Saturday I was in a department store buying some clothes.  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a tall, balding man in a salmon-colored tank top standing next to a rack of shirts, idly flipping through them.  I guess I have a proclivity toward noticing that sort of thing.  My eyes drawn inexorably to the scene, I watched him take a shirt off the rack, put it on, and proceed about the department looking like he was shopping for clothes.  No pretense of trying it for fit.  No looking in a mirror.  He was wearing this shirt because it was his now.

I was positively fascinated by the sheer brazenness of his action.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I don’t know if he ever actually noticed I was watching him, but he wouldn’t leave the area as long as I was there, going back and forth to different racks as long as I was still shopping.  I wandered over to the rack from whence he got his shirt, noted the empty hanger on it, then picked out a shirt of the same style he had taken, and made a show of holding it up as if I was checking it out for purchase, even comparing it to his shirt since he was at the adjacent rack.  I was tempted to ask him what he thought of the shirt; ask him how he found the fabric and if it was comfortable.  I was likewise tempted to take the empty hanger, walk over, and simply say, “Here, you forgot this.”

Instead, I left the department, returned a minute later and he was gone, empty hanger still hanging on the rack.  I didn’t do a thing about it.  Would you have?

Back when I worked retail — yes, I did my time at Radio Shack — I caught a shoplifter or two, usually teenagers.  In those cases, my goal was to prevent the loss of merchandise, not get someone arrested.  As a retail worker, I don’t have any power or authority to prevent someone from leaving the store, and I could, in fact, get in trouble if I did try to detain someone.  So instead I’d walk up behind them, say something clever like “You’ve either got a walkman from that shelf in your pocket, or you’re way too interested in resistors than anyone should be.”  The usual result of something like that is Drop It and Run.  Fine by me.

But I never had to confront someone who I couldn’t take on if it came to that.  And, since this wasn’t my store, I wasn’t about to start.  I suppose I could have reported him, but I doubt it was have helped since, as I mentioned, when I left the department he disappeared faster than a Fox News anchor’s credibility.

Maybe I’m assuming too much.  Maybe my tank top-wearing compadre simply wandered over to a cashier and produced the tag for the shirt he was wearing, saying “I’ll be wearing this out.”  Certainly, unless and until he left the store, he hadn’t actually done anything wrong.  Still, I found it amusing.