This is the kind of thing that could either work great, or end really badly. When a clerk at a convenience store in San Diego,California, was confronted with a robbery suspect, she had a brilliant idea as to both avoid being robbed and avoid cooperating with the armed robber. Rather than pray the criminal away, she simply pretended she didn’t know English and stopped the crook cold. This ruse frustrated the robber so much he just left the store without any cash!
I’m actually surprised this doesn’t happen more often, and I don’t mean the ruse. Given the level of English proficiency in a lot of store clerks, I’d imagine there are a lot of them who don’t understand English enough to be properly robbed. That’s one of the problems with the low-paying job in a robbery-prone industry; nobody really wants to work overnight at one of those places, so you have to take what you can get. The clerk can’t ignore robberies like customers can.
Tags: unusual robbery prevention, clerk pretends not to understand English to avoid robbery, dumb criminals, San Diego, California, law and order, clerk fakes not knowing English to avoid robbery, stopping robberies