so yesterday my store got robbed
Jun. 18th, 2012 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingDo 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 02:48 am (UTC)And, hey, store cameras, maybe they'll actually pay for themselves!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 02:59 am (UTC)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.