Friday, August 19, 2011

If It Feels Hinky . . .

I was running errands last Saturday and had just left a specialty store in a small strip mall with my purchases.  A woman who looked, shall we say, out of place in that area approached me with some sob story about needing help.  She needed money, she needed to borrow (yeah, right) my cell phone, yada, yada, as she kept trying to get within arm's reach.  I maintained my distance, explaining politely but firmly that I could not help her.

Fortunately she finally got the message.  I then watched her go into the store I had just left, the only one in the vicinity with no customers inside, just a single late-teens-early-twenties female sales clerk with the situational awareness of a doorstop.

I pretended to have forgotten something and went back into the store.  The woman was regaling the young clerk with the same spiel as she edged closer to the open end of the counter.  I stood off to one side, where the woman could see I was watching her out of the corner of my eye.

Funny thing, she quickly left the store and was nowhere to be seen when I went out again to the parking lot.

Pay attention to that built-in hinky meter.

3 comments:

eriko said...

Thank you for protecting that person that probably did not even know they needed the protection.

It is good to make it hard for people to do bad.

Brian K Miller said...

Very impressive!

Anonymous said...

Trusting your belly button is one thing that should be taught to every one of the "good guys".