by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

Sometimes you come across something that just makes you wonder who is in charge here. Our local newspaper The Curious News holds a "survey" every week about something relatively innocuous. This week's survey asks, in honor of the 100th anniversary of powered flight, what is the greatest invention. The choices one has to respond to are: airplane, automobile, computer, electricity, and cell phone. I have two problems with this list. The first, and most glaring, is that electricity was not "invented"; it was discovered...and we still don't know a hell of a lot about it I might add. The second problem I have is the inclusion of the cell phone; that bit of fluff is not even in the same league as the other heavy weights in the category. I'm afraid this is just another example of the dumbing of America and why the end of this century will probably find us a second or even third rate power--much like the former USSR is today.

On other fronts, the more exciting news to report is that I caught a professional scam artist before he could rip my store off. E-mail is a wonderful thing. The corporate loss-prevention people do gather reports on verified scams and pass them along, via e-mail, to all our stores. As a CWS (cash-wrap supervisor which is what they now call us), I read these emails when they come in. Well, Monday night I looked up at my next customer and alarm bells started ringing in my head. Here was a nicely dressed, 40-ish gentleman with a greying beard who wanted to return some computer books. Problem was that his physical description matched that of a pro scam artist who had been working stores in New Jersey. The alarm bells changed to flashing red lights when I saw the "receipt" he was using. It fit the description of the one used in the other stores almost perfectly (oops, our genius changed exactly one digit in the transaction number on the receipt. Brilliant!) By this time I had called the manager-on-duty who brought the email to the cashline and he got the pleasure of actually confronting the gentleman. Personally, I would have waited until my cashier had all the jerk's documents (we ask for a driver's license to prove identity before issuing credit or a cash refund) in hand before confronting him. And then I wouldn't have given them back.

Go ahead, fool, drive off with me in possession of your driver's license (fake though it must be). It gives me reason to call the cops and reason for them to stop you. And when you produce a driver's license, then you get arrested for possession of false documents. At least, I would hope you would be. God knows, I'd testify that you were the one who tried to pass off a fake receipt and a fake license in an attempt to steal $100+ from me.

As it was, the guy got to walk out of the store with receipt and ID in hand. We kept the books he was "returning" (which he had obviously just picked up off our shelves.) In the battle between the scammers and the store, the store won this one...yea me!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005