2002-03-09 - 11:40 p.m.

Neighborhood Kids

A couple days ago I walked into the comic store downstairs, and the Manager had that certain look on his face like he had a story to tell me. He had been having a fun day.

There are a couple of neighborhood kids that had been coming in the store recently. They looked to be eight or nine years old. Well, today the Manager caught them shoplifting.

Most people who don't know anything about comic books assume that they are for kids, but that hasn't been true for years. The target audience for comic books are people in their thirties and twenties and perhaps their late teens. These days, kids aren't into reading for pleasure, at least not reading comic books.

However, we do get pre-college age kids coming in our store. They can be neatly divided into two groups: a) Suburban kids brought by their parents, b) local kids who walk in. The first group are mainly regular customers, the second group are mainly problems. The local kids generally don't have much in the way of money, and the odds of them trying to shoplift something are distressingly high. We used to get a lot more kids in the store, say, ten years ago, but the odds of a local kid being a shoplifter or a problem are much higher now, I think.

So these two neighborhood kids have been coming in the store for the last few months, generally stopping by after school. The Manager had been watching them, but after several weeks of them coming in, he figured they were okay. They'd come in, and buy maybe a dollar's worth of quarter books, and then leave. For the most part they were quiet and well-behaved and obviously enthusiastic about what they were buying. It's nice to see kids get excited about comics.

In the front of the store, near the door, we have a rack of books that mainly consists of stuff we are trying to move. Generally they are $5.95 bookshelf comics that we over-ordered. However this rack has another function other than to move overstock. It's a shoplifter trap.

The rack is carefully set up so we can see immediately when something is missing, and if we lose something off it, it really isn't a tragedy. It's stuff we're having trouble selling anyway. No matter what the cover price, if we can't sell it, it has no value. It's worth it to lose a book or two to identify a shoplifter.

Well, today the Manager caught one of the two little neighborhood kids stuffing some $5.95 books into his knapsack, caught him red handed. It was also obvious that the other kid was working as an accomplice, trying to divert attention.

The manager gave them a choice: either he could call the kids' parents, or he could call the cops. Both kids gave him their parents phone numbers, but he couldn't get through at either number.

Ordinarily he would have called the police, but another employee, Alan, happened to be on hand. Alan is someone that has been recently covering Tuesdays, and he's been a friend of the store for years and years. The Manager decided that he was going to take the kids home and talk to the parents himself and leave Alan in charge.

The Manager figured, correctly, that the kids only lived a couple blocks away, so they started walking.

An amusing little drama was played out while the three of them were walking those couple of blocks. The kid who had been caught with the books in his knapsack was quiet and resigned - he knew he'd been caught with the goods. However, his accomplice made a swift transition through the Four Stages of Grieving during the short walk.

First, came Denial: "I didn't do it! I didn't do anything! I'm innocent!"

Next, came Anger: he started blaming his little friend for talking him into it. "It was all his idea! He MADE me do it!! I hate you!"

After a couple of blocks came the third stage, Bargaining: "If you let me go I promise to never do it again! Please?"

And then the final stage: Acceptance. He dragged himself along the sidewalk muttering and whimpering to himself.

When the Manager got to the house of the first kid, his mother was home and he described her as a Rosanne Barr sort of person: a working class woman who took crap from nobody. When you talk to parents about their kids, you never know how they are going to react - they may blame YOU for whatever their precious angels did. However in this case the woman apologized profusely, and it was agreed that her son wouldn't be allowed in the store again without adult supervision.

While the Manager was talking to her she was giving her kid the Evil Eye, and as soon as he left, he heard yelling coming through the door. She'd obviously had a hard day at work and this was the last thing she wanted to come home to.

When the Manager got to the house of the Accomplice, his mother was home too. However, she didn't speak a word of English, only Spanish. This was kind of surprising considering her little eight year old kid spoke English without even an accent. The Manager had trouble making himself understood, but a neighbor woman was called over to translate. As soon as the mother understood what her son had been up to there, was much rapid-fire Spanish spoken at top volume. This mother, too, was very apologetic and said that her son wouldn't be allowed in the store again.

And that was the story.

The Manager had told this story for laughs, especially the Four Stages of Grieving part, but the entire episode left him sort of depressed. Here were a couple of kids that he thought he could trust, and he turned out to be wrong. The reward you get for waiting for these neighborhood kids to spend their quarters is to have them try to steal from you.

You start to wonder: is it worth even letting them in to the store any more?

There are some stores that have a "no minors unless escorted by an adult" policy. We really couldn't enforce such a thing but on days like this it sure is tempting.