Okay. With that out of the way, we can talk about the topic for today, and today we have another thief. It is not quite the same as the culprits in last week's entry, because that situation was a bit more ambiguous, and was handled as such. No, this time we got the thief dead to rights, right on camera, stealing our stuff... only it was a little too late.
It all started when one of our regulars, Abed, had his new boss Robert (Game Stop in the Harlem Irving Plaza Mall) come over to our store as a new customer. Robert was kind of annoying in that he was a bit off, but most of the people involved in this industry (including yours truly) has some sort of foible that has brought them into nerd culture. I have a document that I am working on called Grand Nerd Unification Theory, and that is one of the main theses. Most people can and will be annoying a lot of the time, and that is just part of being human.
My point is that Robert was weird, but he bought stuff, and paying customers are always my favorite people. It is usually the people that are so annoying and attention-demanding, but never spend any money, that get my real ire. Even then, it is not worth it to point out that person X or person Y is extremely unlikable. Most annoying people have to know that they are driving people crazy just by their needy existence.
Anyways, Robert was just another cool customer that bought stuff, until one fateful night when he transgressed into the criminal category. It was late at night on a Tuesday, which meant that I was closing the store, Ed was off doing Ed stuff, and mostly we just have a small Magic draft crowd in. I wasn't needed for the draft, so I was up at the front, doing computer things.
In came Robert at around 10 pm, and he was asking me about Warhammer Conquest, which is a Fantasy Flight card game based on 40K. Robert wanted to know when the game was available, and I couldn't actually find a release date for the life of me. I had to do some intense searching, and in the mean time Robert said he would just shop around.
The night went on as normal - one of our minority shareholders, Cozzi (he's Puerto Rican) came in, I talked to some of the guys about Magic, etc. It was basically a normal night, though I would find out a few weeks later that indeed, it was an un-normal night.
One day, Ed asked me if I sold some Warhammer paint sets. I said I didn't remember doing so. We kind of both just shrugged and hope one of our volunteers sold it without remembering, but Ed suspected that some things had walked off. We could check the security footage, but really it never felt like we had the time to literally check through hours of footage.
But then, we had a very bad storm in Chicago, and our power browned out. It ended up shorting out the computer, so it was kind of out of commission while we had our buddy Blonde Tom take a look at it. We could still check the camera footage, as that was a separate system that shares the computer monitor, so it gave Ed a chance to see what happened to the missing Warhammer stuff. The Warhammer stuff is one of our harder to protect areas of the store - we have a camera directly on it, but it is not visible from the sales counter (yet).
Of course, after some earnest searching, we were able to narrow down when our merchandise disappeared. And also of course, it was that Tuesday night, while Robert was there, which is of course dramatic irony by this point.
While I was looking up Warhammer Conquest for Robert on the computer, the camera shows that Robert was busily stuffing Warhammer products into his bag. It was pretty bad to see, especially since I am just sitting there reading a computer screen like a dumbass while it was happening. To make matters worse, he actually leaves with merchandise, and then came back in for more. I remember him popping his head out to ask if I found the info on Warhammer Conquest yet, and I just assumed he was killing time while I was looking up the information.
To make matters EVEN WORSE, the butthole left again, and then came back for more.... GAH! The camera catches it so perfectly too, like it was one of those planned 'we steal from you to show how to beef up your security' type shows, like we were being trolled. It was pretty embarrassing to see me miss this going on under my nose, and of course Ed was all very self-righteous about the occasion. He would have at least caught Robert, even if he didn't catch on at first. I have no real doubts of that.
In our estimation, Robert walked off with about $500 dollars in Warhammer stuff. In my defense, Warhammer products are over-priced, but yeah... fail. Big fail. Luckily though, we had some damning evidence, and this guy actually stole from us (not poor Panda). We called the police this time, and we were so happy with ourselves. If we are going to get ripped off, at least we somewhat caught the guy after the fact. Go us?
Unfortunately... Robert had moved to California in a few weeks between the theft, and our realization. We still have legal action pending on him, including a sweet felony charge if he doesn't make right. Still, we were hoping to shame him locally, but he already left by the time we caught him.
I gave the detective all the information, and I feel we handled it properly. It was definitely an eye-opening situation for me, because while I am watchful of people that are newer, or the annoying loiter-y people that don't spend money, typically I give people I know a wide berth to shop at their convenience without hovering about. The severity was pretty bad for the ego, but it was so shocking that I will go to paranoid lengths to make sure it doesn't happen again. It was also very eye-opening for the rest of our staff (not Eddie, of course), and it's forced all of us to be on the look out more.
We definitely tightened up our security since this incident. Even after such a dismal failure on my part though, there is still felony action on the table, so this is by no means an invitation to steal from us (obviously), or even to say that it might be easy to steal from us. Definitely don't let Ed catch you stealing from us. Ed doesn't run so good anymore. Which is why he keeps a .22 at his desk. But be more worried about his lavish knife collection. (The part is bold is what Ed wanted me to include.)
There is one more story to go, where I finally talk more about the even that spurred this miniseries on annoyance. I've alluded to it in some of my Facebook posts about telling a pregnant woman to go away. Make sure to check out next week's episode for the full details!
No comments:
Post a Comment