I consider myself a weird but, morally neutral and complicated person. One of the most surprisingly fun things in my life was fucking with the "mall cops" at my shitty retail job, they had no access to polygraphs or fancy tools, they illegally recorded private conversations on their cell phones and did a shit job of hiding it. Ultimately they were just very poorly trained investigators given the title "loss prevention manager". One day the store audit came back and it was so bad they just decided to fire everyone one by one. They chose to use the LP guys as their tools to sweat everyone off the payroll. I didn't associate with any of my coworkers outside of the store, a lot of them thought of themselves as thugs and gangsters just because they sold coke as a side hustle and other dumb shit like ripping people off on CL. I knew they stole shit from work here and there. So here comes mallcop and they're in tears escorted out the store ratting on themselves, they were then given the ultimatum to quit or be fired, if fired the company would have to pay unemployment, so obviously they pushed resignation.
They fired 4-5 guys and over idk a week and a half and my number came up. First of all I hated that job half of me wanted to be fired collect unemployment and work contracting under the table, beyond that I saw it coming a mile away when the LP guy "Steve" shows up unannounced one day and keeps eyeballing me. I got the feeling he was a rookie I knew the room he'd want to talk in. I had something really heavy for lunch might have been Italian meatball sub extra onions something brutal to smell face to face. This tiny room I'm sent to I pretend like I'm adjusting my clothes and press the chairs close as possible and take the one nearest the door, now when he enters he's in a corner with guy who's breath smells like mace. He starts probing me for morals, gives me a hypothetical about to employees under me I catch stealing, "you see them both steal and confront them, one of them confesses the other denies even though you saw both do it, doesn't the guy who at least admitted it have a better character? Doesn't he deserve a second chanc-" I cut him off, "Fuck no. both theives fuck 'em, fire 'em. next question". "yeah... but don't you see how the guy who felt bad had remorse?" "no, at least the other guy had balls to commit to what he did, you're splitting hairs, fire them both. Why am I in here? I have my manager duties to attend too" "well I'm sure you know Jimmy and Timmy and others aren't working here, you probably heard internal theft was involed. We need to know you're one of the good managers, not like them" "I work hard and don't steal anything, if that's what you are asking me. I get the feeling our time could be spent doing more productive things"
I can tell the onions on my breath are getting to him at this point, I'm purposely exhailing a lot as I speak and pushing the limits of personal space.
"Yeah... well Jimmy and Timmy we kind of expected them of the kind of guys to steal things, now we have to make sure everyone else is not pulling the same inside job" I can feel the joy in me as Jimmy and Timmy are Mexican or something, can't recall. I raise my voice a bit "Wait, what do you mean expected"? he realizes he fucked up badly saying that, I watch his pupils demeanor change instantly. He rephrases the statement, and I say I'm confused. All of sudden I'm interrogating him and he blurts out something like "well um you know it's kind of their thing" My reply: "who are they"? He's fucking nervous now and I double down. "Are you saying that Jimmy and Timmy are culterally predisposed to theft"? He has nothing but this nervous look on his face, I repeat the question. I can tell he's searching for some kind of neutral reply and caught off guard. "You're making this conversation really odd saying stuff like that, Steve. Is this something I need to talk to the union rep about?" At that point he's in full panic and just ends the interview and leaves the location. The boss comes up to me 5 mins later asks how I chased Steve out of the store like that. I told him I basically convinced him he was racist and our useless impotent union might hear about it. Boss starts laughing as a white smart mouthed kid just played the race card and fucked with this guys head who's job it is to sweat people for a living. I got a promotion next week unrelated and they pulled the same shit with more seasoned LP manager on me.
