I worked at Kroger for about a month while looking for "real" employment. Working at the grocery store was not the most exciting job I've ever had, but it taught me a lot. For example, how to speak to people you've met and yet avoid recognition. Actually, that's an easy one: get a job at a grocery store. Nobody looks at the help. Nobody.
One girl, at least, saw me. On a Thursday afternoon, I was straightening up the stuffed animals in the seasonal aisle. It was shortly after Valentine's Day, and, in case you ever need to know, giant stuffed unicorns sell a lot faster than giant stuffed gorillas. After convincing the gorillas to sit upright, I walked around the end of the shelf into the make-up aisle. It was a very slow afternoon, like most afternoons, and I had already neatened the make-up—it's called "facing." I had also faced the entire pharmacy and the shampoo/soap aisle, so I was on my way to baby-food. All those tiny jars take forever to move around, so the baby aisle was my favorite for very slow days.
When I came around the aisle, a young girl was checking out the lip gloss. She was about 11-years-old and had just turned her head away from me, toward the back of the store, when I came around the aisle endcap. Suddenly her hand shot out, grabbed a pink tube of lip gloss, and slipped it in her pocket. She had been looking away from me to check for witnesses, but her timing was poor. She turned her head and looked straight into my eyes. It was clear I had seen her, and her sly expression turned to fear. The tube of make-up leapt back on to the shelf, and she scampered away. It took just a moment. My sudden approach, her turn, the taking and putting back, happened so fast that I had only had time to raise my eyebrows.
In my afternoon's-worth of training, I had learned not to confront shoplifters, but I followed the girl. It wasn't conscious—she had gone into the baby-food aisle. Her mother was there with her little brother in the shopping cart. The little girl took hold of the cart and looked at me again. She looked so scared that I left and went to stack bags of M&M's in the candy aisle. Should I tell her mother? Despite the don't-disturb-the-shoplifters policy, I wasn't afraid that the kid would slug me. But her mother might. I didn't want to deal with an affronted mother who knew her daughter would never shoplift. If the girl had kept the make-up, it would still be in her coat pocket, but it was back on the shelf. No one else had seen it. My mom would have wanted to know if the grocery girl had seen me take something, but then my mother actually cared; this mother might or might not.
I did decide to find them and tell the poor mother, but I had waited too long and they were gone. I hoped it had been the girl's first shoplifting attempt and that I had traumatized her so badly she wouldn't try again.
I'm glad she was scared, because I felt awful. Grocery stores are full of empty battery packages and Advil boxes; people take things all the time. But she was so young, and I had seen it. I felt sorry for her. Maybe her mother didn't let her buy lip gloss, so she took it. Maybe she was just a mean, nasty kid who shop-lifted all the time. But someone who should have cared didn't know her well enough.
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