By Mary Potter
Belle Trading Store had been a successful family business for over a hundred and twenty years. Arthur Belle ran the store, as had his father, his grandfather and even his great grandfather before him. Arthur had immense pride in the store and had overcome many hurdles to keep it running well and keep the profits rolling in. He brought the store through good times and bad times, brought it into the age of technology and was very popular with his staff. Belle Trading Store was a huge department store but had started as a small one room shop a hundred and twenty years back.
Recently, Arthur had been experiencing a problem. For some reason, sales were down and his figures did not seem to add up. Arthur had never had this trouble before and it worried him a lot. He thought the reason for this could be shoplifters. Every department store has its share of thieves but some had better security in place than others, so shoplifters were deterred.
Arthur was friendly with many regular customers and did not want any imposing or obvious security measures but something definitely had to be done. Arthur decided to bring Belle Trading Store's security into the twenty first century, perhaps something he ought to have done before.
Arthur had a browse online and found just what he required. He organized a meeting with the store security to explain the new measures. Arthur gave each security guard a mobile phone and told them that the store would be surveilled from a central location and monitored using electronic eyes. Whoever was monitoring the store could then text the security guards so they could follow suspicious customers around, to find out if any theft was going on. The security staff would follow the possible shoplifters in a discreet manner and, these days, most people who shop in large department stores expect security staff to be walking around anyway. Arthur had total confidence in his new idea and had his fingers crossed for success.
The security staff also seemed impressed with this idea and confident that it would work better than their previous old-fashioned methods. Arthur explained to them that he did not want to offend his regular customers, who were also friends, by making the new security system obvious. After only two months, the sales figures were back to normal and everybody was happy. Arthur was delighted with the change and took the security staff out for dinner to celebrate Belle Trading Store becoming bigger, better and brighter than ever. |
