Thursday, February 15, 2018

Tattle Tits


You can call me Tattle Tits.

Last year I witnessed an incident at a retailer that ended in an ambulance call and left me with a gut feeling that someone might lie about it.

I don't even know why I felt like that. Something was just off. The reaction wasn't what I expected.

Other people saw it, someone else called for the ambulance, there were surveillance cameras.

Still, I stopped by later that day when the hubbub died down and asked to talk to the on-site contact for loss prevention. I could tell he wasn't quite sure what he was doing, so I jotted down a quick statement with elements I knew were important. I wrote down my name and telephone number.

Today, I got a call from their corporate loss prevention division. The claim is something wildly different than the facts. They found my name and knew from the first written narrative scribbled sideways on a scrap that the statement on the claim wasn't adding up.

Here's the kicker. Those cameras? They only SOMETIMES work. They didn't that day.

Why?

Why had I even been paying that much attention?

Am I a five-alarm stalker?

Only kind of.

It was July. Go ahead and look up what the weather was like or I'll save you the trip to the Googlemachine because it was HOT AS BALLS.

This lady had on layers and by layers I mean like A COAT and gloves and I noticed this because she had those gloves up on the handle of an empty cart she was pushing into the store from the parking lot and I was like, "how unfortunate, maybe she has eczema or something but Jesus that sucks because it's so freaking HOT she is going to have a heat strooooooOMG what is happening????"

Because I watched as her feet STOPPED MOVING like, you know how when you're walking but you have to sneeze but you don't want to pee your pants? No? Just me? Anyway. Like that. Just stopped. But the top part of her body KEPT ROLLING with the cart.

She twisted around, never letting go of the cart until she was on the ground and the cart was partially on top of her. I thought this lady just dropped dead in front of me but honestly I wasn't that surprised because I was JUST thinking she was going to roast to death.

I can see this happening even now in my head because I was walking behind her in that way that one does where you kind of give a person room so they don't think you're being a crowdy asshole, but when I saw her start to twist and fall, I threw my purse to try to catch her which of course didn't work because I'm too slow but fortunately since my purse wasn't zipped I did manage to dump the contents all over the front entryway.

Her husband hadn't noticed.

"Um, hello? HELLOOOOOO!!! Um, your, uh...wife? She fell."

"Oh yeah. She does that."

He stood there with his hands in his pockets while I held her head off the concrete while she wailed because it was her bad leg that apparently already had a hip replacement. Two other women who'd been behind me called for the ambulance. They stayed and conveyed the information to the ambulance crew and I left to finish my errands.

Later I'd just gotten a bad feeling about it. I mean, I felt for the woman. I still do. I believe she was legitimately injured. I have no idea how it ended up for her. But I also got such a weird snarky vibe from the husband, or whoever was with her, that I felt like someone probably needed to say something, in case the camera hadn't picked up the right angle. Or something was blocked.

And today, I got that call. They're being sued. The claim is that she tripped over an object due to the store's negligence. They said my statement was key in this. That they'd gotten him to admit that he didn't see it because I specifically said he did not see it happen.

I got an education I didn't want in logging objective observations as a victim. I felt awful for those witnesses who got dragged in to speak to the things they'd seen and heard. It opened my eyes to just how beneficial it is as an outsider with no connection to a case to be willing to speak up and attest to what you've seen, sometimes boring details you encounter in your everyday life can make or break a criminal or civil case.

Fixers, speak up. Don't ever assume that there are cameras rolling everywhere. Don't duck out and say you don't want to be involved. Sometimes it's hard to find someone to report things to when something is chaotic. Wait until it dies down, then go back and leave your name and number and a short statement.

Be a tattle tit.