If you’ve ever been robbed by a stranger who pointed a gun at your head, it’s an experience you never forget. You know that you were a mere twitch of a finger away from suddenly being dead. And you always remember the feeling of almost childish helplessness and fear.
Jim Williams, 26, remembers it well. It happened only last November, when he was manager of an Aldi food market in the suburb of Streamwood.
It was just before the store closed on a busy Saturday. Williams was alone in one of the food aisles when a tall guy wearing a ski cap tapped his shoulder with a pistol, jammed it against his spine and ordered him back to the store office.
No one could see them. The two cashiers were busy with the last few customers. And his assistant manager was already doing paperwork in the office.
When they got there, the gunman told the assistant manager to flatten out on the floor. Then he told Williams to open the store safe and give him all the money or he’d blow his brains out.
Williams did exactly as he was told, which was the sensible thing to do.
But Williams’ assistant made a mistake. He twisted his head around as if trying to get a look at the gunman. The gunman didn’t like that and stomped his face, knocking out two front teeth.
Then he told the bloody-mouthed assistant that if he didn’t remain quietly on the floor, he’d put a bullet in Williams’ head.
Fortunately for both of them, there was a lot of money in the safe–more than $25,000. That’s because the no-frills Aldi food marts deal strictly in cash or food stamps.
Obviously the gunman knew this. Just as he knew that Aldi stores have no security people or cameras and few employees.
After taping their wrists, the gunman told them not to move for 10 minutes or they’d be killed. Then he left with the money.
Three days later, Williams was fired.
The higher-ups in the big Aldi chain blamed him for the loss of the $25,000. They said it should have been locked in an inner compartment of the safe so the gunman wouldn’t have known about it.
To which Williams says: “If the money hadn’t been there, and he had only gotten $500, I don’t know what he would have done. He had already kicked out my assistant’s teeth.”
What might the gunman have done if his efforts brought him only $500, when he almost certainly knew that Aldi had a big cash flow?
Well, he might have been angry and frustrated enough to beat Williams to a pulp or maybe shoot both men. Such things happen all the time. Some young or goofy gunmen kill just for kicks even when they are satisfied with the loot.
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There are people in Chicago and other big cities who always carry a hefty roll of cash in case they are robbed.
“I never have less than $300,” a salesman friend who lives Near North once told me. “It’s life insurance. If all I have is a couple of five-spots, the guy might get mad and kill me.”
So after six years of working for Aldi, a giant multibillion dollar food corporation with headquarters in Germany, Williams was fired for having had the misfortune of being robbed and scared half to death.
“I started there as a cashier and eventually got my college degree and became an assistant manager and then manager for the last three years.
“It’s a tough environment to work in because it’s a low-cost operation with few employees. I worked 60 to 70 hours a week, whatever they expected. I made about $50,000 a year and never had a performance problem. I ran one of the highest productivity stores in Illinois.
“For what I’ve done in the past for the company, I didn’t think I was treated fairly. I’m sure they had insurance for the money that was lost. Basically, they didn’t care what might have happened to me.”
Last week I wrote about a female cashier in another Aldi store who was recently fired because she was robbed of less than $1,000 by a guy who put a knife to her back. They said she neglected to wrap the money and give it to her manager for safekeeping.
This is a remarkably tight-fisted company. Their position seems to be that if you have the bum luck to be robbed while working for them, it is your fault.
They are also remarkably tight-lipped and refuse to discuss why they blame their own workers for crime losses when they are too frugal to install security systems–no guards, no alarms, no cameras or anything that might discourage stickups.
In Williams’ case, Aldi officials tell us only that Williams knew that the money should have been concealed from the robber.
That might be a smart business approach.
But what if the mean mug with his finger on the trigger or the knife in his hand doesn’t know or doesn’t give a hoot about Aldi corporate policies?
Apparently the people at Aldi’s German headquarters don’t know this, so I have news for them: The average American stickup man is not an MBA.