Wet Work

I was thinking about a former job I've had. (I've had quite a few) But this had to be one of the more dangerous ones I'd had. I was a store detective, a loss prevention agent, whatever you wanted to call it. I basically provided security and prevented shoplifting and employee thief for a BIG BOX chain. At the time I was very desperate, having been trapped in a very dead end job in the rotten underbelly of Newark. So I landed the job at the box store and they realized I would be good at stopping shoplifters based on my background. So I trained for the next three months and learned the extremely difficult profession of loss prevention. Fortunately for me I had a very good teacher. Soon I was sent off to my own store to work it alone. First stupid policy (one of many). There's a reason why most Bouncers work in groups. For security especially in a physical environment numbers count. In the loss prevention field it's even harder, you don't have the overt intimidation factor like bouncing does. Anyway i started to make small cases and my confidence grew and eventually I started to make big cases. Once I detected a group of professionals that had emptied a wet vac out of it's box and started to conceal merch inside it. I can tell you my heart was pumping, I had a spot and they couldn't see me. I just watched them and tried to figure out how was I going to stop five guys at the door. I was able to flag down a dept head that was friendly and had he act as backup. We waited 10 to 15 minutes as the group loaded the box, place it into a cart , tape it up and push the cart thru the store looking for surveillance. They were good, but they were overconfident. The store had be wide open, no one had worked loss prevention there in about a year. The group finally broke up and three walked out. The other two stayed with the cart and got on line to pay. They purchased the "wet vac" for about $48. I let them pay and walk to the doorway when the dept head and I stopped them. I told them we needed to talk about the items in the box. Guy # 1 said "I don't know nothing about what's in the box" PRICELESS. In the end the apprehension was for over $1500. worth of merch. Those bastards had stuffed drill kits and drill points into the box, it weighted 60 lbs. I ended going to a grand jury hearing for that one. In the end both guys were convicted of theft and I don't know if they ever served any time. They were both career criminals so it wasn't a big thing to them. To me it was. I thought it was the beginning of a serious career. More later.