A Nice Place to go if You Want to Feel Like a Thief

I love going to the mall and looking around at all the nice things. I used to love going to Payless shoe store, that is until they upped the seriousness of loss prevention and decided to stalk the shoppers.

My husband, our daughter and I went to a Payless in our mall. There were a total of three women working there and we were immediately ambushed by a woman who looked like the manager. She explained which sections were which and asked if we needed any help. Then she said she would, "let us look around" as if we needed permission to simply look around with no intention to buy. Then she said, "If you need anything, just ask."

We were in the woman's section of the little store for about 20 seconds (literally, count off 20 seconds) when one of the workers came and asked how we were doing; "Fine, thanks." Then literally 30 seconds had passed and another worker asked if we were finding everything okay. "Yup we're fine." After she walked away I immediately asked my husband if he liked the heals I was trying on. "So babe, do you like these? Are they cute with this shirt? I think they are but I think they would ONLY go with this shirt." My husband was about to answer my question when another of the three workers came by to ask if we were finding everything okay, and then complimented me on the shoes and said, "Those are cute, and they're on sale I think..." Yeah, I could tell they were on sale without your help. There is a gigantic red label on the box that says SALE 29.99. They kept coming by to see how we were doing literally every 20-30 seconds. I noticed that they were doing this to another woman who was shopping there and realized, they must think we're going to steal the shoes. After all, the isles are high so they couldn't see us stealing. They don't have security tags on the shoes, and it would be easy to put on the shoes, and just run out of the store...

I don't think our little family looked like the stealing type though... We were wearing our "Sunday Best". I was wearing nice new Nike shoes, carrying a Coach purse, and wearing a "classy" blouse. My husband was wearing a nice brown wool and cotton sweater and a nice leather coat. Our daughter was wearing a brand new outfit and a suede coat. I didn't think we looked like a family of thieves, but who knows. Maybe they thought we stole all that nice stuff...

Either way, it was obvious that they were stalking us to make sure we weren't stealing. We only lasted in there for about 5 minutes. We were so annoyed, irate and appalled that we had to leave. I have never been in such a bad mood while looking at shoes!