The Little Kid

[tiredmike59]

Yesterday I had to go to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. I had just turned the corner to get into the check-out aisle where there was just one customer ahead of me. It was a woman with a full cart of groceries, a little one, maybe two years old sitting in the cart and another kid about five years old standing behind her and in front of me. He didn't notice me come up behind him because he was staring at the cashier and grabbing a pack of sweet tarts off the shelf and stuffing them into his back pocket. He looked back to see if his shirt tail was covering his stash and saw me. He had a terrified look on his face, I thought he was going to start crying. All I did was smile and that put him at ease and then he formed a devilish grin and followed his mom out of the store. I was looking at myself 50 years ago. I began thinking of my own capers when I was his age. I should have thanked him for the trip down memory lane.

[Foggy]

So, since we all know that you have outgrown shoplifting and you know now that shoplifting is a crime. You offered to pay for the sweet tarts with your purchase, RIGHT?

[gidgetgrape]

I hope his mother found out and punished him. That's a bad habit to get into.

[Foggy]

Here is something interesting:

The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP), an organization dedicated to educating the public about the threats of shoplifting, routinely keeps statistics about the effects of this crime. According to the NASP, more than $13 billion worth of goods are stolen from retailers each year (or approximately $35 million per day). Moreover, 1 in 11 people will commit the crime of shoplifting at some point in their lives, but only 10 million people have been caught shoplifting in the last five years. In fact, according to NASP, only 1 in 48 shoplifters are caught, and only about half of those people are turned over to police for prosecution.

With numbers this high, it is obvious that shoplifting is nearly epidemic in America. Some people think of shoplifting as a victimless crime, given that many retail stores (especially “big box” stores like Wal-Mart or Costco) have such high volume of sales, but this is far from the case. In fact, as shown above, the cumulative effect of these thefts is quite substantial. And, of course, while these losses may be so frequent as to become a “cost of doing business” for many companies, that cost is necessarily passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices to absorb the expense of shoplifted losses.

http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31291

My brother use to work in retail and once told me that they had to raise the price on everything in the store by $.05 just to cover the loss... but even with that, they finally ended up closing up-- do to unfore seen losses--30 people loss their job!

[biffbronson]

I shoplifted a little box of Hot Tamales candy at about age 6, on a dare from one of my best friends. I got away with it, but later on my brother ratted me out when he found that outside of my mouth was all red from scarfing down the candies -- and also he found the empty box, which I'd tossed in the street...! My grandmother then faked a call to the store, to scare me out of doing that type of thing.

I've also been falsely accused of shoplifing a pack of cigarettes as an adult. First of all I'm a non-smoker. After being detained, there was no evidence against me -- and I never even got an apology from the *******s.