Flasher in Aisle Three

This is my first post to Feministing.  By all rights it should probably be at a Hollaback site, but there isn’t yet one that covers the region this took place in.

This experience happened a couple of years ago.  At the time, I was working in a retail store in the arts district of Columbus, Ohio.  Even though we got the occasional drunk or creep in the store, I never felt unsafe working there.  Until…

The manager (female, as were most of the employees) had gone to the back of the store, where the office and restrooms were.  She was approached by a skeezy looking man who pulled down his pants and exposed himself to her.   She reported the incident to the police.

About a month later, the assistant manager (also female) and I were working when the same man came in and wandered to the back of the store (the better to catch us alone?) I called the police, and was in the process of explaining the situation to them when he came back up to the counter and asked where the restroom was.  I told him, and he shambled back to the back of the store, where he wandered up and down the aisles waiting for one of us to head back there.

Luckily, an acquaintance of the AM came in, and we asked him to stay with us in the store (it had just been us two employees and the pervert) until the police arrived.

The police finally did show, and they escorted the man out of the store.  One of the cops told me that he had “definitely been up to something” and was “likely to escalate,” but then they refused to charge him with anything, since he hadn’t actually had the chance to do anything this time ! I’m sure the Manager would have been happy to identify him as the man who had exposed himself the last time , but they just kicked him out of the store and let him go with a warning.

I saw him once more in the store during the holiday season, but the store was so full of people he just strolled in and out too quickly to do anything about it.  

Our job as retail workers was to be nice to people, to help them, and requires that anyone have access to the store/us.  If he had wanted to attack us, to “escalate” as the police suggested would happen, we could have done almost nothing to prevent it.  At least if they’d been willing to charge him with indecent exposure/sexual assault/whatever I’d have felt like they took our concerns seriously.   I’d still have felt nervous working in the store late at night, but…

We began joking about keeping pepper spray or a baseball bat behind the counter, but beneath the joking was genuine fear.  It reminded me of how vulnerable retail workers can be, how vulnerable females are perceived as being, and how little the police apparently care.

It feels better to get this off my chest.  Thanks for reading.