On Saturdays I’ve gotten into the habit of packing up the papers I need to grade and setting off to do my work at a table at one of the local malls. It seems like a nice way to get out of the house and get some work done at the same time.
Today I had a lot of grading to do, so I decided to go to the Downtown mall to do it. After a few hours I got hungry, so I left my papers with a guy who was sharing my table and went into Carl’s Junior to pick up a burger. While I was waiting for my order to come up, a tall young male teenager asked to borrow my phone. I’ve loaned my phone to lots of people, and I kind of feel like it’s a contribution to good Karma. So I loaned him my phone - because for some reason I try to assume the best of everybody.
This is $300 Palm Pilot phone that I’ve just handed to a teenager I don’t know. I think you already know the general direction this is going.
I dialed the number the kid gave me, and he took the phone outside to talk - which kind of made me nervous, but I could see him outside the door so I figured no harm so far. After he had been on the phone for a few minutes I got kind of anxious about it, so I went outside and asked him to please stop using up my minutes and let me have my phone back.
This is where things got rather ugly.
The kid wouldn’t give my phone back and pretended a couple of times to hand it off to another kid who didn’t really seem like he was too involved, but who was hanging around the area. I kept pestering the kid who took my phone to give it back, trying to appeal to his better nature by pointing out I did him a favor by loaning him the phone. Eventually he said his friend put it in the garbage can. Of course, when I went to check the garbage can, the kid who took my phone disappeared around the corner.
When I ran back around the corner to find the kid who took my phone, someone in the crowd told me they saw someone run into Macy’s, and sure enough inside the store maybe 20 feet from the door there’s the kid who took my phone. So, I ask a clerk to call security, and meantime I’m herding the kid away from the door so he can’t leave.
At this point things got kind of close to being violent. I kept blocking this kid’s way from the exit telling him to give me back my phone, and he made a couple of vague threats, smacked away a bottle of water I was drinking, gave me a pretty hard push after I block his way a little bit forcefully, and sort of semi smacked me in the face so my glasses fly off - but I’m not getting out of this kid’s way for nothing.
Keep in mind, this kid is taller than me, but he’s skinny so I probably outweigh him by 40 pounds. However, I’ve never been in a fight in my life and I’m not in the best shape, so I don’t really know who would have the advantage in a real fight, although at this point nobody has thrown anything like a real punch yet and I’m not going to be the one who starts. Still, I’m pretty damn mad and the adrenaline is up and I’m not getting out of this kids way.
After a few minutes a plain clothes security guy from the store shows up and calls mall security. He also told the kid that he saw him smack me, and that could be considered assault so he’d better stay put, calm down and give me back my phone. Meantime I’m not letting this kid out of my sight, because it looks like he is seriously thinking about stashing my phone on a shelf somewhere while no one is looking.
Oh, and during this time about 3 of his friends show up too, and the security guy tells them this is private property and they have to leave. Fortunately, they don’t seem that interested in getting into the middle of it - they just seem to want to keep an eye on their friend, and I guess eventually they decided doing so wasn’t worth getting in trouble because they walked out.
Soon mall security shows up and we all take a walk to their office. Before we all go though the door they talk to the kid and threaten to call in the police and have him arrested if he doesn’t give me back my phone. After a few minutes of threats, and after the kid pretended to look in a trashcan where a friend supposedly dumped the phone, he finally pulls out my phone. Of course he had on him the whole time despite saying multiple times that he gave it to someone else, or put it in a trashcan, etc. After he gives security the phone, he then tells them that he would have given it back to me earlier, but I called him a racist term that I think you can guess and which I’ve never used on anyone in my life.
After I got back my phone and decided not to press charges, I grabbed my work from the table where I had left it and I got the hell out of there - leaving behind my fast food order and any chance of getting my parking ticket validated. So, fleeing the scene with all possible haste cost me maybe $20, but I did get back my $300 phone and avoided an altercation with this kid’s friends, so I guess that’s kind of a better result than I probably deserve for my stupidity.
Right now I’m kind of wishing I had pressed charges, because the only person who actually learned anything in this whole affair is me. I’m sure the kid who stole my phone just thought it was a really good time watching a white guy who was trying to be helpful get really pissed off, and I’m also guessing it was a fun game trying to pull one over on mall security. So, I’m pretty sure his financial and emotional cost for the whole thing was zip. However, I was stupid enough to hand him my phone in the first place, so I don’t know if I really deserve the satisfaction of seeing the kid hauled away by the cops. I only hope that at least security escorted him out of the mall and told him not to come back.
Anyway, I guess I’m pretty lucky the kid was not a very good thief, because if he had been just a hair smarter he probably could have gotten away with it. Although I’m not sure theft was really the point - I think stealing my phone was just something to do. Meantime, I think I’m going to stop using the malls as an office anymore. I don’t like some of the people who hang out there - and anyway I don’t really want to run into this particular kid and his friends for a while.
Oh, and now I’m just a little less predisposed to help out strangers anymore, and maybe a little more willing to be judgemental about people I don’t know. Maybe I’m smarter now - the same way that I’ve gotten smarter on a couple of other occasions when I’ve tried to help a stranger and I’ve been ripped off.
But you know what? Little by little, this is how all of us learn to stop caring about people we don’t know, and learn to keep our world’s as small and tightly controlled as we can. This is also how whole groups of people get painted with a brush they don’t deserve for actions they didn’t commit.
This is how a few assholes screw it all up for the rest of us.
