Welch: Bad day for brash ambitious shoplifter
The shoplifter was nervy. That’s for sure.
He didn’t catch my eye at first. I was poised to spend a couple of dollars for a little packet of Harbor Freight zip ties when he streaked by outside the storefront windows juggling two big boxes of something.
“Did he pay for that?” my checker asked the other checker.
“No!” said the other checker.
When I say “streaked,” I’m not using the term in the classic naked sense. He was clothed in unremarkable youthful attire -- boots and somewhat baggy jeans and a nondescript shirt. But he was conspicuously jogging.
Maybe he was inspired by footage of successful shoplifters on television – scenarios captured by in-store cameras. The mass shoplifting episodes are remarkable. The thieves are brazen.
Maybe my response was also inspired by seeing those videos, but I think I would have pursued him anyway.
Yep, I dropped my unpaid-for zip ties and went to my car to follow the burdened miscreant. I’m guessing HF doesn’t encourage checkers to pursue shoplifters who’ve already been caught on camera anyway. Not that I had time to think it all through. I just didn’t like the idea of him getting away with thievery when I was going to have to pay for my zip ties.
We humans naturally want life to be fair. In my mind, that means both he and I should have to pay for stuff. In his mind, who knows what he was thinking?
Google the topic. People apparently shoplift for all sorts of reasons and not just because they’ve fallen on hard times or need money for drugs. The thrill of stealing can help them counteract feelings of low self-esteem. Some just cave in to peer pressure.
Even as I pursued the guy, part of me felt a little sorry for him. No matter what his reason for shoplifting, he was as a victim of misguided thinking. Not only was he doing the wrong thing by stealing, he should have stolen something less heavy. Like maybe lipstick.
Did he think it unfair that his task was so difficult? He wasn’t able to keep up the jogging. Or maybe he was just trying to look less conspicuous. Maybe he suspected he was being followed by me, a woman old enough to be his great-grandmother. Absolutely unfair.
He put both big boxes in a grassy ditch near a culvert and kept going, no doubt hoping to come back for “his” stuff.
Should I have stationed myself there and called the police as I watched him distance himself from the scene? Probably, but daylight was fading. I needed those zip ties to fasten insulation to the pipes at the well before nightfall.
Harbor Freight thanked me for returning both boxes.
Turns out the shoplifter had stolen two sizeable power inverters. The total value price-wise was about $800!
He almost got away it.
That boy needs an inverter all right – a special one to turn his thinking back right-side-up. I just don’t think they make ‘em.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Welch: Bad day for brash ambitious shoplifter
