When you work in retail, after a time you get extremely good at noticing one kind of customer.

The shoplifter.

Whether it’s something about their body language, the way they move around the store, or that strange bulge in their bag, you learn to pick up on it – and also what not to do in response.

The store colleague in this story got the approach quite right after spotting a suspected shoplifter.

But the woman’s excuse was beyond anything the staff had ever heard before.

Read on to find out what she said.

“My sister’s friend bought that for me earlier for my sore leg!”

It was about 10:50pm, and we were about to lock up for the night when a woman who I’d just served seemed to linger around the DVDs at my till.

She was picking them up frantically then looking at them and putting them back.

She was acting suspicious so I decided to call on the intercom to my manager to make sure she wasn’t doing anything on CCTV.

Him and a colleague went into the back and about five minutes later both of them come back and ask the woman to take the steak out of her bag.

Let’s see why this woman was behaving so weirdly.

The woman went absolutely livid, screaming at my manager that her sister’s friend bought it for her earlier (bearing in mind I’ve been on the till since about 2pm that day, and have never sold a steak, but I didn’t know if anyone else had during my break).

This woman claimed that her sister’s friend had bought the steak to soothe her bad leg, yet she was walking absolutely fine about the shop.

So this woman was screaming at my manager, who is probably the best guy I’ve ever met.

He was really calm and really professional, and basically told her she could come collect it the next morning with the receipt, because as far as they’d seen she’d grabbed the steak (which was cold as heck, didn’t know her bag had cooling properties) and shoved it into her bag.

But that wasn’t all that was hidden on the woman’s person.

Not only that, but the charity CDs I’d noticed her looking at earlier? She had decided to pocket one of those too.

So not only had she tried to steal a £5 steak, but she had also attempted to steal from charity too. How low can you get?!

After escorting this woman out of the shop and locking the doors (because at this point it was actually past closing time), she began to kick the door and scream through it – we could hear her upstairs while we were getting our coats!

She was standing at the bus stop outside when we left the building, still screaming her heart out even before we’d left the store, screaming god knows what.

And that wasn’t the end of her odd behavior.

I walk home, so I had to walk past her while she’s screaming – luckily I was on the opposite side of the road and had my colleague with me.

She was actually starting to threaten to have us shot (this is East Coast UK – good luck with that).

She was still screaming her heart out even when everyone had left.

I didn’t find out until later that she had actually grabbed a glass bottle and lobbed it at one of my colleague’s cars – luckily there was only minor damage and she wasn’t hurt; the manager never told us what happened but apparently the police were called.

This could have been a truly terrifying experience had it not been handled so well by the management at this store.

Trying to steal from a store is one thing, but verbally abusing and threatening the staff when you get caught?

It’s clear this woman needs help.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person was flabbergasted at the unconventional use of steak.

While others were curious about where the steak ended up next.

Meanwhile, others had had similar experiences.

It’s blatantly clear that she was stealing, whatever crazy excuse she decided to come up with in the moment.

Because she probably panicked when confronted, and her defensiveness came out, concocting this tall story.

It’s one way to explain why you had steak in your pocket, that’s for sure.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.