Okay, I’m seeing a few specific posts about “how to know that you’re sussed,” and I am loving this advice. Sometimes stuff that is applicable to one place can go across the board and be relevant elsewhere, too. So…
* Have you noticed anyone near you? (Customers can be as much a threat as LP/SAs, and may very well be ununiformed LP. Keep this in mind, especially if you don’t honestly know.)
* Have they moved with you around the store? (SAs often like “straightening up” areas where they have customers in line of sight, especially if it’s very quiet.)
* Are they as quiet as you (hopefully) are?
* Has someone made eye contact with you and genuinely looked surprised? (They may have seen something in your hand and then *not* seen it.)
* Has someone seen your hand near/on/in your bag?
* Have you heard any questionable announcements? “Carol, you have a call on line one in Kidswear,” if you’re in cosmetics, it might not be too weird, but anything with sketchy sounding names (or highly ordinary or unusual names– might be a store code for “Houston, we have a problem”) or in your general location? You’ve just gotten your cue to make very quick exit plans.
* Have you seen more than one staff member near you, and how is their body language and do they seem to be whispering? I sometimes LOVE it when staff are casually talking about their plans of the weekend/the bitchy manager from another department/who’s rostered on this weekend/etc, but there is a marked difference between this and when their guard isn’t down.
What to do? Swallow your pride, continue on as normal, and get out. Don’t come back for awhile.
Keep in mind, you may be sweating bullets at this point, but this is where you know your local laws (some places don’t go you for lifting until you have passed the point of sale, in some places, concealing in and of itself is criminal) and go into normal mode. Anything ELSE you do from this point that looks sketchy is just going to be another point against you, especially if people are already watching you. And if they aren’t, you’ve psyched yourself out.
I’ll be honest: I think everyone has had something like this happen in their history of lifting. It doesn’t mean The End, it doesn’t mean getting caught, it doesn’t mean mass panic and it doesn’t mean doing time. What it does mean, is that you have to stomp down every single drop of adrenaline and the instinct telling you to freak out, and you need to a) offload anything you’ve concealed in a complete chill manner, and b) work out how you’re going to get out. Remember, you could always be a first-time lifter who got spooked and decided not to go ahead with anything, or someone who’s realised they’ve left their wallet at home or lost their credit card (losing a wallet or credit card will naturally make people panic, too, so it ads some plausibility if you’re looking frantic and upset when you leave… just don’t, for the love of fuck, have anything on you to suggest otherwise or that you’re stealing.)
My “getting out” depends highly on the situation, and this is where being adaptive to your environment is important. Stores that are multilevel or have multiple exits will change how you do things and the speed with which you can escape. (Ideally, you know where all the normal exits are, already, too.) My general method goes like this:
a) Find a blind spot. Ditch anything I’ve had in my bag, while pretending to look for my phone. If you can’t do this, getting into an unmanned changeroom would possibly work, too– just grab a couple of clothing items, and leave everything you’ve pinched in there. Now isn’t the time to go, “But I’ll still sneak this lipliner no one saw me with.” No, sweetie, they might have seen that. Ditch ALL of it. Remember, going into a changeroom when you already are being watched can be a massive tell. If you leave things in there, they knew you had the intention, but if you haven’t taken any of it, they’ll assume you chickened out, and often they won’t follow beyond that. Loss Prevention is what it sounds like a lot of the time. Not about “catching the bad guys” but, well, preventing loss. You leaving stuff in a changeroom because you were spooked still means they’ve done their job and prevented that loss from happening.
b) If they see you with something in your hands, and you have cash, after ditching what you’ve concealed, just swallow your pride and walk to the counter and buy the damn thing. If you really can’t afford it, keep the receipt and return it at another store with an excuse about how you bought it for your friend but you got the wrong one/your friend is allergic to one of the ingredients/you thought the product was cruelty-free but since learned otherwise when you got home. If it’s clothing, you got someone something in the wrong size/found a cheaper alternative elsewhere. Toys or homewares? You bought it for someone and they already have it.
c) Don’t return for at least a few weeks. And when you do, do so at a time where customer traffic and staffing is likely completely different. (ie. You were sussed on a Monday morning? Go back in a month on a busy Saturday afternoon.) And try to make your next visit one where you aren’t stealing anything, where you’re just sussing out things (it’s always a good idea to keep up with store layout and camera changes; some places will add cameras to blind spots or rearrange displays) or legitimately shopping. Maybe go with someone different, too: sometimes when they’re expecting to be on the lookout for a sole lifter and suddenly you’re there with someone else, and probably dressed differently, etc, they just plain won’t recognise you. Remember, people often see what they’re looking for.
I’ll say this, too: getting sussed and having unfortunate events is going to happen at some point in time. Statistically, your odds of getting caught increase the more you lift (this is before taking into account psychological changes like getting cocky or too relaxed, too); most reports on lifting suggest that an individual who gets caught has already gotten a few thousand under their belt before getting busted. Shit happens, but like a lot of other areas in life, it’s not so much the cards you’re dealt, but how you choose to play them. As I’ve said before, I still think about 60% of lifting is in the social engineering execution.
