Why Does My Deodorant Get Locked Up?
Because People on the Streets Cut and Serve Hygiene Products Like it’s Dope
Damn, I forgot to wear deodorant. Again.
Late, I rush into the Safeway on Mission Street. I find the toiletry aisle. I find my preferred deodorant — the Degree dry spray, also preferred by Chef Curry — in a case. And it is locked.
While thinking about how I can bypass the long lines at the only two open registers, I see a man with dreads who is dressed in all black walking swiftly toward me. He’s got a paper bag in his right hand, which also clutches the waistband of pants in danger of falling.
He’s being trailed — rather closely — by a security guard, whose hands are placed in his pocket as if he’s on a routine store patrol.
I can’t hear what the man says, but the guard’s “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh” is clearly audible.
As they get closer to me, the man, without slowing or turning around, says, “Why you asking for my bag?”
The bag rhymically smacks against his knee. In time and on beat, the guard says, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.”
In his left hand, the man has a bouquet of flowers. Something is happening, I realize. Either this is a case of customer profiling or someone’s being accused of shoplifting.
They turn a corner and I hear it — paper shredding followed by plastic bottles tumbling onto the floor.
The security guard returns. He’s now cradling several bottles of shampoo in his arms.
“You see that, OG?,” he says. “He trying to play me, OG.”
“How did you know?,” I ask.
“They had just restocked it, OG,” he says, pointing to the shelf where the shampoo was taken from. “Talking ‘bout, ‘Why you messing with me?’”
And the bag? The man said he had brought it with him, but, as the intrepid security guard noticed, it had too few creases to have been previously used. He had gotten the bag at the store.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Why would anyone steal shampoo bottles, you might be asking yourself. On the street, hygiene products such as soap and toothpaste can earn a premium. A multipurpose product such as shampoo can be sold for a higher rate, and it can be, to use a street metaphor, be stepped on to make the product stretch.
The guard, who is the true OG in this story, didn’t care about the flowers, which he speculates were to be purchased to reduce suspicion.
“That’s nothing compared to how much this is. This is Head & Shoulders. This is $8, $9 a bottle,” he says.
If the man, who dipped after the bag was torn, wanted to avoid suspicion, he shouldn’t have suspiciously used the pole in the aisle as cover. He also shouldn’t have treated the grocery store like it was a hotel where amenities are expected to be pilfered.
As he restocks the shelf, one of the bottles falls from the guard’s arms and a chip of a cap’s blue plastic skitters away. He remains composed, obviously, as he’s obviously the kind of guy who chases a thief with his hands in his pocket.
“You just gotta be calm, OG,” he says. “I didn’t have to grab nothing. My main focus is the bag. I’m not fin to touch you, bruh, but I’m definitely going to get that bag out your hand.
“That’s definitely going to happen.”
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
[This story originally appeared on Ripple.News]
