I need to clean up this place a little. Jeez, how long has this plate been here?

OW! Man, how does a person trip over a pair of pants?

AHA! So sorry if you guys heard anything obscene. I forgot that I left the recorder on.

Time to get on with what you all have been waiting for: Thursday. Today I am going to tell you on how I got fired for not doing anything wrong and being accused of stealing. I promise you, I did not steal anything! I love my job. I work at this really cool clothing store, but it is more than that. The store has clothing lines that are named after great movie characters. Like, they are based on pretty much any movie character. One of my favorite lines is based on Iron Man. It has dresses that have yellow straps and the dresses themselves are yellow and come with this big blue pendant.

Sounds cool right? Trust me, it is. The next day, it was like any other day. I only spent the night at Greg's because I did not feel like going home. I was still too angry with my parents to even consider going home for the next couple of days. So, I went to school and I actually felt like I was going to get past this whole thing. Work was one of the ways I coped with my feelings. Especially since I was the inventory manager and I worked so fast I could sit and read whatever novel I was reading at the time. But only once I finished three chapters would I go out and actually work in the store.

That is why they thought I was stealing clothing. I was the inventory manager. That meant I had direct access to the clothes going in and going out. What went missing was the clothes that were going out, and occasionally coming in. After the first two times, we just thought the shipments were getting lost. But as we all know, there is always a different side to the story.

I went to work as usual. I came in and worked for about thirty minutes, helping customers whenever they came in. Since it was Thursday, it was inventory day. When I went back to the office I grabbed my clipboard, turned on some good music to work to, and found myself face to face with my general manager. Needless to say, I was a little startled. I was always the closing manager on Thursdays.

"Hey, Beth. What are you doing here?" I turned off the music. For some reason, "Happy" didn't seem like an appropriate song for the situation.

"We need to talk about the missing inventory, Tomi." She crossed her arms. I started to get really nervous for my coworkers. I loved each of them... except Conrad. He was this mid-life crisis guy who was working in the place for absolute no reason. He was rude to customers and was upset that an eighteen-year-old girl had a manager position over him. I'd bet that if it had anything to do with stealing, it would have been him.

"Okay, did we find the missing shipments?"

"No, someone has come forward and we found out that someone was stealing the shipments." Beth was looking really upset at this point and I knew that it was Conrad's time to go. Thank God.

"Oh? Who did the person say it was? I bet it was Conrad. He always seemed a little sneaky."

"No Tom, it wasn't Conrad."

I looked in shock. Who could it be then? If it was not my prime suspect, then who was it? I trusted each of the people here and I could not believe someone else would steal from the store.

"It is you, Tomi. The person said it was you."

"Are you kidding me?!" I could feel that anger flying up into my gut again.

"No, we are not Tomi. The person said that you hide the clothes behind the lockers and then pick them up later. We found the most recent stash. Right where the witness said that you left it." Beth picked up and bag and spilled out the contents of the past two weeks of the new and old clothing shipments.

"I packed those away and I have not even seen the new 'Sandy Olsson' collection. Beth, I would never steal from this store." I waved my hands around, "You know how much I love this store. You know that I have worked here for three years and I have had this manager's job for a year. Why in the world would I start stealing clothes now when I have so much on the line?"

Beth looked at me with such a cold stare that I knew that I was not going to convince her otherwise. "I don't know Tomi. I am sorry, but you need to turn in your keys. You are fired."