Reminds me somewhat of a story I posted to my Facebook a few years back, where a dude was trying to snag a figure from me.
Had something a liiittle similar happen at Target a few years ago. Hell, I don't even remember what figure it was now, but I remember at the time I was after it something fierce, and it had been hard to find (some sort of exclusive, I think? I wanna say something NECA related). I remember I was already having a pretty shit day and figured I'd check out the toy section to cheer myself up. I'm the type of person that knows exactly what I'm looking for and what it looks like, so I can usually see even from afar if it's on the pegs or not. And, sure enough, there it was. It was tunnel vision, angel chorus, the whole shebang. There wasn't really anyone else around, but I still power walked over to the aisle and picked it up. Made me so happy- it made everything that had happened that day worth it. And as I'm looking it over, I felt something slam into me. I mean
slam, and hard. Enough to make my head snap to the side. Had to use my free hand to stop myself from falling, and as I did so, I felt the figure leave my hand. At first I thought I'd dropped it, but it wasn't on the ground, and as everything sorta cleared, I realized that this dude had slammed his cart into me and grabbed the figure and ran. By the time it took me to process what happened, he was out of there, and I was so shocked that I didn't even try to chase him (not to mention my hip freaking hurt from, you know, having a cart smashed into it). Had it been me nowadays, I probably would've ended up on the news, but me being me back then, and the shit day I'd had, I just slumped out of there defeated.
Another time, something similar happened, where, like out of a movie, as I was literally reaching for the figure on the pegs, some kid ran by and snagged it and power walked away. It was like a Looney Tunes moment, like the frickin' Roadrunner had just sped by and told me to go "Meep Meep" myself. Another moment where it took me a second to realize what happened, and I was honestly kinda amused. Don't think the item in question was quite as pressing, so it didn't matter as much.
These nerds be frickin' crazy out here.