by Studs Terkel
“How would I describe my work? Different. Weird. At times, inconvenient. What they use u.s for is large thefts, continuous thefts of merchandise. Or if a client feels there’s mismanagement, they’ll put an undercover agent there, too. I’ve been doing this for two years and never had no problem. Undercover guys are the greatest actors in the world. You make a mistake and you’re not allowed to come home. (Laughs.) If they knew I was undercover there, they woulda thrown me out of the window.
“It’s a fast growing field of employment. Tremendous. Just pick up the papers, any day of the week, you can see it. There’s a definite need for it. You take the department stores, they are being literally torn apart. It’s three billion dollars a year in department stores. It’s unreal.
“I like my work because you’re not stuck in a lousy office. And I think people are very interesting. You get beautiful material . . . Pay’s good, I got no complaints—Christmas bonus, three or four raises a year. I plan staying in it a long time. It’s a very important held. This is one industry that affect all industries. Security. It’s also very helpful to the police department. We supply the police with a hell of a lot of information.”
His wife, Diane, occasionally joins in the conversation. A delightful little boy scrambles around and about the apartment. There is an openhanded hospitality, as beer and sandwiches are urged upon the guest.
I’ve been on a case one day and I’ve been on a case eight months. You never know how long you’re gonna be there. You put in an application for employment like you come off the street. You’re hired. It’s set up. The plant manager may be the only one in on it. Ninety percent of your job is mobility, to be able to move around, like a porter or a stock clerk. In the event of theft, you’re put in the department where it’s occurring.
In this one job I was a baker. They threw me in. You have a training program. I was hired as a dough mixer. They had a theft of butter. It sounds ridiculous but it ran into quite a bit of money. Seventy cartons of butter was being swiped on an average of once a week. This was going on for six months to a year, which amounted to something like four, five thousand dollars. This wasn’t too important. The problem was this company had a contract with the city. It was well over a million-dollar contract and they were worried about losing it. If the city sent an order down to find out where the stuff was going.
After working in the mixing room about two or three weeks, I was positive these guys were clean. I needed more mobility, so I went on the sanitation gang. They’re the guys that clean up. I had only a week to bust this case because I was going on a surveillance detail starting Monday. I did it in exactly one week.
We knew the butter was being taken out of the refrigerator. I stationed myself on top of the refrigerator, which was a completely dark end of the room. I stayed up there four days, eight-hour shifts. I sat, I walked around, there was room. The ceiling was a foot over my head. Nobody saw me.
I knew who had access to the refrigerator. I would see them take the key. You’d time it. You look at your watch and see what time he went and what time he came back. I’d say to the guy I work for, “I have to go to the men’s room.” I’d go up and check out the area. I had an idea it was being done on the weekend because they usually found the butter gone on a Monday or a Tuesday.
This one particular Friday he comes. This was like two ’ in the morning. He takes the butter, brings it to an adjacent room, and then he left. I got the lot number, the serial number, wrote it down, and called my supervisor, “We got the guy, the case is over.” He says, “Find out where he’s gonna take it.” That’s where we ran into a problem. I never seen him actually take the butter out of the place.
On Monday our office sent down the polygraphers, the lie detector guys. They confronted him and explained to him that he’d have to take the test. Everything came out. He signed a confession. But he signed without any witnesses around. He didn’t have any counsel. The confession, according to the union’s lawyers, was useless. It was a big, drawn out affair. The union wanted the company to take him back. Meanwhile, he couldn’t get unemployment because he was fired for theft. They won’t give you unemployment for that. So it had to go to arbitration.
He was there, the union lawyer, I was there, the company’s lawyer. He didn’t have a leg to stand on. They fired him. When I got up and took the stand, my testimony destroyed the man. I never thought I’d finish a case in a week. I never thought I’d catch the guy. I met my deadline. I’m proud of that.
DIANE (suddenly interrupts): You want it honestly? I can see sometimes where it really makes him feel bad. Where he really feels like the villain. Like the time that guy lost his job. (Addresses him) I couldn’t talk to you for a couple of days.
This one particular time she’s talkin’ about, it did. He was with the company twenty, twenty-five years. He was supposed to retire that September. Black man. And he just blew everything. He was out. That’s it. We busted the guy. Nothing, after twenty-five years. He ain’t got a job, he’s not a kid any more, what does he do?
DIANE: What’d you say? In your own words, you said the employer was wrong. You’re always stickin’ up for the employer, but in this case you didn’t. (Addresses me) He said, “The employer should have more rapport with the guy than that. He shoulda called him in and said, ‘What’s the problem? What do you need that extra money for?’ Maybe the guy’s in a bind or something. You shouldn’t throw him out in the street.” (To him) It was the first and only time he ever met the man that owned the company, right? He works for him for twenty-five years and never saw his face for twenty-five years. You said, “He should have some respect for the guy, as a man who put his life’s work into the business.” All right, so he stole some lousy butter. He should have found out the reasons. Apparently he needed extra money for something, whatever it was, right?
