We were sitting at one of our usual posting locations around 9:30pm. We had been on shift for 4 1/2 hours and had yet to receive a call or a post move. This wasn’t unusual for this shift as at the time, I was assigned the first half of the week. Most of the excitement was enjoyed by our counterparts working the 2nd-half night shifts.
Up until now, there wasn’t anything spectacular about this evening. My partner and I were eating the same fast food, listening to the same talk-radio show and talking about the same BS as usual. We had no idea that we were about to get a critical lesson in customer service.
So there we were, parked in front of the same drug store that we usually park in front of, and sometimes shop around in during our hours of down-time. The night was quiet as could be until a blacked-out car pulled in front of the building. 3 men jumped out and one remained in the vehicle. They quickly put on ski-masks and 2 of them grabbed shotguns from the back seat.
I saw this and gave my partner the “check this sh*& out” punch to the shoulder. The look on his face was almost as entertaining as what we were seeing unfold.
Not wanting to become a target, we backed the unit up out of the way while we notified dispatch of the incident and requested for law enforcement to respond. Now the right thing to do would have been to leave the area immediately. But unfortunately, our curiosity over powered our common sense.
We watched the robbers storm into the store, and continued to watch the show through the large glass windows. They immediately ran to the cash registers, only to find that all of the employees were nowhere to be found. One guy ran up and down the isles, which I’m presuming was looking for an employee to operate the cash drawer. Another was keeping watch at the front door while the 3rd was frantically trying to figure out how to work the register.
The robbers now shared something in common with me and my partner. We had both now experienced the notoriously bad customer service that went along with the night shift at that store. Our silence broke when my partner said, “I can’t believe it. Their service is so bad, you can’t even find someone to rob”. We started laughing hysterically as the team finally gave up and fled to the car empty handed and took off.
We were interviewed by the police shortly after and confirmed our theory that the employees of the store really had no idea what just happened.
So what’s the moral of the story?
Bad customer service affects everyone, including criminals.
