is the monitor gone?

Yep, monitor is definitely gone. Possiby their brains, too.

(Slow day at home.)

Georgia?... yup.

winner of the dumbest employee of the year award... How do you miss something like that?

let's all say it together... al-BAN-y (ban rhymes with fan). I have no idea why they pronounce it like that.

Wait...what's gone?

he was probably in on it lol

Where can I find this store? And is there anyone with a large truck who would be willing to drive down there with me?

@vaxman: In the employee's defense, they were "in the back putting plain t-shirts in a box" which sounds like they were in a different room with the theft occurred and was still in there when the boss came back.

That said, this is a photo studio we're talking about. It's not like the place sells TVs and it would look like the person(s) taking it away had just bought one. How is it that no one saw someone taking the TV?

I applaud his efforts to be direct and concise. If there is nothing more to say than, "yup, tv's gone", then he has not wasted any more of our time than is necessary. Good on ya, Laconic Retail Employee.

All you have to do is look confident like you are on a mission and know what you are doing. People will assume you are supposed to be there doing that.

I'm thinking it was an inside job

@Huntergreene: It also helps if you carry a clipboard. Although admittedly, that might be difficult if you're trying to carry a TV.

@Omi: why bother, their TV is already gone :)

dude, if thieves want something that bad, they can get it without being noticed (it's all about your demeanor.)

damn, huntergreene beat me to it.

That being said, unplugging, picking up and carrying a 42" plasma takes balls, and some muscle. my 37" was almost a bit too much to move by myself (more because of its dimensions) so 42" must have been a [worthwile] pain in the ass to haul quickly

@DISCOUNTEGROLL:
Two guys walking around the mall wearing coveralls w/radios would be able to clean up while security is busy outside roughing up old folks who are just trying to find their cars.

Did nobody consider the possibility that the monitor just up and quit? Or maybe it was on break.

After reading the employee's testimony, the movieIdiocracy comes to mind.

@Huntergreene: You might mean that as a joke but I have heard that works very well.

@magic8ball: It helps if you also have coveralls and a white van. A dept store in my town a few years back just kept giving all their furniture to these guys that would show up in coveralls and a white work van. Claimed they were there to pick up furniture and the employees would often help them load it into their van. It took a few months for the store to figure out where all their products were going.

Confidence helps, a cargo van and wearing Dickies coveralls is even better.

Doesn't the mall have security cameras?

About 20 years ago some guy had a jacket printed with "IBM Factory Service" on it & had work tickets printed. He went into large secretarial pools in NYC, said he was there to pick up broken typewriters, put them on the cart he had & just picked up Selectric typewriters, then costing about $1500 each.
He supposedly stole a few hundred & was never caught.

@LilKoko: Those were taken yesterday.

Why should some min. wage-monkey care what gets stolen in the store they are working in? When I was a kid first working a shitty job I could care less what happened. Heck! Most kids got a new shitty job every few weeks or months.

Its funny that managers & the higher ups think that when you pay someone absolute shit wages... that they will fight tooth & nail to help the company in any way possible. LOL! Pay shit... you get shit back!

And about the cops lifting fingerprints .... what a lot of people dont realize is that there is such an INSANE backlog of fingerprint IDing on cases that all the non-serious cases are perpetually pushed to the back of the list compared to the REAL Fingerprint-IDing cases (like murder etc. etc.). It can take literally YEARS for them to get to low priority cases.

Wait, so the monitor is gone?

I remember working at Sears the summer before I went to college, back when shoes were still on commission. Our department was right near one of the entrances, and they had the bright idea to put a bunch of air conditioners right next to our department.

Next to the door.

With no security nearby.

By the end of the day, half the air conditioners had apparently walked out of the store.

Mall security ftl.

Sharp fellow.

@Verklemptomaniac: Air conditionners, pfft... Try washer and dryer :) I thought first it was a joke first, when I heard the news.

Everytime I am in the mall near opening time, I see the not yet attended Dell kiosk with the 4 or 5 flat panel tv's just sitting there 50 feet from the mall entrance, waiting for someone in a pair of overalls, fake name tag and a walkie-talkie to stroll up to it, unmount it, and walk right out.

Nobody would think twice.

Most things are easier to take in broad daylight if you know what you are doing. Not that I've ever stolen anything in my entire life if you don't count sampling the jelly beans in the candy store.

