Petty prosecution of petty theft.

Okay, everyone knows you're not supposed to "graze" from the bulk bins...but arresting the guy seems just a wee bit of an overreaction. I would think a warning from the store manager would probably be enough to thwart such a criminal as this...

IMHO, the buttered popcorn jellybean has to be the worst idea man has ever concocted. I throw up in my mouth a little just remembering my one and only encounter with them...*shudder*

Sometimes I wonder about the people who crack open a soda in the grocery store, drinking while they shop, then go pay for the empty bottle. My mom used to do that to keep me quiet, but it seems so criminal now that I read stories like this.

I understand in this situation that the guy didn't buy any...but still.

I bet the store has put up with grazers for quite a while. If everyone takes 10 jelly beans pretty soon it cuts into their bottom line. I never take stuff from the bulk bins because it's stealing - just the same as opening a box of cookies and helping your self. It's really lame petty stealing but the store has a right to protect itself.

Wegmans will prosecute if they catch you eating from their bins (there's signs all over that section plus they have surveillance cameras around)

Couldn't they have just let him pay for the jelly beans that he ate instead of starting the expensive court-going process?

also: yes on buttered popcorn jelly beans.

Eating from bulk candy bins would seem to me to be its own form of punishment. I mean I could understand if the candy was individually wrapped but jelly beans aren't. God knows who else was sticking their hands in there.

@Lin-Z:
small claims court is not very costly, but can be time consuming

The hilarious thing about this is that the store almost certainly lost an extremely loyal (thirty-year) customer over a few pennies of jelly beans.

yeah... did they ever hear that saying about picking your battles? I mean really...

@louisb3: It's their choice.
@overbysara: Their bettle to choose.

At Dominick's in Chicago, (formerly owned by Safeway) they had a coin bin. Drop in a quarter and you get some quantity of bulk candy.

Oh, come on. There's a time and a place to do this, and that wasn't it. They could have asked him to pay a dollar and asked him to not do that again. This isn't how you get loyalty.

It doesn't matter how many jellybeans he took. Whether he took two, ten, or an entire scoopful. He took the candies and had no intention of paying for them. He adimitted it. He committed theft.

However, this is would appear to be poor customer service. I do agree that having him arrested does seem a bit excessive, unless there had been prior issues with this person (Which there was no evidence of in the article).

@louisb3: pennies? these were probably jellybellies....$10 a lb LOL

That whole "I've been a shopper for 30 years" sounds pretty lame coming from a 34 year old; and stealing from candy bins is tacky and unsanitary. I think 5 or 10 years behind bars should curb his taste for jelly beans ;o) But seriously, they should have given him a warning or asked him to pay for the candy.

@mgyqmb:

One of the big chains around me(can't remember which one) use to have drink holders on the shopping carts that coke installed as a promotion. The idea was that people couldenjoy a soda and just pay for it with the rest of what they were buying.

As far as this story goes one has to wonder about the officer that bothered to stop the guy. As far as the manager pressing charges it does sound like a good way to get some bad press. Yes what the guy did was wrong. If they had confronted me about it I would have offered to pay for the candy. Then I would go ahead and return everything elce I bought that day.

I'm all for it -- set the example. But I've become a hardass over the years with people like this. If we don't come down on them, we cultivate a whole new generation that seems to think the behavior is acceptable.

I can't buy out of bulk bins anymore. Ten years ago I saw a man just standing by one repeatedly eating almonds out of it like he was at home eating out of a bowl. Hand in mouth, back in bin, back in mouth. Ick. I want to buy bulk, no packaging, efficient, etc., but now I can't since I don't know whose hands have been in there.

When I was a grocery cashier, I never had a problem with the opened bottles of soda, it was the howler monkey parents that would toss up a banana PEEL, or an apple CORE and tell me to charge them. ???????

Umm, its by weight, you've already fed your monster the fruit...exactly how am I supposed to charge you for this?

