb and pulled up right outside. Four guys wearing ski masks popped up out of the truck bed and hurled cinderblocks through the glass, shattering the doors and adjoining windows. They jumped out and ran into the store, splitting into two pairs. Each pair of guys together hefted a four-arm rack of clothing, which they muscled up into the truck bed. Then all four tumbled back in atop the clothes, and the pickup peeled out of there. The whole thing took about thirty seconds.

Alarms were going off and other staff and customers wandered over at the noise, but only me and the cameras saw any part of the heist. Once again I was no help at all to the security guards or the police regarding additional details. I had been so dumbfounded by the audacity of the hit, they probably could have come back in for another couple of four-arm racks and I still would have stood there gaping. They were never caught, far as I know. In my imagination those guys are like criminals from a Coen brothers movie except where everything goes pretty much okay.