As some of you may or may not know back in the day I had a short stint working at the store Sears. By short I mean 2 weeks. That seems like a very short period of time to work somewhere until you compare it to my shortest employment with a company… 1 day, which was at Wal-Mart. I’m sorry but I didn’t see myself working in the shoe department at one of the trashiest stores in the world for minimum wage…

Anyways, I worked in the Sears hardware department for 2 weeks and it was by far the longest 2 weeks of my existence. In that time a number of dramatic things happened. I got yelled at and nearly abused by a customer who got angry at my not-knowing-what-the-fuck-I’m-doing-ness. One of my co-workers was I gigantic bitch both physically and personality wise. But the most dramatic thing ever happened while I was there was a little bit of tent thievery.

The day started out normally with me doing my usual, walking around, hiding in aisles where there weren’t customers when all of a sudden I noticed this huge wall of monsters type lady checking out our fine selection of tents. I didn’t think anything of it besides the usual “you better be checking out the 5 person tents…for yourself only.” So I dodge her and made my way to the other side of the store, opposite of the nearest entrance/exit so I could spy on the incoming customers and develop my dodging plan. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere I witness the 3-times a lady bear hugging one of our most expensive tents and waddling out the doorway, shuffling along as fast as she could go. I laughed at the sight of it all, fully aware that she was stealing.

Of course the sirens go off and one of my male coworkers takes off out the door after her, like he was going to stop her. Now I knew this guy long enough to know that he was weak and quiet that he was going to be in trouble when he caught up to her. So instead of helping like any reasonable, caring person, I run over to the exit and stare out the smudged and dirty glass door watching this whole episode unfold before me. I see him yelling at her, her waddling to this car with 3 little kids in it and then taking off nearly causing a wreck. When my coworker makes his way back into the store, he’s pumped; he has the license plate number and is starting to call the cops. Meanwhile I’m sitting there in a lawn chair with a bag of popcorn with my Sears nametag strategically placed inside my front pocket watching this freak show. But then the inevitable happens. Our hero coworker suddenly gets taken down from his heroic high. One of the managers makes his way over to him and starts yelling at him saying things like “it’s against the law for us to chase after a thief” and “this kind of thing could cost you your job.” The hero very quickly apologized and sadly continued with his duty of helping other customers.

After that was all said and done I started getting visually upset, and for good reason! If I had been the one to chase after the behemoth I would have stood up for what I believed in and not folded under the pressure of management. Then I would have gotten fired for trying to do something good and my heroic image would leave with me. This would also create a great excuse to tell my parents why I got fired and they would have been proud of me instead of disappointed that I quit after only 2 weeks. Either that or my heroic actions would have gotten me ran over and/or sat on and/or eaten.