Hey there TFR! It's been a while since I posted anything, but I've been enjoying reading your stories. Though I no longer work retail, from time to time I still recall horrifying interesting events from my days in the trenches.

Back when I used to work for a big box retailer, I managed the hardware department. (Along with 3 other departments, because that company didn't believe in having enough staff.) During the summertime, that meant I would get inundated with fans and air conditioners. This was usually good for my numbers, because the air conditioners would usually sell so fast we couldn't keep them on the shelf. But sometimes, we ran out for other reasons...

One hot summer day, I came back from lunch to find my department almost devoid of air conditioners. This wasn't all that unusual, because they really did fly off the shelves. What was unusual was that I quickly found out from coworkers that the reason they were all gone was because they had been stolen! It turns out that a pair of thieves had come up with a daring plan that worked flawlessly. When they came into the store, one of them had gone straight to the customer service desk and complained that they had fallen and injured themselves on store property. Then, while management fawned all over them trying to find out if they were suing, their husband had gone over to Hardware, loaded six air conditioners into a shopping cart... And just walked right out the doors on the other side of the building. To my knowledge, we didn't even get the air conditioners back.

Needless to say, there were a lot of frustrated customers until we got more Air Conditioners shipped to the store. To make matters worse, corporate put a freeze (ha ha) on all the ACs, meaning we couldn't get any more for several weeks.