John Stahl says he watches every second of every security tape. It’s probably a lie, but this new job is not the time to take a chance. You know better.
Department 94 to [the front/register 1/liquor department/aisle 27]!
This is the intercom call that sets your heart racing. “Department 94” is the code for security.
Sometimes you call “94” to answer the intercom, just to wake up the undercover guy in the secret shag room loft above the dairy case. He’s probably up there giving a shocker to a Jewel cashier. (Or even weirder, teabagging Lisa the ice queen who works the Jewel CS counter.) Or he’s napping. Or peeping through the raised ceiling tile down the shirts of the college girls shopping for cosmetics.
The rest of the time though, 94 to a location means shit is going down at some location in the store. Everybody swarms it. 94 doesn’t fuck around.
- A vendor needed a pen, and forgot to run it through a register. Response: thrown through window in struggle with security.
- Overnight, some whack job bag lady used the 5 finger discount. Security chased her down outside and brought her back in to be arrested. In her purse? Ice pick.
- Want to shove cartons of cigarettes in your pants and waltz out the door? Security Bob will assemble a posse of clerks, gang tackle your ass, and carry your ass back into the store like some passed-out Teke (redundant as that sounds).
Karma: St. Ides is not for amateurs, Bluto.
- FWIW, don’t be surprised to catch an elbow to the groin on this perp carry. It is the only circumstance where some of these clerks will ever confront you.
- One overnight, there was a guy acting weird in aisle 27. From the break room with the one way mirror overhead, one could see furtive movements.
Note to NYPD. We are happy to describe a furtive movement. It does not start with “if a Black guy does this…”
- He’s stealing chore boys, or alcohol and cotton balls, or maybe all of it plus the cigars that come in glass tubes (the poor man’s crack pipe. Or something. You intercom security and have him meet you there. You get there first, and do your “can i help you find something?” routine. The guy is nervous. Security walks him over to “Room 101,” the windowless office on the Jewel side. Evidently, he’s real nervous, because the guy wets his pants, even before security whips out the rat cages. And for good reason – there’s a gun shoved down his boxers. Loaded.
- If Security Bob (or anyone) ask(s), you “have no idea” how those bolt cutters got included in the automotive order.
- All these stories are real. No, none of them occurred in Detroit.
Dedicated to Mark Landris, Kevin Lester, John Stahl , the one girl security from back when the store spent money on adequate, trained staff, and the other pretend security people.
