"Will Work for Outback Red Sweater"

As a high school junior, I realized my three-bucks-an-hour babysitting gigs were no longer cutting it to procure the things that really mattered, like sweaters from the Limited, Wet-n-Wild lipstick, and used cassette tapes from Repeat the Beat.

I was tired of sitting around on my neighbors’ couches eating ice cream from their freezers and flipping through their cable channels for R-rated movies while their children bounced off the walls upstairs. It was time to get a job – a real job! where I could stand behind a counter reading Tiger Beat magazine and filing my nails.

Landing a gig was almost effortless, thanks to my strong Eastern European work ethic and dress code which dictated nothing less than a suit and briefcase for my interview at Baskin Robbins Express. But that wasn’t where I ended up getting my first part-time job – it was at a classy discount department store, where I was assigned to back cash register duty three nights a week.

As with most things in my life, I was petrified. There were just too many ways people could pay for their purchases and it was nearly impossible to keep the various procedures straight.  The constant stream of sales and promotions further confused me, and I lived in perpetual fear of returns and people who required that I count back their change.

But I was cute and friendly, so they kept me around.

Every evening around six-thirty, the undercover security guard would stop by my register for a chat. Rob was a burly man who always wore suspenders with a black T-shirt and fedora, and he pursued shoplifters with the zeal of a convert. Everyone was a potential thief, no one could be trusted – not even old lady Byer in the ladies’ fitting room.

“See that broad over there, red purse, bad perm? I’m keeping an eye on her,” Rob would say, leaning into my counter and nodding conspiratorially toward the unsuspecting shopper. “Ten bucks says she’s wearing five bathing suits underneath that dress.”

Rob took it upon himself during these chats to school me in the ways of criminal detection. He warned me never to trust a person who was walking too fast and taught me how to recognize bands of marauding gypsies. Sometimes he would give me pop quizzes about potential thieves.

“Okay, quick! Who’s the crook, the lady in the sundress or the dude with the bandanna wrapped around his head?”

“Uh . . . bandanna dude? I guess?”

“Wrong, grasshopper!” Rob would say, smiling with glee. “It’s sundress lady, and I’ll tell you why…”

Even as he ran down shoplifting facts and figures, Rob’s eyes would be darting around in his head, always on the lookout for someone making off with a pair of leg warmers or a pretty scarf. I even witnessed a few momentous occasions when he stopped mid-sentence to chase down a criminal in plain sight. On those nights when he hit the jackpot, he’d always come by later to give me a recap, play-by-play. I imagined he had a wall in his basement with names of petty thieves engraved in blood.

One Saturday I was scheduled for the busy afternoon shift and Rob was not around. There was a big sale going on, and even my usually quiet back register had a line of customers snaking down the aisle. I was pretty frazzled – what with all the coupons and promotional codes being bandied about -  and therefore not on top of my game when an attractive middle-aged man walked up wearing a camel hair coat.

“I’m just buying this coat, and I’d like to wear it out of the store,” he said, holding up the price tag, which I promptly scanned in. After he’d left (in a hurry), I realized with horror that I’d sold him the coat for $9.99.  He’d clearly switched the tag on purpose and left with a few hundred dollars worth of merchandise on his back.

I broke out in a cold, nervous sweat, prepared to be in the worst trouble of my life. I had been face-to-face with the enemy, and I had let him get away. Surely I would be fired from Stein Mart and could never work in town again. My permanent record would be irreparably tarnished and my hopes of attending college dashed. I’d end up a blogger housewife in Cleveland, sporadically posting Lithuanian recipes and cute things my kids have said.

But even worse than this, I had disappointed Rob. He would never forgive me for letting that shoplifter go, especially since the scenario was one he’d drilled me on many times before. It was probably the easiest case study in Rent-A-Cop school, and I had failed it royally. I could just picture my mentor, sadly shaking his fedora-clad head.

I was never found out, but lived with the shame of my mistake for years, beating in secret like the tell-tale heart. And I avoided Rob for the rest of my time at the store, though I did eventually confess my error to our parish priest.

Thanks to the experience, I now have a freakishly accurate theft detection radar when I’m out and about. Once I saw a dude try to leave Drug Mart with an unpaid bottle of Snapple and the strength of my judgmental gaze alone caused him to retreat. I’m always on the lookout for people walking too quickly through Nordstroms and am prepared to tackle them should the need arise.

If I find out that post-it pad on your kitchen counter is from the stock room at work, I will report you in two seconds flat.

I’m doing it for Rob.

Read more of Rima’s writing at RimaRama.com.