Another depot vignette... I have never been on a safari, though my little nephew and niece returned from one a few weeks ago. I have, though, seen clips on television of the great beasts of the African plains as they chase down their prey, either mauling them with one, huge bite to the neck, or chasing them down as does the cheetah, using his incredible speed to tackle and slake his blood lust and hunger on the hot pulsing juices of his still alive antelope. It would certainly be a fun thing to watch, I suppose. I have, however, watched another version of the hunt by a stealthy hunter. It is a beauty to behold, and brings a bit of a tear to my eye as I see him and his fellow pack hunters at work. His name? The LP* dude. For those of you who dont know, the LP dude is a plain clothes young man whose job is to keep an eye out for shoplifters. You wouldnt know who he is unless you knew who he was. He wears ordinary, sloppy clothes. He wears a hat, t-shirt of some sort, and jeans. He carries a cell phone, which looks like an ordinary cell phone, but is actually a magical anti-theft device, for he uses it to alert his fellow hunters that something may be afoot, and prey is in the vicinity. And until spell check, I didnt know how to spell vicinity. Shame on me. In the past, I have witnessed the post-mortem captures of the LP dude.... a sad looking individual sitting in the LP office, perhaps with handcuffs on, and a couple of cops hanging out as reports are made. The victim, most likely guilty of some offense, sits there with a tremendously pathetic (in the original sense) mien of remorse on his face. His life is about to change in ways he could not have imagined, and all for a free drill bit, or a maybe some larger booty that would never bring him the happiness necessary to quell the problems he will have as he walks into the future with the crime of shoplifting on his resume. I feel for him, but not much, since one of my jobs is to log in the empty packages that petty thieves leave in my aisles after they abscond with their various trophies stuffed in their pockets, security tags left behind for me to clean up. And please, if you need to measure something at the depot, please buy a freakin tape measure, and stop taking one off the shelf to measure your purchase while leaving the blasted tape measure on a shelf for me to bring back to the hardware aisle. I hate the hardware aisle. Walk into that aisle with an orange apron, and you may never leave, because someone wants some freakin obscure screw (no rude comments please!) that may or may not have a complement in aisle 16. Today I got to witness the LP dude on his hunt. Minding my own business as I had to catalog PVC moulding on the back wall of the store, I see the LP dude come walking up. He had a wry smile on his face, and dare I say, a rare smile as he nodded his head in greeting. He doesnt talk to me, since he is serious about his job, and I dont hold that against him. I didnt know what was happening and went back to minding my own business after nodding my own greeting to this master hunter. After a few minutes, I heard noises off to my left, and turned to look. A fellow was stuffing various things into a shopping cart. This is a tell-tale sign of something nefarious happening, for thieves will fill a cart with random things, and often hide something expensive below less expensive stuff. They may or may not pay for what is in their cart. Maybe they will leave the cart for someone else to pick up, since these antelopes of the depot work in teams. Perhaps they will stuff something into their shirts or pants while filling the cart. One must be an LP dude to guess at all the signs of illicit absconding. I then saw the LP dude at the end of the aisle, scrouched down and looking carefully towards the potential absconder. He would stand and step back, and then bend down again to look around the corner, his hunters eyes ever ready catch some offense, some weakness in the plan of swiping s*** (Father McAfee) from the depot. I went back to my task of cataloging PVC moulding...a fun, fun, fun activity. My curiosity took control, and I turned to look again. He was gone, the LP dude! But the victim was still stuffing crap into his cart. Was this determined to be a fruitless kill? A waste of LP time? Maybe it was a distraction for some other more heinous absconding? I went back to cataloging. Minutes later, I turned, and LP dude was back! He was not giving up on this hunt! He stood, he scrouched, his eyes ever on call to find the victim! This went on for about twenty minutes. I kept on cataloging. Then it was all over. The LP dude was gone. The potential culprit was gone. Who knows if a hunt was successful. I never saw the cops in the office. I never found out if this hunt yielded a trophy. My inner Marlin Perkins had its moment. I missed the actual kill, if there even was one. I should add that I was singing a bit during this whole series of events. It was the Beatles song, Dont Let Me Down. Maybe my appeal to conscience to the potential thief hit its mark. Or maybe I was encouraging the LP dude to have a successful kill. I didnt choose the song on purpose. Who knows. Maybe both desires were fulfilled. LP dude did his job; the possible culprit had a change of desire. I kept cataloging the moulding. For another.....three......hours.......
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 23:36:05 +0000