For the past couple of weeks we’ve had a puzzling series of events in one of our districts. Someone has been stealing our product from the stores, sometime in the wee hours of the morning between when we deliver it and when the store personnel arrive to take it inside. For many customers we place the product in a discretely placed black box, off to the side of the store entrance. Although the box can be locked, most merchants prefer to not lock it, as the fact that the product is not all that expensive and the black box keeps it out of sight, therefore out of mind. Plus there is a lot of police presence in this area and this kind of thing just doesn’t happen here.

But someone familiar with our system has been taking advantage of the unlocked boxes and raiding the boxes. For at least 2 weeks. They are smart enough to not take from the same store every morning – they switch out their target at random, and there are about a dozen from which to choose.

We finally caught on when one of the store managers saw a man getting into a large black Suburban parked in front of their black box. He had been standing in front of the black box and the manager thought he might have been delivering the product, although she had never seen this man before and didn’t recognize his car. It wasn’t until he sped off and she went to retrieve the product and found it missing that she realized she had almost caught the thief red-handed.

So now I am on the lookout for a tall white man with short dark hair who drives a black Suburban between 4:30 and 5:00 each morning. When I catch him, there will be drama, as I intend to have him arrested and prosecuted, and if he is who I think he is, I intend to have him lose his job, as well.