To all those who say it's attitude. Absolutely, I worked in a 'major theme park that shall remain nameless' in the 90's and someone walked out one day with a six and one half foot Raptor prop from our Jurassic Park exhibit. I suppose the Raptor could have left through the employee entrance carried by someone wearing coveralls. But since no once noticed a SIX FOOT RAPTOR leaving the park, I guess we will never know. Seriously, who is going to question that person. We were instructed to not approach people we KNEW were shoplifting. How do you approach a cat with plums big enough to walk off with a dinosaur?

@LilKoko: It might not have helped. One of current co-workers used to work at a Zellers (mid-level Canadian dept store chain) when someone stole their security camera from the checkout area.

Apparently the last few seconds of video consisted of some radical left-right shaking before going black.

@backbroken:

careful bro, sampling jelly beans is a pretty serious offense; justifiable enough to get tased depending on the circumstances/how many jelly beans were allegedly sampled

When I worked at Sears they had a guy walk out with a washer and dryer. He was an ex employee and he took the freight elevator (which goes right past loss preventions office) and even had other employees unknowingly help him steal. Took them right off the floor by telling them he was loss prevention and he was switching out a customers broken one with the floor models. Two appliance employees helped him wheel the washer while he got the dryer. The people in receiving helped him load it into his truck.
If he never worked at Sears and sent someone else in to do the job then they probably would've never been caught or would've had much better chances at getting away with it.
Most these big department store employees have no idea who watches the cameras.

Georgians like him almost make you wish the drought had continued....

@magic8ball: If you add in a dismissive look, or a annoyed shooing wave, that also helps. Just peer at your clipboard, while someone wheels away the TV on a handtruck. Anyone says "Hey, what are you doing?", just look at them like they SHOULD know.

The Emperor's New Clothes is more than just a fable. It's actually true. I once directed traffic on a four lane road adjacent to where I worked for a half hour during a power outage to get our customers out of our lot. All I had was a whistle, and what I gleaned from watching cops do it on TV. I even had a cop drive right by me, and didn't say boo.

@brennie:

Sounds a lot like Universal Studios Hollywood to me. The Jurassic Park thing blew your cover dood.

That TV is gone. Though karma will pay them a visit when they have about 40 different channels burned in on the screen. This is why you don't get Plasma, people.

I'm confused by the story. What happened to the monitor? Is it still there?

There's a famous tale in my hometown about a couple of guys walking out Canadian tire with a 12' Canoe. The story goes on to say they only cot caught when they went back in for the paddles.

Some friends of mine wandered around the employee areas of the Bonneventure Hotel in LA one time. Some staff looked at them funny. But wily people there are, they pointed at their clipboard, and then something at the ceiling, and wrote something down. The staff then went about their business, ignoring them.

Clipboards are better than the Jedi Mind Trick.

You would be amazed at what you can get away with at retail locations if you show up with an official looking photo ID, a clip board, an orange safety vest and the tiniest bit of inside information.

Years ago when I was a copy machine repairman I was left alone in a room of a church FULL of money. It looked like Scrooge McDucks vault.

@bdgbill: In light of your observation, I'd like to revise your comment to say, "You would be amazed at what you can get away with when you put forth an image of piety and ask people for their money in the name of god."

@reykjavik: The drought is not over.
[www.drought.unl.edu]

Does anyone remember US history? Here's the trivia question: What does the US state of Georgia and Australia have in common? Both were prison colonies of England. The decedents still live there...

Yeah, I grew up in Albany, GA. It has gone downhill A LOT in the 12 years since I left there to go to college & never looked back. But let's just say, I knew people there were in a dead-end town even back then. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about that town. I hate that I still have to go back there periodically when I visit my mom. Nothing about this story suprises me at all.

TV: "And then I was like where's the store? And the dvd player was like 'you're not in the store' and I was like 'woah, I'm not in the store anymore' and that was pretty much it."

@m4ximusprim3: Nice one.

I always say, if you put on a worker's jumpsuit and carry around a clipboard and measuring tape and look official like you know what you're doing, you can steal anything from anywhere.

people have walked out of the CompUSA I work for with TVs on more than 1 occasion. One guy walked in the front door, grabbed a 32 inch LCD and walked out right in front of the door guard. This is what happens when you pay minimum wage to the people you expect to guard your inventory.

@morganlh85: I agree. People don't believe me when I tell them how easy it is to steal from companies. A former client of mine didn't think I could steal computers from them, I walked into their office, looked for a computer no one was using, said i was the new tech and was told to pick it up to be upgraded and walked out. simple. It's all about confidence.

@xtc46: That's completely awesome to be able to do it with zero chances of legal consquences