Creeper Joe and the Retail Woes

I thought I saw it all when I was a server.  I’d been degraded and talked to down by people with little or no education and by my congressman’s wife (and I won’t vote for him again until he can keep his dog on a leash).  I’ve been sweet-talked and complimented by customers racking up a $100 bill to stiff me on the tip (I’m sorry, but kind words are no substitute for cold, hard cash), and just been stiffed by assholes who thought that if I wanted to actually make a living wage that I should’ve chosen a different career path (hey, if you want me to make $8/hour, then your $8 burger is going to cost more like $24).

Now, not to brag, but I’m not exactly stupid.  I did graduate high school.  I even graduated college.  I just happened to get two degrees that are worth about as much as Enron stock.  Sadly, I was making more money serving than I was using my degree.  So now, I am getting my certificate of accounting and have had good enough grades that I was invited to join several honor societies (take that congressman’s wife who told me she went to college after high school).

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about my smarts or my asshole restaurant customers.  I’m talking about Creeper Joe.

Now, we’ve seen some people come through the doors of our little store.  We have Whisper, an online shopping compulsive who will buy $2000 worth of clothes and return IT ALL with the clothes still wrapped in the plastic they were shipped in by way of explanation that nothing fit (um, if it’s still in the plastic, how do you know it doesn’t fit?).

We have those crazies with reverse body dysmorphia who seen themselves two or three sizes smaller than they are.  I’m not one to call someone out for his or her size.  We all have our hang-ups.  But I’m not buying a size 00 and then bringing it back saying the manufacturing is shoddy because the clothes are all stretched to kingdom come and back.  No joke, I’ve even seen a size 0 co-worker be insulted by one of those crazies.  The customer asked my co-worker what size her shirt was and my co-worker responded by size extra-small.  The customer then said, “Oh, it must be running big then.”  To which my co-worker responded by saying “Well, this is the size in tops that I always wear.”

We have Crazy Town, a customer who comes into the store three and four times looking at the same thing, butting into other customer’s conversations to ask their opinion before leaving and not buying anything (which is great for conversion, BTW).

We have loads more nut-jobs that come into our store, but all of those pale in comparison to Creeper Joe.

It was a Saturday.  It was about 10:45.  Kamerin, the other girl that I was working at the time went to the restroom.  With no one in the store, I was just kind of bee-bopping around.  I glanced at the jewelry to make sure no grimy mitts had messed it up to badly, people watched, and finally went to the registers to check our e-mail. 

I was reading e-mail me when I voiced cut in above me.

“Do you have any scissors?”  Now, other than the fact that he was completely in stealth mode coming into my store (most customers you can hear from the other end of the mall), one look at him told me: Do not give this Crazy a weapon of any kind.

“No,” I lied.  And once it was said, I knew that he knew that I was lying.  But seriously, what was he going to say?  “Hey, I know you have scissors?”  He still wouldn’t get a “weapon” from me.

He hedges around and finally admits defeat and then begins to walk for the door.  And then the jewelry caught his eye.  “You’ve got some nice jewelry,” he says.

“Yes we do,” I respond because seriously, this is a women’s clothing store with women’s jewelry.  Now, while I’m cool with cross-dressers (money is money), this creep didn’t look like he had two quarters to buy a gumball.

“Can I try this on?” he asks. 

Before I can respond with “Are you fucking crazy?” Kamerin appears and tells him he can.  He then asks for a mirror and Kamerin points out the little mirror on our jewelry table. 

“I want to go back there,” he says spying our dressing room and big mirrors.

So he treks back there and Kamerin follows.  He tries on the necklace.  Mind you, he has on a hoody with the hood up and he has a hat on top of his hoody.  He also has a backpack.  The try-on doesn’t go so well, so he puts his backpack down, takes off his hat and his hoody and thankfully he has on a t-shirt.  Kamerin puts the necklace on him.

“I just wish it was longer,” he said.

Kamerin goes and get another similar necklace that is longer in length and puts it on him!  This girl is a trooper.

“It’s just not as nice as the other one,” he says.

Kamerin responds by saying, “ But it matches your shirt.”

To which he then responds by pulling up his t-shirt and showing off his boxer shorts and asking if it matches his boxer shorts.

Kamerin got a gold star by saying “It matched your shirt better.”

He then comes up by the jewelry table and to look at more jewelry, and we then learn the true intentions of his mission.

“I really just came in here for some scissors,” he says.  “Nobody will give me any scissors.”  Apparently, we haven’t been his first stop.  “I need to cut my hair,” he says and then proceeds to short us how his greasy hair needs to be trimmed around his ears and his bangs.

I’m about to tell him there’s a salon in the store when Kamerin says, “You can probably get some really cheap at Wal-Mart.  For less than three dollars.”

“If nobody will let me borrow some, I’ll just steal him,” he says.

Now, as a retail worker, this is exactly what I want to hear someone talk about: stealing shit!  If you’re going to steal scissors, what won’t you steal!

Anyway, Creeper Joe gets done looking at the jewelry and heads back to the dressing rooms to put his hoody, hat, and backpack back on.  I watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t pocket any tights, belts, or anything really. 

A security guard goes by and Kamerin asks me if she should go and I get them.  I tell her no because at this point I just want Creeper Joe to leave.  If there’s going to be an altercation, I want it to take place out of my store.

And finally he leaves.  I call security and tell them about Creeper Joe, giving them an exact description about him.  They ask me what I want them to do about it. 

“Well,” I say, “He’s told me he’s going to steal scissors if he can’t find some to borrow and he said no one will give him scissors, so apparently we weren’t his first stop.”

I hang up the phone, shake my head in bewilderment and we talk about Creeper Joe.  I wanted him gone.  Kamerin thought he may have a weapon and didn’t want to upset. 

Anyway, I find out a couple of days later that Creeper Joe had been across the way at Victoria’s Secret and asked my sister-in-law (a manager there) for scissors.  When she wouldn’t give him any, he started looking at the swimsuits.  He tried to pull a girl out of line to get her opinion on the swimsuit and how it would look at him.  My sister-in-law told him he needed to leave.

Another co-worker hears from a friend that Creeper Joe made it all the way to the middle of the mall and approached a jewelry store and asked for scissors.  My co-worker’s friend gave Creeper Joe scissors.  Creeper Joe then turned around to walk to a bathroom presumable to cut his hair.  Her friend asked him wear he was going, and when he found he was going to cut his hair, the guy asked for his scissors back.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that while there are all kinds of creepers in the mall, Mall Security isn’t going to do shit about it unless you sit down in one of the massage chairs to simply sit (not get a massage).  At that point, they’ll pull your ass out of the chair and tell you to move along. 

Trying to steal scissors is okay with them.