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Not a day goes by without theft. Sometimes I catch up to eight people a day. Food thieves are mostly regular customers. They come over and over again up to three times a day, build trust with the cashier, talk about the holidays – anything so they don’t get checked out. An old woman asked what they needed in the neighborhood, stole it from the shop and then sold it to the neighbors.
I was able to catch a couple recently. They both stole, but they didn’t know about each other. The woman sent the man to fetch vegetables and then put a spray of deodorant in her pocket. He stole a piece of meat from his jacket pocket. I often catch educated and wealthy people stealing it like it’s a disease.
panty butter
A man once stole two pieces of cooking butter and hid it in his underwear. He insisted that he had not stolen anything. He pushed me when he checked. But then he probably felt uncomfortable, quite cold after all. He really wanted to go to the toilet. I said yes, but you empty it first, we caught it like that.
It’s often wrong to write on self check-out checkouts. We have a lot of work to do with the young people there. You feel that you are not being spied on, do not scan everything. Recently, a housewife filled her entire basket but scanned only two items. She said she forgot when I talked to her. I wonder how someone can be so brave.
My job requires a special feeling. I pay attention to how someone enters the store. How is he running? Does he make unusual movements? I pretend to be a customer, carrying baskets, talking on the phone and chewing gum, it relaxes my facial expression. If I catch one, I have to wait until I’m past the control area. Then I stop the person in question.
Extremely embarrassing for many. Some become aggressive, others apologize. I’m trying to be discreet, so I get annoyed. Once we caught a man stealing with his wife. I later learned that he was an IT specialist. In the presence of his wife, I asked him if he could help him – we had problems with our system. He was very grateful to me.
We don’t ask people why they steal. For many, I suspect this has become some kind of compulsion. You get away with it one, two or three times, with no consequences, and then you do it again. When I caught a woman in a managerial position she said to me: “It’s so easy to steal, why should I pay?”
It happens that people steal out of poverty, but very rarely. We realize this when we have business in a shop close to a madhouse.
Everyone has their own style. Professionals wear kidney protectors, put four or five pairs of shoes inside, then wear a shirt that’s one size up. You don’t see anything there. Others have pockets lined with aluminum foil that override alarms. Others dip locks of clothing into Coke bottles and then continue to beep, but much quieter.
What are cameras good for?
Unfortunately gangs of thieves are very active in Switzerland. A recent trend is that they pack expensive clothes in bags and then just run away. If there are three or four exits and we’re not close, we have little chance of catching them. With CCTV we can detect them later, but they are not deterred by the cameras. I’ve never caught a thief on camera in my entire career.
Meanwhile, the biggest thefts are handled internally by staff. When you constantly see what others are getting and earn very little yourself.
Almost a dozen people work at my company today. There is training to become a store detective where you learn what is legally possible. But the most important is the sense of touch. I often go to a store with applicants, ask them questions, but actually watch out for thieves. My daughter seems to have inherited my instincts. Two years ago, when he was nine years old, he pointed to a woman in the shop and said, ‘Dad, the woman is stealing.’ Then we observed him and stood behind the cash register. In fact, his entire bag was full of things he hadn’t paid for.”
Source :Blick
I’m Tim David and I work as an author for 24 Instant News, covering the Market section. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, my mission is to provide accurate, timely and insightful news coverage that helps our readers stay informed about the latest trends in the market. My writing style is focused on making complex economic topics easy to understand for everyone.
