When Dyson entered ZMart today he immediately noticed four employees standing at the front looking out into the store. All were wearing the megastore’s signature purple and yellow over dark security uniforms. Local news stations had recently reported the increase in theft so the store was beefing up its security. Dyson couldn’t see for sure, but at least two of them were packing, which meant they were serious about their show of security.
Dyson nodded at the bulky blonde woman with a security hat on nearest the entrance, but she didn’t acknowledge though she did follow him into the store with her eyes.
After grabbing a shopping basket, he turned back and she was still looking at him, staring him down. Dyson had been profiled before when he was younger when he came in with a few rowdy friends, but it wasn’t this obvious.
He finished shopping, yet still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He knew about the dozens of overhead cameras scrutinizing his every movement in the store, but those four in front bothered him.
With plastic shopping bags in hand, Dyson surveyed the four at the front, all burning a hole straight through him with their eyes. He passed one of them and said, “I don’t like what you’re doing,” but the large man said nothing.
When he passed the bulky lady he first greeted on the way in, he stopped directly in front of her.
“Is there a problem?” he asked, but she said nothing.
He looked her up and down, and then he saw it: the crossed cardboard feet at the bottom. The four lifelike cardboard cutouts were intended to deter shoplifting and shoplifters. They had piercing Mona Lisa eyes, eyes that were photographed to follow you wherever you went.
As Dyson broke out into the open air, he noticed a manager, a man walking in front of the store with a lit cigarette in hand. He said, “Gotcha, didn’t they??”
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