Name: A Mall Cop | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #518
Uploaded: 2024-07-23T19:35:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Mall Cop | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #518' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-07-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Mall Cop | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #518' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-07-23. Transcript available.

A Mall Cop | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #518

I got a few tour dates to tell you about Wallingford, Connecticut, Portland,
Maine, Bangor, Maine, Moncton, Canada, Las Vegas, Nevada.
We'll be back for the USC LSU football weekend, Oklahoma City, Northern Little
Rock, Springfield, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
La Crosse, Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Moline, Illinois.
You can get tickets for those at TheoVaughn.com slash T-O-U-R.
Thank you so much for your support.
Today's guest served 10 years as a mall cop.
You know who I'm talking about, that fellow that's just looking all beast mode
outside of the Cinnabon, baby.
You know what I'm talking about, that Build-A-Bear badass, baby.
Mall copping.
We get into it all, the stories, the stealing, the sex.
Grateful for his time.
Today's guest is mall cop Gus Parsons.
Shine that light on me, I'll sit and tell you my stories.
Shine on me, and I will find a song I've been singing.
Almost.
Gus Parsons, thanks for coming in, man.
Hey, I'm glad to be here, bro.
You've worked in security for 20 years, right?
Yes, sir.
Mall cop.
Mall cop.
For 10 years.
10 years.
Wow.
Did my tour.
Did you?
Yeah.
That was great.
And what, how do you get into mall copping?
Basically, zero education, no goals in life.
Oh, really?
No, it's, you know, it's just one of those things that kind of just happens,
you know?
Like, I started off doing other security, and then it just turns into, like,
hey, I need
a job, you know, and a full-time job at that.
Yeah.
And mall security is usually one of those ones, like, hey, man, can you breathe?
I'm like, yes, fully functional, and they're like, you're hired, you know?
So, that's how I got into it, and then...
Was your, was your father in mall copping, or was it, is it a, it's not a...
No, I'm not.
Okay.
My dad was actually a bus driver.
Oh, he was?
Yeah.
That's cool, man.
I've ridden on buses, and I like it.
I mean, the uniform, the fact of us wearing uniforms in the family, that's a
thing.
Oh, it is?
Yeah, it's not military.
You know, bus drivers, security guards.
Yeah.
So, you get a job at the mall, right?
So, where do you, where's the first mall you clock in at?
The first one I ever did?
Yeah.
It was called Horton Plaza.
It was downtown San Diego, no longer there, rest in peace.
But it was a three-story mall, had the theater down there, had all the kids
hung out there
at the time, because the buses went and connected all through there.
Who told you to get a job as a mall cop?
Did you just...
Myself, honestly.
You did?
Yeah.
I wasn't into the whole labor thing, you know?
I did the little side jobs, building swimming pools, just being out in the sun,
stuff I
didn't want to...
What do you mean, being out in the sun?
Like, what, hitchhiking or whatever?
Yeah, you know, it was a hard job.
No, you know, just like labor, you know, like hard labor, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Like digging and trenches and, like I said, digging swimming pools and stuff.
It just...
Yeah.
I'm too fat for stuff like that.
So, when I got into, like, the mall cop thing, it was kind of supposed to be a
lazy
job for me, and it definitely wasn't a lazy job for me, because I still come
from
the era of chasing people down.
Okay.
And that used to be fun.
What?
As a mall cop, you mean?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, first of all, what is the training like?
Oh, here's your...
Here's the mall.
Here's the clock in.
Like I said, you can still breathe, right?
I'm like, yeah, okay.
Well, you're fully functional, you know?
Training with that, it's just more like...
But there's no, like, you don't have to have a 40 time, you don't have to have,
like,
a...
There's not, like, a physical requirements to be a mall cop.
No.
They actually will give you a segue if you can't meet the physical requirements.
Wait, really?
Yeah.
Like, oh, you can't walk that fast?
Well, here's some mobile wheels, you know?
Like, here you go.
That Paul Blart shit's real.
It's very much real.
Like, a lot of people make fun of it and stuff.
I'm like, actually, those are for the mall cops who can't get physical.
Wow.
And that's embarrassing.
I've gotten on those things and actually chased people as a joke.
Like, oh, they're stealing.
I'm like, oh, watch this.
You know?
It's embarrassing for them.
They're running through the mall and you're just, like, coasting along.
Yeah, exactly.
That look right there.
Well, segues are so ridiculous.
Because the whole...
Every time you're talking to a guy on a segway, he's like, all right, man, I'll
see you guys later.
And then he just takes...
He's just, like, fucking...
Or you get those real professional ones and do the full spin on you and they're
just, like...
Yeah, that shit.
Yeah, all that, like...
But the training-wise, man, it's not much.
So there's no training.
So there's no, like...
But there's not, like, where there's boot camp or anything like that.
Oh, no, no more.
No.
Okay.
I think that was the 70s security guards.
I used to learn from those tough guys.
Did you?
Oh, yeah.
Punch them in the face.
I'm like, well, we can do that.
Like, we're not cops.
I'm like, when you find out as a security guard that you're not a cop and
things change,
you're like, oh, I can do some shit now.
But that was back in the day.
And now you just have to kind of watch them steal and run off out the mall.
And you're like, hey...
But what do you mean when you watch them, when you see them?
Like, okay, so as of, like, the past 10 years now, you know, everyone's got
cell phones and a stick up their ass.
So it's like, hey, I'm trying to steal from your store.
Don't touch me.
So now some guy won a case, I don't know, however many years ago.
Now it's like, you can't chase them.
You can't touch them.
You just have to kind of monitor their stealing.
Like, hey, man, put that Gucci belt in that pocket.
It's showing, you know?
Like, you got to kind of escort them out the mall.
So what do you...
