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| Photo by Jennifer E. Miller |
The Lady Thief
by,
Jennifer E. Miller
Recently, I saw a question on social media as follows:
How Smart Are You?
A lady walks into a store and steals a $100 bill from the register without the owner's knowledge. She comes back 5 minutes later and buys $70 worth of goods with the $100 bill. The owner givers her $30 in change. How much did the owner lose?
A. $30
B. $70
C. $100
D. $130
E. $170
F. $200
There were all sorts of answers and arguments towards which is the correct answer. "$100 is $100;" "It depends on the profit margin of the goods;" "$70 plus the cost of the goods." Of course, my creative analysis presents a different spin to answer the question of "How smart are you?"
For one thing: how did the lady thief go unnoticed? The sentence says she simply walks in, which would mean the store is already open for business. In other words, no breaking and entering. It also says "without the owner's knowledge" which would lead us to believe this is a mom-and-pop operation because most chains don't have owners working in the stores. Mom-and-pop stores typically have those little bells that ringy-ding-ding when the door is opened. Unless, the lady somehow outsmarted the bells' sound, I find it unlikely she would be unnoticed and/or not greeted in the first place.
Next problem: how did she physically take the money? Let's stay she premeditated her whole plan. She is hunkered down in the nearby bushes peeking into the store windows with binoculars. She waits until the owner goes to the back room (or somewhere away from the counter) and casually strolls in, muffling the mom-and-pop bells. If the $100 was in the cash register, how did she open it? I imagine that even though this may be a small-town operation, store owners are aware of the potential for theft and have secure storage devices to store their cash. The register would need a key, code, or other means of opening it. She's a former employee with a code that hasn't been updated? Okay. Maybe.
This brings me to another chin-rubbing question: what mom-and-pop store keeps a $100 bill in the cash register? Anyone who has worked retail or even manned a garage sale, knows that you need small bills for change. Lots of them. Perhaps it is the end of the day and the owner is letting it sit in the register until he places it in the safe or bank deposit bag. If it's the beginning of the day, a customer must've paid with it prior to lady thief's arrival. How did I come to the presumption that the theft happened at the beginning or end of the day? Remember, lady thief went unnoticed. There are no witnesses per the described scenario and she returns to the store, so it's easy to come to the conclusion that she chose a non-busy time to rip off the store owner.
All right, the stars align for lady thief and she somehow enters completely unnoticed, opens the cash register, and steals the $100 bill. The second sentence of the scenario says she returns in five minutes to buy $70 worth of goods. Hmmm. Based on criminal behavior patterns, I'd doubt our thief would use the money for purchasing of store goods. Criminals steal cash for drugs. But lets say she was down-and-out on her luck. Perhaps she got laid off, food stamps allotment got cut, simply got sick and was unable to work for a few days, etc. Why didn't she just snatch the goods from the shelf and bolt? It's sorta risky to show your face in the same place a short time later. She would be on surveillance twice.
Hey, that brings up another question: if security cameras were in use, this gal is in t-r-o-u-b-l-e.
Anyway moving on with the scenario. The owner next gives her $30 in change for the items she "purchases." Here is the large bill problem again. How many $100 bills do mom-and-pop operations get? I'm going to venture not too many because enough small businesses don't accept them to begin with. My point is, having a $100 bill in the cash register would be a rarity, and wouldn't the owner notice it's missing when he retrieves her change? I would say, yes, he would. He would then become suspicious, wondering what happened to his original $100 bill when this woman pays for her items with one. He would mentally jot down her physical description and/or take note of her license plate number. Seriously, though, in a small town with a store that uses an unsecured cash register, he would probably already know who she was.
That wraps up the scenario analysis and brings us to the final sentence: how much did the owner lose?
Answer G: The owner would actually make a profit because he could identify the lady thief with surveillance cameras, license plate, or personal recognition. She would get charged with theft, then the owner sues for losses, damages, and attorney fees caused by his absence due to the subpoena to testify at her trial.
But I don't think small-town folk get too excited about those sort of things, so I will go with
Answer H: The owner, living and operating a business in a red state, would lose a bullet.
Copyright 2018 Jennifer E. Miller
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