(He looks away for a moment. A slight pause.) First of all, most people don’t steal for money. These people are not criminals, they’re just like you and I. They feel they can get away with somethin’. Whatever his reason was I don’t know. I don’t think it was money. He was splittin’ it up with two other guys, so what the hell did he get out of it?
I testified. Sure, it bothered me in that the guy lost so much. I don’t know if I was mad at the guy for bein’ so stupid to pull somethin’ like this or what. The outcome was bad. You picture a guy fifty years old, out after twenty-five years. And if he’s got kids, they’re probably married, maybe they have children. He’s gotta go home now and tell his wife, “I lost my job because I stole.”
What happened to him?
I don’t know. (A long pause.) My company doesn’t like the idea that you’re gonna go out of your way to maybe hurt somebody for a buck. I don’t think they believe in that. Contrary to popular opinion, we do more good for people than damage. I wish I had a penny for every guy that became a manager because of me. You report the bad things, but you also report the good things. You’ve got a good man here, this guy knows what he’s doing. He didn’t go to college, but he knows his job—boom! I report ability as well as mismanagement. We’re complete. It’s everything.
The thing I like is I could start on a case tomorrow and there could be an office boy there and I could make that son of a gun a manager within six months. If this kid’s got something on the ball. I could say, “Why don’t you give him a better job? The other guy you got is a flunky, he’s a loser.” So he went to college, but he’s not smart.
A lot of people say, “Oh, you’re undercover,” right away, “bustin’ people by the dozen.” How many people of all the cases I worked on, with the exception of one, every other case, was there any jail involved?
DIANE: They can fire you.
Yeah, but that’s a far cry from servin’ time in jail. (Muses) As soon as I go into a place, everybody’s a suspect.
A long time ago I had this weirdo case. We had a client that was a big tire company that lost two hundred and some odd thousand dollars. They felt this one individual was stea
lin’ ’em. He owned a bar, this guy. My job was to go to the bar and drink beer and eat sandwiches all night and get friends with this guy. (Laughs.) So I used to go every night. I got pretty friendly with this guy. He was sellin’ hot jewelry and hot shoes, silverware you could buy, coats. But it never got down to tires. After two, three weeks, they pulled me off the case. I never found out what happened. I think if they woulda left me, I woulda found out, because the guy was mixed up in all kind of shady dealings.
The first night I walked in there, he comes over and says, “Are you a cop?” I said, “Jeez, I’ve been called a lot of things, I never been called that before.” I got a little nervous. He was a big guy, big Polack, nine feet tall and a thousand pounds. That was the only time I was ever confronted. It was a raunchy neighborhood and anybody in their right mind wouldn’t have gone in. I was clean. I never shoulda shaved.
I was called one weekend on a restaurant job. They felt it was being hit. The guys that were running it—at two ’ they close it up—they were taking cases of beer and soda and putting it in shopping bags, and walking out with the joint. I had a beautiful spot to watch. I started at six. They close at twelve-thirty. They shut the lights out, they lock the door, and that’s when they get their shopping bags and beer and soda and milk and everything. I sent in my report and that was it.
I was working on a very short case. They couldn’t understand why all this stealing was going on. I found out their top man was making $1.85 an hour. I said, “You don’t know why you have this theft problem?” (Laughs.) Give a guy a halfway decent salary—$1.85 an hour! What’s he, kidding me or what? He said, “That’s enough.” I worked there one day and they gave me something like eighty dollars. They hired a lot of Spanish-speaking people, Puerto Rican, Bolivia, and all that. I said, “You can’t understand . . . ”? He’s smokin’ a cigar and didn’t say nothin’. (Laughs.) They canceled the following day. The big bosses were the ones that pulled the cork.
The surveillance I was on was hijacking. You follow a truck all night, five days a week. You report all activities of the truckdriver and anyone you encounter. You gotta be a very good driver, you gotta have eyes like an eagle, and you gotta be a quick talker if you’re picked up by the cops. Every time we had an encounter with the police, they were very cooperative.
You got identification. They give you a card. The only time I have identification on me is when I’m on surveillance. In undercover work you have nothing at all. You may lose your wallet or the guy may fool around and grab your wallet, pull out the card—hey, boom! it’s all over.
Before I was a placement manager in a personnel agency. (Laughs.) The outfit I work for was one of my accounts. I used to send people there for jobs. A lot of guys went for it and a lot of guys didn’t. Before they hire you, you take a polygraph test. If they don’t like the way the results are, you’re not hired. They’re interested if you’ve ever been a drug user, whether you ever stole anything—in event you have to testify in court and you’re cross-examined. Do you love your wife? They ask you that.
The guys who would shy away couldn’t have made it anyway. They’re looking for a fairly honest person, a guy not afraid to work—because you’re put on cases involving manual labor. Reliability is the key. You need someone to show up for work, will do the reports and all this.
