These rules exist for a reason. As Thomas mentions, if you structure things so that people are allowed to have damaged product people will often engineer situations that will allow then to benefit from “accidents”. The bulk of money lost from theft, or what they call shrinkage, in the biz, comes from employees. Loss prevention often starts by preventing loss internally. In every place I ever worked the biggest losses always came from staff. Unfortunately when you try to control loss from a great distance the methods tend to become more and more draconian because you can’t micromanage every situation. Big companies don’t trust their management all the way down to store level, and that’s probably wise. The store I worked for actually had two instances where almost the entire crew were working to steal thousands of dollars of merchandise as a team. I came in after that point and while I worked that never happened in no small part because, in spite of hating the company, I would still rat on anyone I caught acting shady to preserve my own job. I was certainly duped on more than one occasion, but no cabals of theft began while I was on the team. Only little parties. Anyway, the distrust between owners and staff has become a vicious cycle that I expect will never be repaired. If you don’t treat your staff well it makes them disloyal & management barely even thinks of employees as human these days.

On a more personal note, a few things from my life I want to make note of so they hopefully won’t be lost to me over time.

My grandfather’s last words to my grandmother were “Goodbye beautiful.”

Grandma fell onto a metal magazine rack on her way back to bed. Her legs had been giving out randomly & she refused to use a walker or a cane. The magazine rack was one she inherited from her mother. It ruptured a kidney, causing internal bleeding. In spite of the fact that her entire house was wired with cameras so we could keep an eye on her the camera that would have caught the actual moment of the accident shut off. The fall broke her collarbone and two ribs as well. She wasn’t wearing an alert necklace so she dragged herself to her chair before grandpa heard her. No one is sure who called 911.

Her bloodtype was O so they took several bags of blood with her to Wichita, but she didn’t lose much blood on the way. In surgery she did however. They didn’t sew her closed because they needed to go back in the next day to see if anything else was damaged that they missed. When they went back in 90% of both intestines had already died. At this point there was no saving her. Grandma was still aware, but could no longer speak. Those of us who couldn’t be there were all called to say our final goodbyes while she could still hear us and communicate via hand squeezes and eyebrow code. Which she had practiced from her time coming in and out of a coma. I’ve already related the story of my goodbye to grandma. After that the family members who were on hand settled in for the last ride. She was essentially being kept alive by medication to keep her blood pressure stable. She has always had a problem with maintaining her blood pressure in surgery and whatnot so once they drugs wore off it should have taken an estimated 6 minutes for her to die. She held on for a little over 30. She departed from this world on her own terms, which were the only ones she was ever willing to accept.

Each and every one of us has so many stories we could tell about her. My first memory as a sentient being is of being on the floorboard of her car, playing with a wind up crab toy. She’s not even in the memory, I just know she was driving. She took care of me while my mother finished high school. I wish I had taken the time to write down the stories she told me about the time before I was born because my memory isn’t as clear trying to retell it.
She was still quite young when I was going to be born and the idea that she could be a grandmother at that age was driving her nuts. She was a bit vain and I was kind of a symbol of the fact that she was, in fact, also aging. She stared having terrible headaches to the point that she went to the doctor over them. He told her that they were from the stress she was inflicting on herself over the whole affair. The doctor told her “That baby is going to be born, so you might as well accept it and start loving it now.” She did. The headaches stopped.
I don’t know when she started calling me Special Angel, but I don’t remember a time when she didn’t. She called me that from the first time I can remember talking to her till the last time we hugged as I left her house. I can barely tolerate the thought that I’ll never hear it again.

She loved all her grandchildren with all her heart but, as I told the other 8 of them as we stood 6 feet from her grave, she loved me just a little bit more. XD

Posts authored by Jackie

2401 Taking In The Trash.