so yesterday my store got robbed

[edenfalling]

Do not be alarmed! I was not there! The robbery was at 7:35 in the morning. I haven't opened the store for about a year and a half, and I never work Sunday mornings anyway.

PM (my manager) was the only person on staff at the time, and she is unharmed. She was understandably still somewhat shaken up when I clocked in around 3:30pm yesterday -- she kept verbally rehashing the incident, as one does when trying to get a grip on a disturbing event -- but today she had moved on to annoyance and adjusting some of our procedures so that if (gods forbid) we get robbed in the evening, there won't be all that much cash in the registers.

I can't say much because of the ongoing investigation, but basically the second customer who came in to the store threatened PM with a metal object (kept hidden so she couldn't see if it was a gun, a knife, or something innocuous), and stole some money from the register. Then he ran and she called 911.

7:35am on a Sunday is a stupid time to rob a store, especially if the store only opened five minutes ago. You are not going to get much money. It might make some sense from an 'avoiding other people walking in to see and/or stop me' perspective, but given that we sell newspapers and newspapers are a business weighted toward morning purchases... eh. It smacks of a desperation move.

Also, we have security cameras.

Today our owner came up from Elmira to talk with PM and do some general store assessment while he was here. This is the first time I have seen him since I started working at the smoke shop, which was... six and a half years ago, I think. We are not what I would call a central part of his business. *wry*

We shall see what happens with regard to the thief and our tentative new monetary security protocol thingies.

Comments

[rthstewart]

I am so sorry! You are sounding very calm and all but I know this is at least the second time for you!! I'm glad everyone is OK! And Ithaca? Really? have you gotten your computer situation squared away, btw?

[edenfalling]

Ithaca has more crime than most Ithacans would like you to think it has. Ithaca also has more poverty, massive income disparity, racial tension, political dissent, and so on than most Ithacans would like you to think. I suspect part of that is because the kooky far left idealist stereotype of Ithaca only really dates back to the 1960s or 70s -- before that, Ithaca was a manufacturing town, kind of the far eastern trailing edge of the rustbelt. There was a clock factory, a gun factory, etc. Borg Warner, which makes precision parts for car manufacturing, still has a factory in the area, though the economy has shifted a LOT toward tourism, wine, and computing. The overall economy recovered from the loss of manufacturing, but that shift left a dearth of decent-paying jobs for people with only high school educations. (I should know! I dropped out of college, which is one reason I am at the smoke shop instead of working as a secretary. It is really hard to get people to even look at your resume for a non-retail job without a college degree.)

Anyway, there are a lot of unemployed or underemployed people living in the cruddy parts of town, and crime is a thing that happens. I am pretty safe because Fall Creek is a generally good neighborhood, but if I lived on, say, Plain St. between Green St. and Court St., I would not be surprised in the least if my apartment were burgled. (This happened to a former coworker of mine, btw. Twice. She only lived there for a year and a half.)

My computer is fine! The problem turned out to be my upstairs neighbors' router -- they had reconfigured it and accidentally left my computer's address off the network list. (I trade them the use of my driveway in return for free internet.)

[branchandroot]

*freaks out for .5 seconds until she finishes the first sentence* Whew! Okay, you're all right, the manager's all right. All right.

And, hey, store cameras, maybe they'll actually pay for themselves!

[edenfalling]

We are all okay! Angry, but okay.

The cameras have been useful in the past for things like identifying shoplifters, and once for discovering that a man who claimed he'd tripped over a coffee pot rack I'd stupidly left sitting in the aisle when I went to help some people at the register had not tripped by accident -- he'd very clearly spotted the rack, looked around, and tripped on purpose. Which was very nice from a store liability standpoint. :-) They would be more useful if they operated at higher resolution, and if more than two of them filmed in color, but they do record to DVD for playback, which is the main point.

[cherokee1.livejournal.com]

That is the sort of excitement you don't want to experience, no.
Glad you weren't exposed to it, and happy your manager is alright.
I imagine she will be angry at some time about it.
No fun, no, not at all.
C

[edenfalling]

Yeah, PM is pissed off. I am not sure the logistics of her plan to skim excess cash out of register 1 and put it in the safe when register 2 is closed down around 5-6pm will work well in practice, but I can see the logic behind it. And she's already had a workman in to repair the light in the back alley, which should discourage anyone who might think of breaking in via our back door. (Such a break-in has never happened, but there is a first time for everything.)