When I was in the personnel business, Wall Street was dying. Eighty percent of our business was Wall Street—brokerage houses, banks . . . I got laid off. (Laughs.) I knew these people were looking for someone, so I spoke to Mike and the following week I was hired.
The recession isn’t hurting this business, jeez, no! It’s the fastest growing field in the past ten years. There’s a need for it. If a person did something wrong twenty years ago or immoral, today’s it’s accepted, like nothin’. There’s a moral decay since after the Second World War.
Take petty thefts. A guy’ll take a salt shaker and then the other guy takes it. Years ago this was frowned down upon. Today it’s the thing. If you don’t take nothin’, you’re an idiot. You get five hundred people takin’ fifty-cent ash trays, it’s not fifty cents any more. It runs into money. That’s what brought the need for these security outfits. Our company does a lot of polygraph. They have contracts with trucking firms.
DIANE: Do they have to get the polygraph before they get the job?
Sure, oohhh sure. Imagine they hire you to drive a truck loaded with a hundred million dollars worth of fur coats. Hey, you drive away, you’re set for life. (Laughs.) The guy’s out the money.
DIANE: If you refuse, you don’t get the job?
I’m gonna hire a cashier, right. I want you to take a polygraph and you say no. I can say to you, “I don’t want to hire you.”
DIANE: That’s stupid.
You don’t have to take the test.
DIANE: But you don’t get the job.
Yeah. Why wouldn’t you want to take it?
DIANE: Because I wouldn’t. I want people to accept me as I am. I don’t need a test to prove my honesty.
Who said so?
DIANE: I said so.
It’s your word against the employer’s. He’s got more to lose than you. He’s gonna pay you X amount of dollars a week to do X amount of work. Maybe you’re a loser, maybe you’re a turkey.
DIANE: That’s the chance he takes.
Why should he take a chance? You’re gonna be guaranteed a week’s salary. Shouldn’t you guarantee a week’s work?
DIANE: I’d want to polygraph him.
(Looks heavenward.) Everybody looks at the employer like he’s the evil guy.
DIANE: He is the evil guy.
He is not, he wants to make a buck, just as much as you do.
DIANE: He wants to make a buck on you, not the same as you.
Of course. If he can’t make a buck on you, you’d be out of a job. If my company wasn’t makin’ money on me, you think I’d be workin’ there?
DIANE: You always seem to think people are doin’ you a favor and they’re not. You’re really doin’ them a favor because they’re makin’ money on you.
Of course. This is a capitalist society, whether you like it or not. It’s not like goin’ on welfare, you gotta work. There’s nothin’ wrong with it.
DIANE: Big business uses people. They use people as long as they can.
No news in that.
I been on this one case now about eight months. The problem is bad management, not theft. I started at the bottom and now I’m my own boss. Strange as it may seem, it’s hampered my investigation like a son of a gun, ‘cause I don’t have the time to get around. I gotta answer this guy’s question, take care of this and the other thing, I gotta know traffic. And I’ll go higher than that. The guy who’s on the case with me is today the merchandising manager of the company. He’s still an undercover agent, and they don’t know nothin’ about it. (Laughs.)
The case is never gonna be solved. It’s what we call preventive maintenance. Say an outbreak of thefts starts. Rather than call a UC man in after it started, they have a guy there all the time, who can report it constantly.
You and your friend may be at this company permanently?
I hope so.
DIANE: He’s got dental plans now with this one. You can get your teeth done and everything.
When they claim losses on their income tax, they have to show the Internal Revenue that they’re doing something to deter it. You can’t go over to IRS and say we were robbed a million dollars last year. They’d say, “What kind of security you got?” Security is a tremendous break to the company. You could start a company tomorrow and put a UC man in there and you could be in business ten years and he could still be there and you know everything that’s goin’ on.
DIANE: They have another agent workin’ with him that is reporting on him. (Chuckles.)
Yeah. What happened is this: Say I’m an agent and you’re an employee. I’ll go over to you and I’ll say, “Hey, I seen a TV in there. I wonder what the chances are of gettin’ th
at out.” You as an employee would more or less go along or say, “You’re crazy.” But if you’re an agent too, you’re gonna feed me. You’re gonna say, “Yeah, how the hell could we get it out of here?” And that’s what happened. (Laughs.) As soon as I gave him the bait, this other guy says, “Right. What do you think we oughta do about it?” So I called up my office and I said, “This guy, Hal . . . ” They said, “Forget it, he’s one of our own men.”
DIANE: They finally told him, “Don’t send us any more reports on him.”31
So part of the work is provocative—you tempt . . . ?
You can’t do that, it’s against the law. I’m just providin’ conversation. Entrapment is if I put a wallet on the floor, with a ten-dollar bill on it—forget it! Talkin’ about it is just a line of conversation. It may lead anywhere.
