Larceny in my heart, I guess.......

Larceny, embezzlement and downright petty thievery; all of these seem to be a part of my confession.

This confession, no, this crime, was forgotten until this morning when it hit me, and I started to laugh as I walked Max my dog around the neighbourhood.

In the 60’s, I worked for four years for a large Baltimore Department Store now long gone. I have written many stories about my exploits at the store, and this was a long forgotten incident. I lost my innocence at that store, as I had previously written. I knew about sex of course, and had practiced it, but it was all innocence and light. I learned about “adult sex” at the store, secret meetings and people’s affairs, and I learned way too much about the “real world” that I didn’t need to learn.

When I was at the store for a while, I was moved from the Stationary, Books and Notions Sections to the Record Department, where I most wanted to be. I stayed there for a few years and it included Luggage as well, a subject I learned way too much about.

Records ended up being purchased through one supplier, a job shop I guess, where we could order anything and they would deliver. They also filled the 45 racks with the “latest and greatest” top 10 hits, selling for I think $.99. We started selling albums and I was there through mono and stereo, sold at different prices. The mono albums I believe were $2.79 and the stereo were $3.79, except in rare cases.

We picked up a salesman along the way who did the orders, and along the same way I became the manager of the departments. Usually, before the end of June, the store would fire the manager and make me manager until the fall when I went back to school and they made someone else manager.

The salesman, Bill, I believe, would give me a gift every now and then, which made me very happy. He would bring me a popular album, inscribed on the back as gift from him to me, which allowed me to take it home without any questions from security. I simply showed it to security as I was leaving.

It took a while for me to catch on, or it took a while for it to work this way because I think he used to take the records from his briefcase, but Bill was taking one of our records (our company stock) and writing it off as a gift to me. He “allowed” me to steal our own records.

Once I found this out there were perhaps many things I could do, all of which I never did. I smiled, thanked Bill, and went off happily with my record in hand. He never said he was doing this, so I only know because I was smarter than he was and saw him stealing it. I suppose I made up some lame excuse for our thievery, such as he would replace the stock from his own stock, but knowing full well it would never happen.

I was never told he was doing this and could plead innocence were I ever caught.  However, we all now know. Maybe I contributed to the store’s demise…….