Figure if everyone who walked through the produce department took just one strawberry or just one grape...its theft. Ask, the produce guys, they'll be happy to help you out.

reg

@darkclawsofchaos: Small Claims involves neither arrest nor prosecution. Small Claims is civil court. The store is having the city/state prosecute them in criminal court. I just want them see them prove he took 10 and not 2 jellybeans.

If you read the linked follow-up [www.nwfdailynews.com], the deputy was off duty AND was the one who accused him of eating 10 jelly beans. What I want to know is if they arrested him before or after leaving the store (Or the last point of payment as is normally needed for shoplifting)

No affect on the population of general customers with disproportional affect to an individual. Never the most cost effective move.

Now if the store put the head's of shoplifting grazers on pikes...

He should have denied taking them and made the "deputy" wait around with a sand pail to collect the proof.

I can't stand people who put their grubby hands into bulk bins. The last time I went to Whole Foods, an elderly couple went straight for the candies in the bulk aisle, each grabbing out a "sample" and walking away from the aisle entirely (they obviously were not even bulk goods shoppers at all.) All I could think of was the line from Oscar Wilde, "These days old age is no longer a guaranty of respectability." (Well, I though of that line and fantasized that such people with no impulse control and a complete inability to follow basic rules should be horse-whipped in the public square like the olde dayes.)

At any rate, petty theft seems an inappropriate charge. Instead, a more apt charge should be some sort of threatening public health related charge -- the punishment for which should be:
1) Being forced to buy/pay for the entire bin of foodstuffs contaminated.
2) Paying a fee to the merchant to clean/sterilize the contaminated bin.
3) Paying a non-trivial fine, like a few hundred dollars (or the equivalent of something dangerous to the public, like speeding in a school zone.)

Stores would probably make a mint "selling" bins of goods at a time to an endless supply of idiots who lack the discipline to tell themselves "No!" when presented with the slightest promise of pleasure.

Having him pay for them & getting a scolding from the gen manager would have been sufficient. Arrest? Heh, that's a bit much. Actually, more than a bit. That's downright ridiculous. Why cause a scene & lose a customer over a few jelly beans? And I agree @JohnnyE: with #2, they definitely need to sterilize the bin now.

Bad PR, yes. But stealing - shoplifting, is a crime. If I took a butterfinger and ate it with no intention of paying for it to 'see if I liked it', that's a crime.

If you want to try something, you buy a few of them, then if you enjoy them, you buy more later. Or you make sure that when you go through checkout, you pay for it. (It may be by weight, but round it up because you should.)

@JohnnyE: Quite so. This is pragmatic and addresses the main concern.

These charges will be set aside from the DA/Prosecuter. The defendant will likely have to pay an attorney. Some will find justice in that, particularly the defendant's attorney.

Owning up to the transgression and apologizing is what would have stopped this whole thing from escalating.

I'm put off by people helping themselves to food while they shop at a grocery store: drinking from a can of pop, opening a box of cookies, unwrapping a muffin they are about to pay.

Pay first, eat afterwards: it's a GROCERY STORE not a BUFFET.

everybody loves raymond had an episode about this.

@seawallrunner: lol i agree. some people just have no sense of shame. then again being humiliated in the store by being called on this 'petty theft' is punishment enough IMO.

The candy in the store isnt free and unless they say to take a sample and try before you buy it is theft no matter how silly it may seem.

If i owned a candy store and sold it via bins by the pound you could bet your last dollar I wouldnt want people sampling for free. Consider that 1/10 people take just a couple piece...in a day the bin could be empty and you would have made no money from it all. Little things add up.

Bulk bins that are directly open to the public are nasty. Even if they have scoops, people's hands and sleeves are still reaching inside. How sanitary can they be? How long has the stuff inside been there and refilled/mixed? I don't even buy my dog's treats from bulk bins.

@legotech: I always just charged them for a pound of the item.

I have read a few stories like this lately. My personal policy is to ask the employee if I could pay for a small sample, if not - I don't take any.

Most of the time I avoid those areas because of the germs. Too many unwashed fingers groping the stuff.

