Crime may get you a movie deal, but it will also come back to bite you in the end.

I slowly stalked my prey through the music section. I didn’t hide the fact that I was following him. I wanted the kid to know. And know he did.

He watched me from the corner of his eyes as he absent-mindedly browsed through the rap CDs. Coming up right up to him, I asked if he enjoyed the magazine.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said without much conviction.

“The pornographic magazine. Did you enjoy it?”

On retrospect, I realize that my little Dirty Harry impression was probably taking it a bit far. In fact, it was my attempt to intimidate the perp into a confession that attracted the attention of another customer.

“Oh no, you didn’t,” I heard a woman scream into my ear. “I didn’t just hear you accusing that young man of stealing a magazine. Where’s your evidence? What have you got?”

Startled by the conversation’s intruder, I turned to look at the woman who was making the scene.

“I’m just trying to talk to this gentlemen about a magazine he was about to pay for,” I attempted to explain.

It was no use. The woman had officially made the problem her business and launched into a fiery sermon, unrelenting in it’s busting of my chops. Looking away from her, I noticed that the kid had slipped away from my grasp and was high tailing it out the store.

“Look, he got away,” I told the woman.

“Good for him. Even if he did steal that magazine, it’s not like he hurt nobody.”

I hate that excuse. “I wasn’t hurting anybody when I tried to steal the candy bar.” “Nobody’s gonna get hurt if I read the book in the store instead of buying it.”

Sure. You’re right. By pocketing a CD from a store, you’re not causing genocide, spreading plague or giving anybody a Charlie horse. What you are doing, though, is ensuring that the cost of merchandise will steadily rise in order for the store to recover the loss of revenue from stolen products. Employees will be paid less, leading to more counter jockeys attempting to steal themselves. It’s a never-ending circle of crime.

In the end, I never directly brought a perp to justice. I was able to hand over video surveillance of two kids stealing a DVD boxset that led to their eventual arrest but I wasn’t there to enjoy my victory.

I saw with my own eyes a kid stuff a video game down his pants pocket but, when I confronted him about it, the kid pulled a Criss Angel and made it disappear. His parents even volunteered to frisk him. The game had vanished.

Now, several years out of the retail game, I still fantasize about catching a shoplifter and bringing down the swift hammer of justice. As I walk through Wal-Mart, I can spot the likely signs of criminal activities — empty packages lying on the floor, kids walking around with huge puffy jackets even though it’s 90 degrees outside, and customers carrying single DVD cases into the depths of the clothing department where they will most-likely rip open the packaging and stuff the disk down their pants.

I’m not a moral lighthouse of derring-do or anything. I have my vices just like everybody else on the planet. I just ask myself everyday, What Would Batman Do? Batman wouldn’t steal; he’d drop shoplifters off of rooftops and break their legs.

Read more stories of my college days

… and mocked years later on a blog.

I’ve always been a stickler for the rules. A firm believer in fair and balanced justice (and the real fair and balanced, not that depressingly ironic Fox News variety), I have always gone a bit overboard in enforcing the rules.

While working at Hastings, a store that specializes in movies, music, books and video games, I found my goat constantly being got by the ever-present shoplifter. From the obvious stuffing of merchandise under a coat to more subtle tricks such as switching price tags or returning books that had obviously been read, I considered every theft a personal affront onto me. I made it my goal to catch at least one perp during each shift. I wasn’t always effective.

I apprehended my first crook as he tried to open a DVD case and shove the disk up his shirt. As I snuck up behind the kid, catching him red-handed, I found his attempts to lie amusing. Without an inch of sympathy, I walked him to the front counter where I planned to call the police. Unfortunately, we were short staffed that night and, in the excitement of having caught my first criminal, I didn’t think that the perp would try to escape as soon as I turned my back to make the phone call. Sure enough, the kid was out the door and down the street the first chance he got. He didn’t take the merchandise with him, though. It was a draw.

The second encounter with a shoplifter came when I went to use the restroom during my shift. The restrooms are always a hotbed for merchandise shrinkage. Specifically of porn. Hastings, unlike most other bookstores, has no problem selling pornographic magazines. During my time at the store, I found every kind of porno (straight, gay, fetish, redneck) shoved in the bathroom trashcan.

Men (and sometimes women) looking to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon, would pick out a pornographic magazine from the rack, sneak it into the bathroom where they would enjoy it before shoving it into a trashcan, the toilet’s tank or, worst of all, gently putting it back into its wrapper and place it back on the rack.

Entering the restroom, the first thing I noticed was the sound of a plastic wrapper being taken off of a magazine. This sound was one I had become familiar with from living in a dorm room and remaining awake after the lights had gone out and my roommate thought I was asleep.

Sure enough, I saw a hand reach down to shove a wrapper behind the toilet.

“I hope you’re planning to buy that,” I said with my best impression of authority.

The kid stammered that he did not know what I was talking about. Not willing to argue with a man on the toilet, I told him that I would be waiting outside to make sure that he paid for the porno after his bathroom break.

Unfortunately, after leaving the bathroom, my attention was pulled to a problem at the front register. When I finally got a chance to look back at the restroom, I saw a kid sneaking towards the music section. He wasn’t going to get away that easily.

