irresponsible retail.. and a conflicted mind.

Let me paint a picture for you.

It is Monday night, twilight, just after 7pm. I am leaning up against the wall outside Lululemon, waiting for their free yoga class to start. People are walking, talking on cell phones, finishing up their shopping for the evening, driving home from working late. Amidst the hustle and bustle, I hear an alarm go off, and I think, "That sounds familiar... I wonder what it is."

Turns out, it is a store security alarm. Across the street from me, there is a LeChateau, which has not yet closed for the evening. The doors are open, and people are shopping inside. There is a man in his early 20s, wearing a well-fitting white hoodie, jeans, and a ballcap, with his hands in his pockets, in the doorway. He turns to his right, and takes his right hand out of his pocket, as if to say to the people inside, "What's going on? This alarm is going off and I don't know why." He must have gotten the okay to leave, because he turned back around and sauntered right out of the doorway. At this point, he is walking down the sidewalk, with his left side to me....with a clear outline of a shoebox poking out from underneath his left arm, which is still tucked in his pocket.

SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. The hoodie was a style you'd see from A&F, or Stitches or something, form fitting, not huge and baggy. I was across the street and I could clearly decipher a rectangular box underneath the whole left side of his chest.

This left me feeling particularly conflicted. The whole time I was watching I was thinking, "Really? Am I really watching this happening?" I was not going to chase him, 1. because what would I do if I caught him, and 2. What if he beat me? The only thing I had on me was my yoga mat, and I don't think anyone ever got hurt from being smacked with a yoga mat. Additionally, as far as I can remember, Le Chateau doesn't leave shoes in shoeboxes on the floor - you have to ask to try them on. So either this guy asked to try on a pair of shoes, and then the employee left him long enough for him to stuff the box under his shirt, or he creeped up behind some unsuspecting customer and stole a box from under their nose. I also thought maybe he had already bought something, and was trying to protect it, but this was highly unlikely as it wasn't raining.

All the employees would have had to do was say, "Can you come in here for a second," and gotten him to do a 360 degree turn, and they would have seen it. Come ON.