Kellie wanted to hear the costume-theft story. :)


So, it was either Halloween or the day before Halloween, I forget which offhand. Both days were equally nutzoid at The Paper Factory. I was behind the register at the time, helping the kids running register keep up - checking to make sure all the costumes we sold had the right parts in the package, bagging up rental costumes, running off copies of paperwork. It was during the afternoon, so eeeeveryone was working, all the adults and experienced people were in the basement - even Chad (who rarely works up in the front of the store) was going between the registers downstairs and upstairs, directing traffic when needed.

At one point, I heard someone near the check-out line being rather loud, and looking up, I saw Flyer (one of the grown-ups) standing beside a rather large black woman, who looked defensive. I heard something like "don't you touch me!", and next thing I knew, the woman was running up the stairs past Chad, with Flyer not far behind her, yelling for Bruce to call the police, telling Chad to follow her - "she's got a costume".

There was a good bit of confusion for awhile, everyone wondering what was going on, and half the grown-ups disappeared. Five minutes later, Flyer came over to the desk and asked if any of us had the keys to the dressing rooms. "No... Mac had them."

Sue Mac (another grown-up), in the heat of the moment, had gone after the woman with the costume.

Sue Mac had, in her hands, the keys to the dressing rooms. Halloween afternoon. One of the four rooms was unlocked, the rest locked to prevent college girls from going in unsupervised and snagging costumes.

As you can imagine, mild panic ensued.


Later, I got the full story:

Flyer had been by the dressing rooms at the time, though Mac had the keys. The afore-mentioned black woman had gone into the dressing room with I believe three costumes - some of which were obviously not the right size for her. (This is never a good sign, we had another incident this season with customers taking wrong-size costumes into the dressing rooms, but we watched like hawks to make sure nothing vanished.) When she came out of the dressing room, Flyer noticed that, while the woman handed back one costume, she was still carrying two packages - and they were empty. The bags had the cover-sheet, showing the picture of the costume, facing out, so it wasn't immediately obvious that the bags were empty, but Flyer is sharp. :)

She walked up to the woman, and asked where the costumes were. She made some excuse, her daughter had them, or she'd given them back, or something, but Flyer demanded to see the costumes that went with the empty bags. Seeing that the woman was getting antsy, Flyer put a hand on her arm - this was the part where I heard "don't you put your hands on me!", but apparently I missed the "bitch!" that was attached to the end of the exclamation.

Obviously, this set off alarm bells for Flyer. The woman pulled away, and took off up the stairs. Mac took off after her, and Chad followed as well, while Ann found Bruce and they called the police.

The next parts, I never heard told consecutively, but as near as I can make out:

The woman took off running across the street. It is not a quiet street. Just as she ran across the road, a giant truck came barrelling out of the intersection, around the corner and onto the street she was running on - it honked, and wasn't that far from hitting her. Mac, not far behind, apparently flung her arms out to the sides, gesturing for traffic to STOOOOP!!! as she jogged across the road.

Rumor has it that people leaned out their windows and cheered her on.

The woman kept running down the road, pausing briefly at Burger King, then seeing Mac was still following her, kept going. The two of them ran all the way down to Denny's... (According to google, this is just shy of half a mile. The black woman was..fairly hefty. Mac is not exactly a skinny teenager herself. I know I'd have been seriously winded myself.)

Meanwhile, in our parking lot, a subplot developed:
Unbeknowst to me, a day or two before, Flyer and Mac had been keeping an eye on some sketchy looking customers in the basement. They were suspicious enough about something or another to follow the customers outside, and take a peek at their car's license plate.

Once this woman took off, Flyer went out to the parking lot, to see if that car was there - some of the girls in the group looked familiar. The girls that had been with the woman came out of the store, and Flyer confronted them. "Were you with her?" "No! No, we don't know her at all..."

There's a Wendy's right next door to us - the girls took off toward *that* parking lot. Flyer followed, and sure enough, the car with that license plate was there, and the girls piled into it, then took off after the woman.

Chad, meanwhile, having a slightly saner mind than Mac, had gotten into his truck to follow the woman.

When he reached Denny's, he found Mac screaming at the woman, and claims he had to physically haul her back before she did something really rash. The police had caught up by this point, and were not at all surprised by the situation (everybody knows everybody in this town).

...I'm not entirely sure the resolution of the story, but we did indeed get the costume back, and Mac and Chad reigned as heroes for the rest of Halloween. At Dave and Buster's, the story was the highlight of the evening, with Ann pantomiming Mac stopping traffic, and Chad mimicking her shouting match with the thief.


The most ridiculous part of the whole thing? It couldn't have been more than a $30, $35 costume.



I find this totally not worth an arrest. We had so many cuter (and more expensive) costumes! wtfh.

Labels: life in general, silliness, storytime, work