To be continued…

Read more stories from my time in college

I was the Jack Bauer of entertainment store retail.

During my last year of college, I worked at an entertainment retail store for six months.

This job, my first in retail, was a strong introduction into the world of customer service. In my few months as an employee, I learned the dark secrets that lurked behind putting products on the shelves in addition to discovering the joy of employee discounts.

Not to brag, but I was pretty good at my job.

I mastered the art of balancing video rental stacks four feet high and grew more than proficient in dealing with irate customers’ complaints about scratched DVDs.

I performed product exchanges like a well-oiled machine and was the undisputed master of the store intercom.

Within a month of being hired, I was promoted to a general store manager position.

I was the Jack Bauer of entertainment retail stores.

The problem of being the Jack Bauer of something, though, is that you tend to attract other masters of their domain.

It was on a night shift during my third month at the job that I had my first and only run-in with the Jack Bauer of homeless people.

I had been at work for five hours and was just starting to get my second wind. I had finished stocking videos and was headed to the front register to get another stack when I saw a group of associates talking in an excited manner at the main counter.

I, being the manager on duty, went up to them and asked what was wrong.

Apparently, an elderly gentleman was posted outside the store and was telling people that he was a federal agent who needed help defusing a bomb.

After taking a few seconds to realize the employees were not joking, I ventured outside to see what was going on.

Taking a peak out the front door, I confirmed that there was indeed a man and that he indeed had cornered a customer and was mumbling something to him.

The man, who I shall from henceforth refer to as Holmes the Semi-Scary Homeless Dude, had all of three teeth in his mouth, smelled like cheap fruit-flavored liquor and was wearing a flannel shirt that looked as if it had once been buried with Kurt Cobain.

Holmes had cornered a young college student and was, with slurred speech, describing a 24-esque adventure he needed help with. I approached the two and asked what I could do to help.

Holmes the Semi-Scary Homeless Dude looked at me and muttered something about how I looked like an Eskimo before he turned back to his prey.

Unperturbed by his faulty racial profiling, I repeated my question in a slightly more menacing manger tone.

Holmes the Semi-Scary Homeless Dude turned back to me – now staring intently at my throat. He walked right up to me, shoved his face right into my own and said that I needed to leave.

I let out a small nervous laugh and informed him that it was he who needed to leave. He was, I told him, scaring the customers (not to mention me) and he needed to go someplace else before I called the cops.

Holmes told me that if I called the cops, hundreds of federal agents would drop down from helicopters to arrest me for being brainwashed and for brainwashing others inside the store. I ignored Holmes’ charming display of paranoia and repeated my claim that I would not hesitate to call the police on him.

Beckoning Holmes’ young college student audience inside the store, I told the man he had less then a minute to find someplace else to thump his tub. Walking back into the store, I let out a relived sigh.

I had not been stabbed with a broken beer bottle and a quick glance outside the window showed that the man was now walking away. I was indeed awesome at my job.

I later learned that I should have just called the cops on him because there actually could have been a bomb or he could have been knife-crazy homeless instead of just cute-crazy homeless.

Lessons learned.

Fresh from my encounter with the homeless man, I went back to the front counter to grab the stack of videos I had originally come to the front of the store for.

Balancing the stack in the crook of my arm, I ventured out into the store to put the rentals back on the shelves. It was while passing through the children’s section of the movie department that I heard a voice call out.

“Hey, you want to buy some pussy?”

While I was certain of what I heard, I still had trouble believing it.

“Hey, brother, you want to buy some pussy?” the voice asked again, this time with more urgency.

I turned to look at the direction from whence the voice had come and saw a lone woman, staring intently at me.

Her face was a road map of scars and bruises, her mouth containing only a few more teeth them my friends Holmes had possessed.

She was dressed in a skin-tight jungle-print mini-skirt that for some reason reminded me of a childhood friend’s mother.

The woman, realizing she now had my attention, walked up to me, grabbed me by the arm and asked again: “Do you want to buy some pussy, honey?”

Impressed by her assertiveness but disgusted by the fact that she was actually touching me, I pulled away and politely declined. A look of anger flashed across her face.

“What’s wrong with all this?” she asked, motioning to her body. “Don’t you think I’m worth the money?”

“I’m sure you’re a very fine bargain, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline,” I told her, already turning back to my duties.

She was not so willing to take no for an answer though. As I walked away, she began following me.

“I know you want to buy some pussy, honey. And I know you can afford it. I’m only the price of a bucket of chicken.”

While impressed by her willingness to compare herself to a fast food value meal, I once again had to decline, this time hurrying off to assist a customer who looked like he needed help.

She eventually wondered off and I eventually finished putting the videos back on the shelf. When I walked back to the front counter to get a new stack of videos, though, I was greeted with an unexpected surprise.

“Some lady was complaining that you were trying to buy her body,” the cashier working the front register told me. “She said you were trying to solicit her.”

I quickly explained the situation, flustered by the thought of being reported for attempted prostitution soliciting. The register jockey nodded; a look of understanding in his eyes.

“I kind of knew something was wrong,” he said. “After she finished telling me about you, she told me that she had the flu and that I looked like a big, steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup.”

Ah, life in retail. It’s a blast.

Read more tales of my life during college