How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? (32 page)
Read How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? Online
Authors: David Feldman
Stephen H. Cook chronicles a cagier strategy:
Most bad-check crooks have to move fast for their schemes to work consistently. This forces them to use checks with low numbers. The first rule for retail store managers is to be suspicious of low check numbers. Managers are supposed to engage in conversation with anyone presenting such a check, starting with questions along the line of, “New in town? Tell me about your apartment or house? Have you met your new neighbors yet?”
The grocery store manager is then supposed to point where the cleaning and related household supplies aisle is. If the shopper is legitimately new in town and is unfamiliar with the store, this apparent friendliness on the part of the store manager is very welcome, and is good business practice for the retailer. If the person is a crook, all of this attention from the store manager should force a decision to take the bad checks elsewhere.
Sounds like Cook is implying that every grocery store manager is a would-be Columbo, making criminals squirm. And several of our readers were sure that this thesis explains why the examination of the proffered checks is often so cursory. Lane Chaffin of Temple, Texas, wrote:
The whole rigmarole is to make a would-be bad check writer “sweat it out.” If the check writer feels he may be turned down or possibly even recognized as a previous violator, he may change his mind.
Cook confirms that part of a manager’s job is to “size up” check writers, and that certain profiles persist that can lead to prejudicial judgments. According to Cook, the best risks for personal checks include:
1) clean-cut parents shopping with children
2) clean-cut father shopping with children
3) well-dressed, well-groomed woman (especially if shopping in the evening after work and before dinner)
4) male coming in after work, still wearing a necktie, who is buying a few items
5) any clean-cut person who is making a large purchase and who is able to present enough cash to cover most of it, but needs to write a check only for the discrepancy
According to Cook, these are the worst risks:
1) single males buying staples
2) harried, “thirty-something” women, especially if overweight, unattractive, or shopping with children
3) married males buying staples, who present little cash and no credit cards
4) any shopper using food stamps
Says Burns, this list represents the following prejudices:
1) Single males are notorious for being sloppy and disorganized about household habits, including the proper maintenance of a checking account.
2) Unattractive divorced women with children have trouble making ends meet.
3) Suspicion of any married man doing the family grocery shopping by himself.
4) Any person using food stamps is too poor to properly maintain a good checking account.
Some of these prejudices may have enough basis in fact to perpetuate themselves, some are just based on outmoded traditions about who does the grocery shopping.
Grocery store managers are supposed to be suspicious of personal checks because grocery shopping has traditionally been a cash-only business. As a result, grocery stores get more bad checks than other types of retailers from people who are
not
crooks.
In conclusion, the answer to our Frustable is: Grocery store managers can be looking at about twenty-five different things when they give your check the once-over. But if they approve it as quickly and as superficially as most seem to do, either they are not doing their job right or you live in Mayberry R.F.D., or some other place where store managers actually know customers by name and by sight.
Submitted by Chuck Jeffries of Greensboro, North Carolina
.
A complimentary book goes to Stephen H. Cook of North Providence, Rhode Island, and to Joseph S. Blake, Jr., of Ottawa, Kansas. Thanks also to the scores of readers who made the same points as our grocery experts but whom we did not have space to quote
.
FRUSTABLE 10:
Why do so many policemen wear mustaches?
For some reason, civilians were reluctant to speculate about this issue, but we heard from quite a few policemen and friends and relatives of cops. We were surprised that so many responses echoed that of Scott Miles of Santa Monica, California:
My best friend, Tim, is a police officer. Like many of his fellow officers, Tim has what some would call a “baby face.” His features are very soft and his looks lead people to assume, initially, that he is a good-natured, easygoing guy.
In Tim’s case, this impression is true, but it is not a very good image for a police officer who needs to command authority. Tim grew a mustache to harden his look, to make him look a little older and tougher.
Of course, some prefer to look older for personal reasons. A few officers repeated the sentiment of Eric Crane of Texarkana, Texas: “My wife won’t let me shave mine off because I would look like I’m sixteen years old.”
Many readers and police officers mentioned that in our culture, mustaches mean macho. We are left with a chicken/egg problem: Do cops grow mustaches because they are already macho? Or do they appear more macho because they wear a mustache? Clifford Smith, an officer in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, notes that mustaches date back to the very first “cops” in Robert Peel’s London service, and that “staches” have always been associated with military and paramilitary men.
Although a young officer might want to project machismo, we’re guessing that other factors are more important. Most of the military and police officers we’ve met, despite the visual image they project, want to express their individuality as persons. Confronted with strict controls over what they can wear and how they can look, a mustache becomes a way to stand out from the crowd. Many cops concurred, among them Ohio police officer Mike Foley:
We have to have short hair and no beard. The
only
allowance for any “style” is a mustache. Most cops (after a few years) want to look like something other than a boy scout, so they grow one. Plus, it keeps the bosses mad when you don’t trim it.
