Today, we finally caught the girl that has been stealing from our shop. No, not one time, but four. Can you imagine that? She had the audacity to steal four items. Yes maybe we were stupid and careless to have let her go time and time again. There just wasn't any concrete evidence, and we weren't so sure. Today, she slipped up, and made it so straightforward that we didn't even need to use any of our devious plans to nab her. She came out of the fitting room, rushed straight into the racks, trying to quickly place the clothes back so we wouldn't know one was missing. Uly made sure I was standing right outside the door, ever ready to catch her red-handed. I confronted her. She denied, smiled, and insisted on the fact that she only took two pieces in to try. Uly came forward, saw the dress she carefully hid under the many contents in her bag. There and then, she gave up, and finally admitted to the crime. Uly and I weren't exactly being very discreet about the whole confrontation. Sooo, we had the entire shop crowd's eyes fixed on us.
We dragged her to a corner. I continued the confrontation while Uly attended to the customers. I wanted so badly to find out why she did it. I don't know, maybe its me, but I always want to understand the root of the problem before even trying to come to a solution. I looked into her eyes. They were stone cold. Emotionless. She had pretty eyes, could come off as a little creepy, and she was really young. What I really felt at that point of time was how I could try to understand why she was doing it, and come to a compromise. Basically not involving the police and ruining her future. But pressing on and trying to get some answers out of her proved futile. She refused to answer most of my questions, and even if she did, her answers were curt and void of any emotion at all. Despite actually trembling inside, it took every fibre of strength in me to muster up courage, to go through the confrontation with her.
Security came, took her away, and we had to call the police. I didn't have the courage to dial the numbers, so I gave her one last chance. We tried communicating with her in hope of finding a reason not to involve the police in this. She admitted in actually receiving counseling but I don't see how it's working at all, when she's still doing it! From that point on, Uly and I knew that we couldn't cave in to our emotions and I had to brave myself to call the police. While waiting for the police (to take freaking long) to arrive, Uly and I returned to the shop, we were acting all dysfunctional, and the adrenaline was still pumping. We couldn't shake off the guilt we felt towards her. Even though we both know, deep inside, that this decision is truly the best for her... there is still the haunting image of her, and the fact that we might have ruined her future.
Dramatic much. I still feel a little affected by this entire traumatizing episode but we need to remember, we are doing a good deed, in helping her to get through this problem by proper counseling. For the greater good.
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