I am watching you!

I woke up today feeling pretty good but, a little on the tired side. I got Kaity some oatmeal and started to clean up the kitchen. Sally was a little perturbed with me,so she told me to go out shopping with her.She would go to Kohls and I would go to Borders and walk around. I like to read and Borders was the perfect place for me to take it a little easy. Sally knew that my pump was causing me some havoc today and wanted me to be careful. The nurse at the clinic didn't tape me up very well and when I got home the tape was coming undone. I think the nurse didn't realize that I was going home with a pump. So Sally re taped it for me . It felt like my needle was coming out.It was actually the tape sticking to my skin. It still made me feel paranoid that the needle may come out. Tomorrow at about 3pm I will get pump taken out. Other than that feeling I have ,no ill effects what so ever.Like I mentioned I was at Borders for awhile walking around. While I was there I felt like I was being followed by the employees. If I was, I think it was because of the pump that was sticking out the side of stomach under my shirt. The t-shirt I was wearing was thin and the pump was easily protruding from my side. I don't know for sure if they were watching me, it just seemed that wherever I was there was a worker. Most of the time it was the same one. I decided to leave and pick Sally up at Kohls.

This reminds me of a time a few years ago when I went to Wal-Mart. I am not sure of the time of year ,but I would sometimes go there and browse and price check items. I would do this for Birthdays or Christmas . I think it was close to Sally's birthday. Well anyway I was minding my business looking at whatever it was I needed information on. I noticed this scraggly looking chap always near me looking stupid. I would constantly move around to see if he would follow me. Sure enough there he was with his head looking at me from under a shelf,I was like," oh please". I decided to go up to him and tell him the he is wasting his time and doesn't need to watch me. So as I was walking up to him he all of a sudden picked up something and started looking at it. I told him that he didn't need to watch me , That I wasn't going to steal anything. He gave me this goofy look and said "You punk. I was flabbergasted to say the least. I said "What did you say".Again he repeated "You punk" I walked away from him and went to customer service and wanted to talk to the manager. I talked to the manager about the guy and said that I come here allot and didn't appreciate being called a punk. She said she would talk to him about it. That's it,you condone someone from your hired security outfit to call a customer a punk. "Actually he is a Wal-Mart employee" , she said. Now I was really getting upset. I wasn't satisfied with the talk she said she was going to have. So I went back home and made a phone call to the District Manager.He said he would tell him to stay away from me if I came in the store. I told him if that was all that was going to happen, I would not be going in that store knowing that it is OK for an employee to call a customer at Wal-Mart a PUNK! I hung up and wouldn't go in there for the longest time. I still have a hard time going in there but, I am very reluctant to do so.

When I worked at Sterks I would like to catch shoplifters as I was working. Sometimes I would just go in when I was off and bored to try and catch some. There was was all kinds of different clientele shoplifters. Some people had pockets sewed into the under part of there skirts. I hate to say some of the customers you had to watch out for were the regulars that liked to chat it up with the employees. Thinking that if they were friendly to us we wouldn't watch them,WRONG ANSWER! One guy would come in every morning at try and take a bottle of MD 20/20. We would say George you aren't going to take anything today without paying for it are you? No, sir I wouldn't do that. That's good cause I am very busy. As soon as I would turn my head he would attempt to take a bottle and high tail it out of the store. We knew he was going to do it so there was always reinforcements to help catch him. It was like a game, we would just shoo him out after the catch. Another guy that would come in that I had suspicions about,so I started to watch him. He moved quickly and one time he got away ,because I couldn't get down from the rafters fast enough. Next time he came in I stayed on the floor and watched as he was moving around the store. I saw him put a prepared meal in his shirt. I hurried up to the front( I had the I am speedy Bill mentality) and caught him. When we started to walk him back to the Managers office he looked at me and said he was going to put a bullet in my head.I asked him to repeat what he said.He said it again in front of everyone there. We called the police and told them what he said to me. They asked what we wanted to do and I said book em Dano.I never saw the guy again. There was a bar behind the store that would send in patrons to steal tylenol. As soon as we had the shelf stocked it would leave the shelf. It happened at different times of the day and night. Finally we got the Tylenol bandit and it was one of our most friendliest customers. He gave up a struggle but we finally got him in the Managers office. We really laid into this guy. We called the police and had him carted off. Sometimes I would see a street person go to the Deli and take some meat. I wouldn't do anything because I felt bad for them. I would only do this if it was something good and not Alcoholic or Tobacco. There was a time when I saw a lady with her daughter stealing together. When we got them upstairs we told the mother what the heck was she doing. Does she realize what would happen if we called the police and they found out that you were teaching your daughter to steal.That they may take her daughter away.The mother and the Daughter started to cry. We really just wanted to scare them because our intent wasn't to get them in trouble and have the daughter taken away, but to stop stealing. We didn't call the police but warned them about doing this again. That there will not be any second chances. They did come in a few times.As far as I know they didn't take anything at least when I was watching. Then there was the Pucket Brothers. They would come in and steal baseball cards. We would let them go. Finally this one time we were tired of catching them and called the police. We didn't want to prosecute but, had them escorted home. We told them to stay out of the store and they did. We always took picture of the perps. One day I was looking at a book that was of a store before it became Sterks, it was called Parkview Foods. The Pucket brothers were in this book crying there eyes out. Allot of these people in this book I recognized some which were ex-employees. We had already caught them doing naughty things and were fired.I have many stories about the different shoplifters I have encounter throughout my ten years at Sterks.I used to get nutty about catching them. One guy I chased all the way to Turner Park housing on Michigan( about two miles away from the store). Once he got there I was like time to go. Allot of Riff Raff lived there. Another time me and the store Manager chased a guy to Angelos restaurant. I fell during the pursuit and received 5 stitches on my one knee. Down the street was the first Baptist Church of Hammond.Every Sunday like clock work a group Of kids would come in and get fried Chicken from the deli. Every time we would have the kids escorted back to the church in a police car. We finally told the police to tell the leaders over there that next time we will keep the kids and have the parents come and pick them up. These kids were bussed in from all other the area including Chicago. After that bust it toned down. I once got hit in the head with a duffle bag( to this day I have nightmares about duffle bags) by a guy that came in from Sawyer Business College that stolen some Deli product. I followed him outside and said "Hey you"! He turned around and biffed me in the head with a duffle bag. I struggled with him over his duffle bag. I finally won the battle and he ran off. I took the bag to the Managers office and knew he will probably be back for his bag. Sure enough he came back with the Police. I thought this guy has guts to bring the Police after hitting me. I told the Police what happened. They wanted to know if I wanted to press charges. The guy was very apologetic and said he was very sorry and wouldn't do it again.I told him that he was lucky I was in a good mood. He better not attempt to steal again. One guy we caught said he will pay for what he took. He had a radio with him. We told him to go and get his dough but, we wanted to hold on to the radio for collateral. He never came back, it was a fairly nice radio too.

Thanks for visiting and God Bless you all.