Oh man I have tons!!!
The Perricone Lady:
There's a big blonde lady who comes into our store all the time shopping for Dr. N.V. Perricone skincare products--average price about $95-100, easily. She's shameless, she'll ask for help, introduce herself and everything. So me and another girl are helping her and offer her a basket for the items she grabs and is interested in. A few minutes later, I walk by the area where she was and see her basket on the floor. I look around and she's walking very very quickly towards the door. I thought maybe she got a phone call or forgot her wallet. I pick up the basket and it's unusually light. All of the boxes were EMPTY. That's about $500 GONE out the door. We have no cameras so I can't prove it, and we're not allowed to stop someone or chase them, only our two top managers can. So nothing I can do.
Two days later she comes back and RETURNS the stolen goods. And our return policy sucks BALLS, because we had to give her a gift card for the full retail value. She happily shopped with her $500 gift card...and yes, I did find empty boxes when she left. She hasn't been back for a really long time, but dammit whenever I see a blonde at Perricone, my blood boils.
The Chanel Bandits
So there's a ring of women that steal from Fashion Valley and return at my mall, UTC which is only a 10-15 minute drive away. So our new manager was working down at FV and noticed a group of young African American women with one baby and two strollers. She greeted them, answered questions, was friendly to them and said she was going to be walking around, to ask for help if they needed it. She'd seen them before so this was her way of trying to keep them in the store while she called security. I guess they saw her and panicked, because they started loading Chanel Fragrances by the handful into the strollers and then took off running. The top manager and the LP lead saw it, and chased them to the parking lot. They caught up to them just as they were peeling out of the mall, but they got the plate number and a great description of them and their car. Since it was a grand larceny case (They got away with over $700 in fragrances) it was turned over to the Police Department. A few days later the police called back to confirm information saying that they'd possibly gotten a call matching their description at another mall. She confirmed it and said she'd be willing to identify them if they were apprehended. Well, it turns out they went to another mall and robbed a store at GUNPOINT in BROAD DAYLIGHT. In retrospect, it's a good thing the managers at Sephora hadn't caught them, because there's no telling what crazy shit they could have done after running away with adrenaline pumping through them. There aren't enough Chanel fragrances in the world worth someone's safety or their life. Fuck that, I'd give them the fragrances AND the lotions and body washes if I knew they had guns!
The Bitter Holiday Hire
This story hasn't been confirmed to match its title yet, but it follows my theory. So, as a Sephora employee you are entitled to a discount and you also get lots of gratis from brands, it's usually brand spanking new in original packaging. However, to prevent interntal loss prevention, they're usually marked GRATIS or GIFT somewhere on the box and the product so that people can't try to return them for free money. And if you need to make a return you HAVE to have your receipt or a copy of your cast purchase record signed by a manager, NO EXCEPTIONS. So tonight, this girl and her friends come in with a HUGE bag of product. She says she's got a return but doesn't have her receipt, so she'd "be happy to take a gift card." To put it shortly, none of the items had boxes (gratis doesn't usually), two of the items we didn't even sell in our company, and three of the items were clearly marked "GRATIS" or "TESTER." So we gave the items back and said that we couldn't return them. Unfortunately we had to take back the other items and give her a store credit. We did and then after we did she complained that she wanted one of the items on a different gift card because it wasn't hers, so she wanted to give it to the person she was exchanging it for. She never expressed this when she threw her bag down and said give me a gift card. So we had to void out the return, then redo it minus the other item, then do the other item separately. The cashier and closing manager weren't happy, so sorry to her we didn't do it with a smile on our faces. The girl goes "Are you having trouble doing this for us? Is it killing you? We didn't do anything to you so you don't have to be rude." Nobody had been rude to her. We didn't kiss her ass if thats what she wanted, but no one was rude. So to confirm my suspicion that she was or still is a Sephora employee, she said "I wanna speak to your Store Director." we said she wasn't here. Most people would simply say "I wanna speak to a manager." because I think Sephora is the only company that refers to their store manager as a store director and the team of employees as a Cast, it's not language common to our everyday clients. So we tell her she's not here and she asks "Who's your Regional District Manager?' Most people say they wanna file a complaint or "I'm gonna email your corporate office." Not every company has a Regional District Manager, and certainly very few clients would know how to address that position. So we will be tracking that gift card, and if it comes up that she used it for an employee transaction (they all get saved on our database, easily looked up) she'll be fired and apprehended. Legally what she's doing is embezzelment, if she's returning things she got for free to get money back for them. To make it awesome after she accused us of being rude and unfriendly to her, she and her friends walked out of the store yelling "Later you stupid bitches! BITCHES!!!" Yeah...cuz we're the rude ones.