4 years ago, I briefly met someone that I was interested in being friends with and I started talking to them. Shortly after we talked, that one time, they left town without telling me, and I felt ghosted.
I was very upset about that, and then later was pulled into a meeting at work that updated us on people that were recently banned from the store. That person was in there, for shoplifting. I sent them a very upset Facebook message about it how I felt about being ghosted and told them to not bother to come back to the store because they were banned for shoplifting.
They sent me a message on a different Facebook account and I didn't read it and blocked both the Facebook accounts.
Today, the person came into the soup kitchen and aggressive reset down next to me and talk to me for 10 minutes about how food and health are important. I told them that I don't know who they are and I don't know what they want, and they got increasingly aggressive. It's been years since I've seen this person, so I really didn't remember them.
There's no security there, so I told one of the volunteers what was going on, and they absolutely deflated under Pressure. They had no conflict resolution skills, and no confidence. After I told the volunteer, the person finally told me who they are and what the problem was.
The problem was that they thought the store had the security questionable footage, and I confronted them only with a guess that it was them, and then took their following reply back to them to confirm that it was them which resulted in them getting banned. What actually happened was those are expensive security cameras that can get you in both black and white and color. With the quality of those cameras, I could see that person's face very clearly. And there's no logical reason for me to tell someone that they are banned if I'm not absolutely sure it's them, anyway.
the person also believe that they would have been confronted right then, but that's not how that works at every place. And stores like Target and Walmart where it's someone's job to watch the security cameras, that would be the case. But our place is one of many local businesses that does not have any designated security/ loss prevention staff, so the person who watches the cameras also has a lot of other duties and can't actually watch the cameras in real time. They will review footage later to see if anything happened, but the chances you'll get caught on the spot is unlikely. If you happen to be pilfering when the mod or store assistant manager is sitting at the camera computer, you drew the unlucky straw. but I told the person not to come back, not out of anger, but if they had returned they would have been confronted.
I don't know if my loyalty has a price, but the place was paying me $10 and something cents an hour, and I know my price is higher than that! And it would take a lot for me to report someone especially for shoplifting, because life is hard. if there's a company out there that will pay me enough money and treat me with enough respect to care when somebody shoplifts from them, I would like to work there. NO GONNA HAPPEN! THAT PLACE DOES NOT EXIST!
We clear up the misunderstanding, and chatted for a while. But I won't be going back to the soup kitchen, because I no longer feel safe there. What if it wasn't an issue that could have been reasonably resolved? If I had been in actually danger, none of the volunteers would have have the tools to properly handle the situation. It is relieving that I found out that the space is unsafe in a tame situation, rather than something terrible actually happen and gettimg hurt. this isn't the ideal time of year to have to find a new place to hang out, but free food isn't worth my safety.
What was the scary thing that happened? A CAPITALIST BOOTLICKER DYSTOPIAN VERSION OF ME HAS BEEN PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSE!
