Story Archive

Where Are the Garden Supplies?

A clerk at a Hudson’s Bay department store in Winnipeg, Man., Canada, noticed a man dash by the jewelry counter, headed toward cosmetics. “I’m looking at him, he’s got garden clippers, and I’m seeing the clippers and thinking, ‘We don’t sell clippers’,” she said later. Then she noticed the police officers behind him; at least one had his gun at the ready. They had been summoned after the man allegedly pointed his own gun at a shopper. The officers eventually tackled him in the parking lot; the “clippers” were a pair of bolt cutters that he allegedly used to try to steal a bicycle, and the unidentified 22-year-old was arrested. The clerk was appalled. “This is retail, for heaven’s sake!” (RC/Winnipeg Free Press) ...Could be worse: it could have turned into wholesale violence.