Don't think I have ever been to the grocery store without witnessing someone taking a handfull of candy/nuts/etc. from the bins without paying. I'd like to see this stopped. It's gross.

I Agree that there should be some hand slapping here. But geez, talk about clogging up the court system with nonsensicle bull****. Judge Judy would have a field day with Alberston's.

@PracticalMagic: I don't think she would. She's fairly hardline about not allowing excuses, or "Oh, it was just this one thing." She would probably slap down the offender for being a tool and say, "So, what? They're supposed to turn the other cheek EVERY TIME someone compromises the hygenic integrity of these bins? I don't THINK SO."

Years ago before they all became bag n saves, I recall the bulk candy bins at Albertson's had a small coin box attached to them so you could pay a dime for your snack or sample. That might be a better solution than having people arrested if they no longer have it.

Why would a store have an open-top bin in this day and age?

First, for reasons of hygiene, people can and do stick their hands into the bins. Ask yourself, have you ever seen people wash their hands as a fast food restaurant before they eat? They don't despite the fact that washrooms are available. Supermarkets don't have washrooms, and their customers touch the same things as restaurant customers do. Yuck and double-yuck!

Second, what is wrong with pull-drawer or spring loaded latches that drop the product? You stick a bag under an opening, pull a lever, and the product falls into the bag. It's a hell of a lot cleaner, and harder to steal from. The supermarkets I've been to are forgiving if I say to a clerk, "I put too much in the bag..."; they usually take out the excess, provided the customer has't stuck a hand in the bag.

Old people love to steal grapes. I see them taking handfuls all the time. The best are the ones that make a few trips.

Um, yeah, the guy stole. He should be charged. What's wrong with you people?

First, if you're gonna eat something from those candy bins, you put them in a bag, walk around the store and eat them as you go. Nearly every store has some type of surveillance around the bins.

Second, he's a scapegoat. What he did was wrong, but he was an idiot for admitting it.

I never sample produce because that usually means eating dirty fruit, and it's easy to smell, see and touch to see what fruits are good choices.

@spiderjerusalem, PracticalMagic: She would criticize both the person and the store manager.

@Jigen: Grapes are slightly different. The taste fluctuates with harvests. Its reasonable to taste one to make sure the bunch is sour or something.

You steal you get in trouble. It's as simple as that. If you don't have to be prosecuted up to laws fullest extent, don't steal. That's pretty simple.

I think that prosecuting him was a bit over the line, but I really don't think the store was wrong, per se. Maybe kicking him out and telling him not to come back would have been a better option.
I just have very little sympathy for someone who plunged their grubby mitts in the jelly bean bin, fished some out & started munching. They have bags & scoops, neither of which it sounds like he used.
Instead, he seems okay with exposing everyone to whatever he had on his hands at the moment.
So I'm okay with him being prosecuted. He didn't show concern for his fellow man, why should I care for him?

@MyCokesBiggerThanYours: No, it is reasonable to ask if you may sample one (some of the Safeways around here have guys in the produce section cutting up melon or citrus fruits to give as samples) But to just take some and eat them is theft.

I think those bins are gross and don't eat from them, but if they are a cause of loss for the store it means other prices will go up. So good for the guy, he deserved it.

On the subject of drinks in stores, if they don' want you having a soda, why do some of the newer shopping carts have drink holders built in?

@Thaddeus: Around here, it's for your Frappucino that you buy at the store Starbucks stand.

@Thaddeus: Starbucks. When I worked that that grocery store, we got an in store Starbucks and then shortly after got those carts with the cup holders. They made LOTS of money offa that kiosk. (Oh, and the "baristas" at the Starbucks stores inside of the grocery stores? Just baggers and cashiers who are asigned over there)

This is petty theft. Plain and simple. It really isn't up for debate, since the guy admitted to the theft.

Personally I would've offered the options of: a stomach pump on the thief's dime, payment for stolen items (rounded up to the nearest lb), or cuffs.