Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Poop Happens

Warning: There is a gross element to this story. I hesitated to write this, but find it oddly fascinating  the lengths some people will go to in order to achieve their misbegotten goals.

Holiday shoppers had already packed the Hobby Lobby, even though it was barely 8 AM on a Saturday morning.  My usual plan was in force- get in and get out with everything I needed as quickly as I could.

As I rounded the corner near the floral arrangements, I noticed a woman dressed smartly in white capris and an expensive top. Her jacket was also quite chic. I squeezed past her and the others in the aisle to make my way to the check out area.

Long lines already clogged each register, so I settled in to wait and watch the folks around me.

As I idled in line,  loud voices resonated from the back of the store. They seemed to be getting closer. Probably people getting irritated with each other in the shopping crush, I thought.

My line had just begun to inch forward when the cacophony spilled out of an aisle near me and escalated. To my surprise, it was the woman in the white capris arguing loudly with a tall man who had a store manager tag on his shirt. "Ma'am, you must come with me, now!" he said firmly.

"I will NOT go anywhere with you!" she screeched, pulling her arm away from him. She clutched her other arm across the front of her now zipped jacket.

"Ma'am, we saw what you took. You are not leaving this store. You must come with me to security now!" He put a firm hand on her elbow.

"Get your hands off me! I'll have you know my husband is an attorney and we will sue you!" As she yelled in his face, a glue gun dropped out of the bottom of her jacket.

He clasped her arm tighter and began pulling her with him. Another manager came to help. More craft items spilled from her jacket as she dug in her heels and refused to follow.

"Let go of me!" she demanded. "My husband is a very important person- I'll have you arrested!"

"Ma'am, please don't make this any more difficult on yourself. We have you on tape," he said evenly.

Several unpainted wooden reindeer toppled out of her jacket onto the floor.

His grasp on her arm momentarily slipped as a couple of fluffy snowmen fell out, too, and joined the reindeer on the floor.

She took this opportunity to make a dash for the front door. The taller manager was quick and grabbed her around the waist as she struggled. "I'm calling the police," she howled.

"We've already called them ma'am, and they're on their way," he said calmly as she worked to free herself from his grasp. Several crystal ornaments dropped from the bottom of her jacket and broke on the floor.

She was petite, but her physical strength in this wrestling match amazed all of us in the now quiet store. She made one last desperate heave to pull herself free, lost her balance, and took both of them to the floor. The manager still kept his hold on her as she flailed and kicked. The other manager stood like a deer in the headlights at the sight.

She pulled one last, toxic weapon out of her arsenal. Red faced and cursing, she stopped struggling for a moment. Onlookers stared in horror as a large brown stain appeared on the seat of her capris and leaked onto the floor. She wailed, "Look what you made me do!" She thrashed again, coating the front of the manager's shirt with it.

Despite the virulent attack, he maintained his clench with her until the police arrived. After they took her out in handcuffs, the manager straightened his glasses, took a deep breath, and looked down at his soiled shirt and the mess on the floor.

I don't know who started it, but first one customer, then a few more, and then most of us loudly applauded as he walked to the intercom and said, "Clean up to the front of the store."

36 comments:

  1. Holy sh-t, Shelly! (LOL) She was caught red handed and brown bottomed! (LOL) In this day and age when Big Brother is watching you everywhere you go how did this woman think she could get away with cramming all that stuff under her jacket? If her husband's a lawyer I hope for her sake it's the defense attorney who got Casey Anthony off the hook because it's gonna take a Christmas miracle for her to escape punishment!

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  2. HA! And people think my bus stories are weird!!

    :-)

    Shell, ain't people just fascinating?!

    Pearl

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  3. Shady: Ha! I would NEVER have pegged her as a shoplifter, OR as one who reacted the way she did. Good grief- she could become even more notorious than Casey Anthony down here- I think her legend will go on long after she is gone!

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  4. Pearl: No need to pay for entertainment- just watch other people!

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  5. OMG that was quite some scene especially the ending. Luckily I have never been in a store when anything like this occurred. It is really easy to look at a person and not know what they are capable of. Great story

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  6. Odie: It just goes to show you really can't judge a book by its cover- I hope to never have to see something like again!

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  7. Now, aren't you glad you didn't buy that top? I doubt you'd want to wear it again after this!!

    Obviously this woman is sick...in more ways than one. Really shows you can't judge a book by the cover. Wow. What a scene.

    I used to work at Sam's Club...like over 20 years ago, and it's amazing the stories you hear of people trying to steal things and how they do it...I did catch one person, by asking if they planned to pay for the designer jeans they were wearing, still having the tags hanging from them...pretty funny!!

    hope he didn't poop them.

    Oops, just noticed you already said the judge book cover thing....also noticed you edited your post about the cute top!! :)

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  8. LOL Speechless, but that woman is in need of counseling...

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  9. Jamie Jo: I would NEVER have wanted to wear it again, that's for sure! I can only imagine the stealing that happens on a daily basis- were you scared to confront the person you caught?

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  10. Sush: She is a major head case, that's for sure- yuck!

