I always thought my return to Substack would be more poetic than this. A memoir from my childhood, an essay on my mother, a think piece on Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover. But sometimes we write to be dignified and sometimes we write because we need to. And I need everyone to know that when I die, and when the collection jar of my life’s moments topples over, that this is a thing that happened to me.
I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s start somewhere else.
First, a recap of recent events: I work at a thrift shop. There are people that shop at that thrift shop. There are also people that shoplift at that thrift shop.
Second, a bit of insider knowledge: it is very easy to shoplift at a thrift shop. For the most part the barrier between stealing and not stealing is a moral one. Us underpaid employees will try to stop you, sure. We will stand by the front door to make you sweat, point out the cameras that have you on tape, say you are banned from the store on your way out, but rarely will one of us physically try to halt anything. Mainly because if we get hurt that’s a liability, and liability means lawsuit, and our big beautiful CEOs have no interest in being sued thank you very much.
So instead we shake our heads and stare at you until you are shamed into leaving. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t get paid enough to think about it too hard either way.
Third, how things started: three shoplifters enter the store at 2pm. All three, women. All three, with big backpacks on their shoulders. All three, immediately start piling clothes into their arms, mowing through the store with little tact, getting twitchy at the sight of an employee.
We spot the first two fast, stay close to them, close the front door. These two, noticing they’ve been spotted, abandon the store fast, leaving within thirty minutes. They leave their friend, the poor girl, to fend for herself.
I stay by the front door while another manager stays by the girl. Meanwhile another coworker by the fitting rooms stands guard in case she wants to “try on clothes”. It’s an elaborately staged holdout for exactly one person, designed to scare her into leaving. But she doesn’t leave, not right away. And she doesn’t leave after 30 minutes, or 45 minutes, or 60 minutes or 90 minutes. This passive aggressive showdown lasts for three hours. Only nearly as long and nearly as tedious as The Brutalist but I digress.
For three hours this woman shops the shoes, and then the skirts, and then the pants, and then the jeans, and then does it over and over again with aplomb. At one point she thinks she finds a way out the back emergency door, only to find an employee standing by the alarm. She then tries her hand at the fitting rooms, only to be thwarted by my coworker who didn’t let her bring her backpack in.
“Jesus Christ, why can’t she just grab something and run?” our lead manager asks, when I clock out for my lunch during the whole escapade. By the time I get back from break, the girl is pouring through the women’s size 9 shoes.
Fourth, another piece of insider knowledge: we hold items for customers when they’re shopping, both by the fitting rooms and by the registers. All you need to do is ask us to hold your items and give us your name. We put it on a back rack, away from other customers, so you don’t have to carry it while shopping, and no one else tries to grab your clothes.
People will try to grab it anyway. The eagle eyes of middle-aged women looking for a Tory Burch sweater is impeccable. They will lock in on a slither of fabric, the color of a shirt, the print of a dress, and move into the customer restricted hold rack asking “how much is this?”
We will then have to politely shoo them away: “this is on hold for someone else.”
“Well, when will they put it back?”
“I don’t know. They might buy it.”
“Ugh.”
You have to lay down your boundaries with these customers. You have to be firm and brave and you have to make sure no one will go after the Christy Dawn trad-wife looking dress Kayla just entrusted you with. It’s a whole thing if you don’t. You can’t be distracted.
Fifth, a consequence: the shoplifter distracted us.
As our employees are eyeing the shoplifter, a woman shopping leaves a jumpsuit on hold by the fitting rooms. It’s a light, linen thing, coveted for the summer months. She puts it on hold with an armful of other clothes.
“It’s just getting a little too heavy to carry is all.”
“No worries. We’ll watch over it here,” my coworker tells her, while eyeing our shoplifting angel, who is eyeing the shopping center security guard by the front door, who is eyeing her right back. We are in about hour two of our Brutalist hold out and everyone is tired.
And as our employee is distracted, a well to do looking woman, with a silk scarf around her neck, spots the jumpsuit, reaches back into the employees only section of the store and lifts it right up from the rack. By the time my coworker notices, the woman has already gone in line to pay for it.
“Ma’am, that’s for someone else!” my coworker calls out. The silk scarfed woman does not care. But the woman who held the jumpsuit in the first place does.
“Hi, that was actually on hold for me first,” the first woman supplies. And then the silk scarfed woman starts screaming. She yells at her to “get the fuck away”, and that she was “harassing her”, and that she is “stealing from her”. While this happens Shoplift Baby moves back to the jeans section.
The first woman backs away, decides whatever this scarf woman’s deal is, it’s not worth finding out. One of our managers goes to apologize for the whole ordeal. The first woman leaves, and the second woman leaves, and my coworker leaves because it’s time for her to clock out, and eventually Shoplift Baby realizes she has to leave too.
At this point all hope for her to leave with something has died. She will have to go back to her two friends, three hours later, with nothing in her hands. But she needs some way to end things, an exclamation point at the end of her run on sentence. Did Brady Corbet end The Brutalist with a whimper? I wouldn’t know, I never finished the movie, but you see my point here.
This woman has to give us a finale. She’s captured our attention for this long. We know this, and so does she. So how will she end it?
Sixth, a conversation:
Shoplift Baby walks up to the register with a pair of tennis shoes in one hand and her phone in the other.
I am the one that greets her at the register. This is what she says to me:
“Just so you know, the employee in the back was a bitch. She was rushing me out of the store. I should be allowed to look at everything.”
“Okay. Did you want to buy these shoes?”
“…My apple pay might not work. The screen is frozen. Plus my phone is dying. It’s almost dead.”
“Okay.”
“I might need to use my sister’s phone.”
“Okay.”
“I definitely need to use my sister’s phone. I need to leave the store to get it. Can I hold the shoes instead?”
“I need a name for the hold.”
She thinks for a moment. I see the wheels turn in her head and I hold my breath with anticipation. This is her moment. This is her author’s signature for her three hour masterpiece. This is who she will be remembered as.
She gives me her name. I can’t quite process it at first. So with a pen in my hand, I ask her to spell it for me:
“G-O-O-N.”
“…Goon.”
“Yeah, Goon. You can hold it under that name.”
She walks out in a hurry from there, past the other managers, past the security guard by the door, her giant, empty backpack swinging low behind her.
Seventh, some definitions:
Goon (noun):
A criminal hired to terrorize or eliminate opponents
– Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Goon (verb):
To masturbate, especially in an obsessive or energetic way. I.E: gooning
– Urban Dictionary
I write down G-O-O-N on the hold label, add a heart next to the name, tape it up to the register to remember her by. A strange hangover lingers over me, not dissimilar to the one I had after watching half of The Brutalist. What do I do with my life now? After all my energy was put into this?
Later at the end of the work day, another customer comes in, tries to sell us her clothes, then complains to me that my coworker was rude because she wouldn’t buy her stuff.
“Do you know if she’ll be here tomorrow? I don’t want her to do anyone’s buy, let alone mine.” This woman underwhelmed me. She just wasn’t interesting, doing the same “threatening to fire us” song and dance we’ve seen over and over.
Couldn’t this woman see? She wasn’t the main character here. We all know who is.
Goon Girl. Shoplift Baby. Backpack Swinger.
Wherever you are, know you are remembered.
.
nothing could’ve prepared me for the name reveal omg