Jamieson's Chemist & Shoplifting

During the 70s I trained as an audiologist in the private sector.One of my roles

was to stand in at various chemist shops and opticians,testing people's hearing.

One of those was Jamieson's somewhere in the city centre.We had an upstairs

room for consultations which doubled as an interview room for anyone caught

nicking goods from the shop below.They had their own store detective,a woman,who was pretty good at spotting a dodgy one and she would bring them upstairs until the police arrived. The regular audiologist told me that, over the years, he had worked out there were only 30 different excuses used in defence of shoplifting. I heard quite a few but the best was one old lass who said she'd taken a bag of cotton wool balls because she was treating her budgie which had

a skin disease.She was let go with a caution.