Foley’s combination of humor and mild rebellion was typical of almost all of the letters we received from police officers. Noncop Bob Kowalski of Detroit, Michigan, aptly summarizes the feelings of many police officers who wrote us:
Perhaps policemen would not be so keen to have mustaches if police departments weren’t so keen on banning them! The old forbidden fruit…
And we were moved by this note from the policeman’s bulletin board on Prodigy Service. Leo Martin raises a point we had not considered—some cops might tire of looking like cops:
I am a cop out in northern California, and I’ve had hair growing from my lip up to my nose for most of my life. It started in the Marine Corps, where the only facial hair you could have was a “stache.”
Most police departments have the same policy. I think growing a mustache makes us feel and look more like regular people and less like cops.
We’re faced with a paradox. Cops grow mustaches to express their individuality, yet so many cops wear them that it defeats the purpose. This irony was not lost on our favorite self-examination, from admitted baby face Steven J. Schmidt of Covington, Kentucky:
As a mustache wearer for eighteen of my nineteen years as a policeman, I have some insight into the question. The obvious answer to this Frustable is, “Because they can.” Although police departments aren’t as paramilitary as they used to be, most policemen cannot wear beards or grow their hair long. A mustache, therefore, becomes a symbol of their individuality.
I know that makes about as much sense as all the people in the 1960s who grew their hair long to demonstrate their “individuality,” but there it is. You might notice that a lot of retired policemen and discharged servicemen grow their hair long or grow a beard right after leaving “uniformed” service “just because they can.” Once the novelty wears off, they revert to what’s comfortable for them.
Schmidt reports that once he turned forty, “I didn’t need the mustache to look older anymore. In fact, I cut it off to look younger.”
As we mentioned, the cops we heard from demonstrated quite a sense of humor. Here are some of the, er, more unusual solutions to this Frustable:
I have a “stache” just because it gives me something to do while I drive around for eight hours. You can twist it and pull it for eight hours and you smoke fewer cigarettes. Sounds silly but it works for me. (Bill Pador, Jr., New Jersey)
I like to make my partner feel like I’m one of
him
. You may not realize that I’m referring to my partner, Max, who is a horse, and also has hair around his lips. (Christopher Landry, New Orleans, Louisiana)
Now that you mention it, my mustache probably came from off the top of my head. (Greg Wilson, Delaware)
I guess it was so my kids could pull it when it was time to get up for work. (Alan Levine, Philadelphia)
And, last but not least,
You can lick the doughnut powder off a mustache for hours after the last coffee break—and it still tastes good. I usually cut mine off in summer because if I don’t, everyone knows I’ve been eating ice cream. Also, a “stache” may act as the last air filter in the air we sometimes have to breathe—I go home and hose it out. Lastly, if a catfish can have one, so can I. (William Howe, IV, Prodigy Service)
Submitted by Steve Propes of Long Beach, California. Thanks also to Laura Arvidson of Westville, Indiana, and Brad Huddleston of Bakersfield, California
.
A complimentary book goes to Steven J. Schmidt of Covington, Kentucky. Thanks to all the officers from the Police Topic on the Prodigy Service
.
The Frustables That Will Not Die
Imponderables
readers don’t give up. Even though we have partially flushed out the frustration posed by the Frustables in other books, readers want to leave no stone unturned. Your most recent contributions to the demolition of past Frustables are presented here.
Please remember we do not have the space to review all the theories we’ve already advanced; this section is meant as a supplement, not a substitute, for our discussions in previous books
.
Frustables First Posed in
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?
and First Discussed in
When Do Fish Sleep?
FRUSTABLE 1:
Why do you so often see one shoe lying on the side of the road?
In the past, we’ve heard from mostly urban SSS (single-shoe syndrome) theorists. But there has been a recent rash of sightings in more bucolic settings, like this one from Donald Mueggenborg of Lemont, Illinois:
We marathon canoe racers often get our feet wet. One year, it became fashionable to tie our wet shoes to the rear thwart when transporting canoes. The shoes not only dried out but became sort of a sign of fellowship. Often, one shoe would become untied and fall off.
Is there any good way to use one tennis shoe?
Sure, if you are Alyssa Constantine, of New York City. Alyssa lives in a woodsy area of Queens, where hikes and field trips are often conducted by nearby schools, with
…students carry bulging backpacks, heavy sleeping bags, and a tote full of life’s necessities. Every forty minutes or so, the teacher allows students to take off their shoes and pamper their aching feet.
Every day, I come out and collect forgotten, mateless shoes, lost in the sea of jackets, totes, sleeping bags, etc. I now have at least one hundred different shoes in my basement.
One hundred shoes in the basement? Whatever happened to collecting dolls? Or stamps? We still don’t think Alyssa’s stash is sufficient to explain the widespread sightings of single shoes on the road. Perhaps the answer could lie in perverse camp counselors? We heard this startling testimony from Mary Beth MacIsaac, from beautiful Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia: