The Shoplifter Who Asked Me to Help Him Carry It Out

I work at a hardware store, and most shoplifters at least have the common decency to be sneaky. They tuck things in a jacket. They cut a tag. They do the thing where they walk very fast and very casually at the same time, which fools absolutely no one but which we all silently respect as effort.

This guy did not respect the game. This guy insulted the game.

It was a Tuesday, dead quiet. A man in a hi-vis vest -- and I want to note the vest, because the vest was the whole con -- comes in and starts loading a flat cart with power tools. Not one. Not two. A drill set, an impact driver, a circular saw, a whole nail gun in the box. Hundreds of dollars of stuff, stacked up like he was building a house that afternoon.

Now, the hi-vis vest does something to your brain. You see a man in a vest moving with purpose and you assume he belongs there. He looked like a contractor. He looked like every contractor who has ever ignored me while buying nine hundred dollars of lumber. So I did not think twice when he pushed the cart toward the doors.

What I did think twice about was when he stopped, looked directly at me, and said, "Hey boss, can you grab the other end of this? It's heavy."

And God help me, I almost did. My hands were already coming up. Fifteen years of customer service had trained me so deep that a man actively robbing the store asked for help and my first instinct was to provide excellent service.

I got one hand on the nail gun box before my brain caught up with my arm. "Do you," I said slowly, "have a receipt for these?"