He entered swiping cigarette ashes from his shirt, as if it mattered, the neck of his plastic bag gathered in one fist. The bag’s thin bottom threatened to break as Mavis glared at the screen. 

           “Wasn’t he in here yesterday?” I asked. 

           Mavis switched monitors, following the man from the entrance into the toiletries aisle. He wore a gray skull cap pulled to his brows, dull eyes half hidden.  A woman cradling an infant glanced up, then straightened brusquely. She turned and hurried away, leaving the bum standing before the toothpaste. Both Mavis and I knew a sale had been lost, but I figured the old guy had as much right to be in the store as anyone else. 

           Mavis started out with a low grunt when the bum’s bag opened and he slipped a hand inside. She avoided confrontation when possible, but the man represented a threat to her employer and to her. I grinned in disbelief as the old guy withdrew a can of hair spray and set it on the shelf beside a stack of Crest. He took a package of toothpaste and dropped it into his bag, making no effort to conceal his actions. Mavis appeared in the corner of the screen as he twisted the neck closed. The man moved with a vague limp into the next aisle and opened the bag again. He withdrew a box of crackers, set it on the shelf beside the Tylenol display, reached for one of the bottles, dropped it in. His head jerked up and around, his face blank as Mavis rushed up the aisle toward him. He nodded feebly a couple of times, closed his bag and followed Mavis to the exit.

           For three days running, the man appeared, exchanged a couple of items and left when Mavis confronted him. Bill checked the items the man left behind and found them unopened, each marked with stickers from other stores, retailing for more than those the man took from our shelves. Bill suggested we see how far he’d go, how many items he’d exchange before he tried to steal something, but the old man didn’t show for months after that third day. 

    Mavis came to Black Brothers’ General twenty-five years before Bill hired me.  I’d been there for three years when the man with the bag first appeared. I grew up with Jackie, Bill Black’s daughter. When Jackie decided to teach school, Bill offered me and my BS in business the job he had once hoped she would take. 

          

 

What We Do

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