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  11. You never know what you will see when you leave the house! The first thing I thought about was the police car and her sitting on the seat! Funny story.

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  12. Belle: Gosh, I hadn't even thought about what she havoc she wreaked after the store- poor cops!

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  13. Remind me to make sure I don't have diarrhea the next time I go shoplifting...

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  14. Clint: That made me almost spew out my water laughing!

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  15. Oh dear Shelly, what an ending to the story! Eeek! As the others have said, you can never judge a book by its cover. Good post, and I'm glad you decided to go with it. It must have been really entertaining for all the other shoppers, but wouldn't you have just died with embarrassment for her?!

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  16. Thisisme: I still can't believe a grown woman who has at least some refinement could do what she did. It was one of those things so horrible you can't look away from it- yuck!

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  17. I am absolutely amazed at all she had tucked in her jacket! That had to be one big jacket! Makes me glad I don't work retail, LOL! I think I'd be asking for hazard duty!

    thanks for sharing the story Shelly!

    betty

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  18. Betty: The glue gun was the biggest thing I saw- the others were small, like ornament sized. You couldn't pay me enough to go through what that manager went through-

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  19. I am stunned.
    Sure wish we were privy to "the rest of the story"
    Humiliating.

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  20. Sweet Tea: This was in a neighboring city. If I knew anyone on the police force there, I'd be doing all I could to find out what happened with her.

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  21. Just coming back now...I was not afraid, because he was a teenager and he was so non-chalant (sp?) about it, he took them off and actually did pay for them. He was like "Oh, yeah, I forgot." But he was caught for (not by me) buying one pair of jeans, having the receipt and coming back in with the receipt and grabbing another pair. Can't remember the jeans, Guess or Girbault (sp?) Sam's sold them really reasonably and they would come in and be gone that day.

    Thanks for sharing the story--everyone always loves a good poop story!

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  22. I've worked retail and you see it all. I worked in a very high end mall and the owner's wife would come in the shops and "take" whatever she wanted and we were to let her. Her husband would come by later and settle up. She was mentally ill and it wouldn't have done any good to try to stop her. Makes me wonder if this woman in your story was ill as well - or she could have been just a horrible person. What an awful experience for the manager through! Yuck...

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  23. Shelly
    Your story does not surprise me.
    What is it about Hobby Lobby stores?
    On several different occasions when I have been in there, I have witnessed the Manager having to stop someone heading to the door without paying. And one time I was shopping in the back part of the store when a really bad fight broke out between one of the Managers and an intoxicated shopper or an employee (don't know which it was). I ran up to the front and told them to call the police. You could hear yelling all over the store. The police, as well as an ambulance were already on the way.
    Very upsetting!

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  24. Jamie Jo: I think you were brave to confront him. The chuztpah os some people, just so brazenly stealing, will never cease to amaze me!

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  25. Karen: I think she must have been both. Gosh- that is something about the owner's wife. Even though it doesn't sound like her illness was cured, at least they had a plan in place to help to deal with it.

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  26. gloW: That's what I can't get- they have the creativity and drive to create things, apparently, since this is Hobby Lobby, but they can't actually pay for it? It's not like it's a high end jewelry store. I am going to have my eyes peeled the next time I go in there!

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  27. And the moral of the story is don't trust anyone who wears white after Labor Day.

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  28. Missed Periods: With that incident now deeply burned in my brain, I don't think I ever want to wear white again, at any time of the year.

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  29. Makes you wonder if she's tried that means of "escape" before and it worked successfully. What a horrible thing to witness. I bet you have been feeling sort of ill after that. It brings to mind another issue that we sometimes overlook during the holidays and that is the Christmas thieves. Once I was pick pocketed in Walmart and lost all my identification and bank cards. Oddly, the security people there said that they didn't catch anything on tape. When my father was a boy someone cut down and stole the one evergreen tree that they were able to decorate in their yard. For a family who perpetually had nothing, this was extremely depressing. Grinches are worse than Bah humbuging Scrooges!

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  30. Oh, MAN! Sounds like she had all SORTS of strategies going. Dressing nicely so as to appear above reproach, trying to threaten with her 'important husband'--but yeah, that last excape attempt was pretty desperate!

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  31. kneesandpaws: It really does seem like something she's familiar with. It was so bizarre and gross- I hope to never see anything like it again. That is AWFUL about how you were pickpocketed, and and TRAGIC what happened to your dad. People with thieving in their hearts have invited it in by pushing all compassion out. It's too bad that Christmas can also bring out the worst in people.

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  32. Hart: She really was sly one. I guess her dignity wasn't as valuable to her as those little craft items.

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  33. You have the best stories in the world!! Man! I wish I could witness a pooping thief in white pants with reindeer falling from her coat. Nothing nearly so exciting ever happens in my presence. What a gem of an experience!!! HILARIOUS!

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  34. This is NOTHING like I have ever read before. Wow!

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  35. Crystal: It was so gross when it happened I didn't want to even think about it anymore, but then I decided if she was going to be brazen enough to shoplift AND to do what she did, she deserved being written about. Gosh- she was something else!

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  36. Zeba: I truly hope I am not in the area if something like this does happen again!

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