But you can't...
Can you even...
So what's your...
What do you used to be like, stop, fucker?
Yeah.
Can you even do that?
No, you can't even say that.
You can't just say fucker.
You just say fucker, you know?
Like, you say stop.
Then we're like, hey, you can't tell me what to do.
I identify as go, you know?
Yeah.
Oh, shit, you know?
So there's no training?
No.
Okay.
Okay, so there's no training.
Do you shadow anybody when you first start?
Yeah, you'll go in.
You'll shadow a couple of the guys that have been there a while.
They'll show you what stores to stay away from, what stores are cool.
More or less just doing the whole rounds.
A lot of time you would have...
Some malls would make you like scan in every 10 minutes through the place.
But then we just kind of figured out if you just took a picture.
And then went to the copy place and made copies of those and had a sheet.
You can just sit in the office and scan those things if nobody's watching.
So as soon as your shadow leaves, that was pretty much it.
Oh, so you're saying like a QR code?
Yeah.
Like at each place you'd have to scan as you're moving around the mall?
Yeah, so every day you'd have to go and check in like, oh, I'm at the Baby Gap,
you know, here.
And then you just have to keep checking in as you go through the mall to make
sure that you've secured the whole place, stuff like that.
Like I'm at Baby Gap, I'm at Bed Bath & Beyond, I'm at Rocco's Tacos or
whatever and just around the bin.
Yeah, so we just take a picture of the barcode, send it to our email, put all
the barcodes on a sheet, printed it, and then we had it in the office.
So you could just sit there and just scan them every few minutes?
Yeah, we had put like timers on our cell phones and stuff like, hey, how long
do you think it would take us to get from here to here?
One guy was an idiot.
He would scan them all in a row.
And one of the time our supervisor came in and was like, hey, Speedy, like, how
are you doing this?
And he's like, and we got caught a little bit, but yeah.
Wow, that's a good hack, bro.
Yeah, we had a lot of hacks at the mall.
Did y'all?
Hell yeah.
When you pull up, so when you start, when you first start there, what are their,
were their like old heads working there?
Like, what are the different types of mall cops?
Oh, man.
Okay, so you got your, you got your pant booters.
We call them pant booters.
Those are the security guards who did not make it as a cop.
Their uncle or their step uncle was a cop, so they wanted to be a cop.
So they come in, they got the whole vest on, everything's tucked in nice.
They got their pants tucked into their boots, you know, they're ready for
combat.
And it's like, bro, it's a mall job, you know.
So you got that guy.
And I will tell everyone that you know that guy.
We all work with that guy.
Yeah.
Then sometimes you get the little thug dudes that are just like hanging around
just because they need a job.
And that's not, you know, I'm not being discriminative, but that's, it's very
true.
We get a lot of little thug guys that do security.
It's great because they're the ones that usually bring the weed for us, you
know.
So it's always like, fuck yeah.
Love you guys.
So those guys are usually ones like, you know, and that's not a race.
That's just the little ghetto guys that always come.
They don't do their job.
Shirt's untucked.
They're like, eh, we'll just do the bare minimum.
You know, if there's someone stealing, let us know.
Yeah, those guys always look like they're going to get some girl pregnant.
Or they already have.
Yeah.
The girl from Cinnabon's usually pregnant.
Is she?
Hell yeah.
Oh yeah.
It's in the oven, baby.
Hell yeah.
Both the bun and that.
Two buns going at once.
Drizzle it.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so those are the main two types of cops.
Do you feel like the mall cops?
And then there's just the average Joe.
Like I would have put myself in the average Joe category.
Like, you know, just the dad who just needs a job.
But there's that guy.
There's the real Paul Blart kind of type.
You know, like no girlfriend, no wife, you know, lives at home with mom.
Can't wait to go play video games type guy.
You know, like almost like the guy that never left the mall in a way.
He grew up in the mall and was like, I'm going to get a job here.
You know, like never left.
I'm going to stay here.
Yeah.
Malls are awesome.
Yeah.
I'm getting that 10% discount.
Malls are awesome, dude.
I remember in our, we used to go to Slidell, Louisiana.
They had a mall there.
Bring it up.
See if it's there.
Just see some images of it.
And they.
So this is a North Shore square mall.
Yeah.
Those are the doors we go in, dude.
And we camp.
They let you camp right outside by the parking lot, like in the medians.
So we get dropped over there on Saturday.
We'd hang out at the mall and then we'd sleep in our tents.
And then Sunday we'd go back into the mall, dude.
And they had a church service in there, too.
And we could just go do it all right there.
Get you.
Yeah.
Some lunch.
Get you on some of those little shaker chairs.
You know.
I loved when those first came out.
I was there for that.
Like, I was there for that evolution of the mall chair.
Were you?
Yeah.
They just popped up one day.
We're like, what in the lazy is this?
You know, like, it was great.
You know, so all of us would be on our break just saying, if I can vibrate now.
I'm like, you can't do that.
I'm like, shit, if I can't.
It only costs a dollar, you know.
Yeah.
It's great.
Whisper something nasty to me.
Right?
You know.
Oh, it's great.
Segway.
You're like, oh, yeah.
What was the uniform like that you guys had?
Oh, it was just a basic cop knockoff.
I refused to wear the Mount Me hats.
What is it?
The Mountie hats.
Oh, Mountie hats.
Yeah, we call them Mountie hats, you know.
Oh, yeah.
But no, some malls will literally make you wear a Mountie hat.
And it's like, why?
We're like, we're in the fucking mall.
We're not like.
Who are y'all?
Yeah, like, I don't know if you could.
Yeah, see?
Like, that's literally how a lot of mall cops will.
Yeah.
Why do they even make y'all look like that?
I have no idea.
That's one of the most r