HLnovel Chapter 50 To catch a thief, you must catch him red-handed.
Chapter 50 To catch a thief, you must catch him red-handed.
Finding a job in Pucheng these days is quite difficult; most companies and businesses still primarily hire employees. Even service industries, like Dafeng Restaurant, are basically not hiring.
Most of the shops are run by husband and wife, and they rarely need help from outsiders.
Only small restaurants need help serving food and washing dishes. It's not only tedious, but the pay is also very low. When business is slow, they'll let you go home to rest, and only call you back when they need you.
She was on leave without getting paid. In her previous life, she worked at a restaurant by the bridge for more than two months and only received wages for about twenty days.
In my previous life, I had just arrived in the city and knew nothing. I went to the restaurant to find a place to stay.
Having spent most of her life doing business and having a place to live, there's no way she would go to those places.
After searching for two days without finding a suitable job, Deng Xiuzhen decided to follow the same path she had taken in her previous life, but she would skip the first step and go straight to the second: work at the "Mini Clothing Store" diagonally opposite the Dafeng Restaurant. The "Mini Clothing Store" mainly sold women's underwear, and also sold sweaters and coats.
She knew they definitely needed people there; in her previous life, after she left the restaurant, she worked there.
The reason she hadn't considered going before was because two things happened while she was working there, causing her to work for over a month without receiving any pay and even losing money.
When she applied for the job, the boss, Yingzi, gave her a trial period. She first looked at her ID card and then asked her about her family situation, where she lived, where she had worked before coming here, and other routine questions.
Then she helped organize the goods, clean the house, and talk to customers when they came.
I tried it out all morning, and at noon I told her to go home and prepare. She'll start work officially tomorrow. Her salary is a base salary plus commission. The base salary is 100 yuan per month, and the commission is calculated at 1%. The more she sells, the higher her salary will be.
The next day, Deng Xiuzhen went to work. The first few days went smoothly; she sold some clothes, and Deng Xiuzhen thought that if things continued like this, her monthly salary would be quite good. Then, things happened.
The weather was nice that day, and there were many people on the street. Several groups of customers came to the store one after another.
The women were chattering away, asking about this and that, and Deng Xiuzhen was overwhelmed with their questions.
After they made their choices, they went to the fitting room to try them on.
Unfortunately, there was only one fitting room, and with several people wanting to try on clothes, there wasn't enough space.
One of the women said, "We're all women, what you have, others have too, and we're not afraid of people seeing, so why don't we just try it together?"
They thought it made sense, and a few generous people went into the fitting room together.
Some women tried it on quickly, then came out saying it didn't fit, left the bra behind, and walked away.
When the last woman came out, Deng Xiuzhen went into the fitting room to get her underwear, only to find there was only one piece available.
Each of those people took several items in, but when they came out they only took one item, and some didn't even take them out. Shouldn't the rest be in the fitting room?
Why is there only one item left in the fitting room?
She grabbed the woman and asked her for her underwear.
The woman said, "I'm right here, where did I take yours?"
Deng Xiuzhen got anxious and said, "If you didn't take it, where did the clothes go?"
The woman said, "How would I know where your clothes went? That's your business, what does it have to do with me?" With that, she turned to leave.
Deng Xiuzhen grabbed her, preventing her from leaving, and demanded to open her bag to look inside.
The woman said, "Don't just say you want to check my bag, you can search me too."
But you're framing me! You're insulting my character!
I'm telling you this upfront: if I find it, I'll compensate you tenfold; if I don't, you either compensate me tenfold or kowtow and apologize to me!
Just as Deng Xiuzhen was about to agree, someone from the shop next door came over and advised, "Don't rush, talk about it slowly."
The woman said, "Take your time! They've wrongly accused me of being a thief, how can I take my time to explain?"
A person from the shop next door asked Deng Xiuzhen, "A few items are missing?"
Deng Xiuzhen was almost in tears, and replied with a nasal voice, "I don't know, but I estimate there are three or four items."
The man pointed to the woman's bag for Deng Xiuzhen to see, and then said, "It shouldn't have been her who took it. It's all a misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding."
Deng Xiuzhen finally understood: that woman's handbag was so small, how could it possibly hold a bra? Even if she wasn't worried about the underwire deforming, it could only hold one bra.
She could only let that woman go.
Then she met the person from the shop next door, whose name was Chunxiang, and who was minding the shop for her relative.
Chunxiang told her, "Those people must be a group. The one who left first must have hidden the underwear in his clothes and taken it with him."
Deng Xiuzhen thought about it and realized this made sense: there were still people inside, and she subconsciously assumed the clothes were still there. Because she wanted to keep an eye on the outside, she didn't go in to check. By the time the last person came out, the clothes had already been taken somewhere.
This is baseless; even reporting it to the police won't help. Not only does she not know those people at all, but even if she finds them, what proof can she use to demonstrate that they stole the underwear from the store? Couldn't they have bought it elsewhere? Or could they have bought it here before?
They say you have to catch adulterers in the act, and you have to catch thieves red-handed, but they caught nothing. Deng Xiuzhen could only accept her bad luck.
She learned from her experience that she would never let others go in to try things together again, and she would always make sure to explain to them how many items they brought in.
As a result, similar situations did not occur again.
About twenty days later, that afternoon there weren't many customers in the store. A woman came in to try on underwear. She took three pieces in, but came out with only two. She said they didn't fit and she didn't want them.
Deng Xiuzhen looked into the fitting room and found no underwear. So she stopped the woman from leaving, saying that she had clearly taken in three pieces, so where did the other one go?
The woman said, "There are only two items, where did the three come from?"
Deng Xiuzhen said, "There are three items, there are clearly three items!"
The woman said, "It's two pieces! It's definitely two pieces!"
Deng Xiuzhen said, "I took three items in for you, and you must have taken the other one!"
"You filthy bitch, how dare you frame me!" the woman said, grabbing Deng Xiuzhen's hair.
Two people came in immediately to break up the fight, and the three of them pushed and shoved Deng Xiuzhen around, leaving her completely dazed.
More and more people gathered to watch, and someone called the police.
When the police arrived, Deng Xiuzhen was released. She was so dizzy and disoriented that she could barely stand and collapsed to the ground.
"What's going on?" the policeman asked.
The woman said, "I went to the store to look at clothes, and she accused me of stealing her clothes."
A woman said, "Yes, when we came in, we heard the shop assistant say something like, 'You must have taken that piece of clothing.'"
Another woman said, "The two of them started fighting, so I came in to break them up."
The person next to them said, "When we came in, we saw three people tearing at each other."
Deng Xiuzhen was still very dizzy and couldn't hear what anyone was saying.
Until the police walked up to her and asked, "What exactly happened?"
She came to her senses and recalled, "She said she wanted to try on clothes, and then took three pieces in, but when she came out she only gave me two. I looked in the fitting room and there were no clothes there, so she must have taken the other one."
"You're still framing me!" the woman said, lunging at him again.
The police stopped her and said, "Let's talk this out. Hitting someone is against the law!"