It's just like divorce. They want to keep living in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

... yet I get no dinner invite :(

We're probably safe blaming the consumer on this one.

I've spoken to the occassional shoplifter, and they always blame the store for charging too much or for not having enough security to stop them from shoplifting.

Please, sir, may I have some more?

Only if you steal it!

when i used to work at a grocery store, there was a wall of polaroids of people, with the items the people had shoplifted written on the border. some were weird, a lot of them were liquor, but some of them were sad, like the little very old lady who stole a $2 bottle of generic cough syrup.

I live in a slightly economically depressed area.

The big thing here is to find nice cuts of meat, and then a cheap cut of meat that weigh the same, scan the less expensive one at self checkout, and then leave that one in the cart and throw the nice cut on the scale.

It costs the store even more, as they can't put that cheap meat back.

@teknowaffle: Yeah, self-checkout seems rife for abuse.

@teknowaffle: That is probably precisely why the self checkouts disappeared here from all but 1 store a month or 2 after they were installed. They were probably costing the store a lot of money in stolen items.

@Outrun1986: Not around here (San Francisco Bay Area); I've been seeing even more as time goes on. Personally, I like the idea of them, but unless I only have less than 5 or so items, it's been better to go to a checkout person due to various problems with coupons, not recognizing an item placed in a bag, and so on.

I like to steal condoms and get caught on purpose, just to show that I have a use for condoms.

@Taed:

That's interesting logic they pitched there. I'm sure it'll go well with the cops and the judge when they get caught.

The problem with Male pants is that you can't fit a pair of nice steaks down the front.

@RandomHookup: In my younger (single) days I would seek out a female cashier to purchase my magnum condoms.

It's the exact OPPOSITE feeling from the one I get nowadays : When I'm purchasing hemmorhoid suppositories from a female cashier.

I got hassled at Whole Foods recently b/c I put my items in the reuseable shopping bag I came in with (the one time I remember it) instead of an officially sanctioned cart. The Larry David in me couldn't resist asking why it mattered if I wasn't shoplifting. The cashier told me that people will come in with those bags, fill them, then mill around the front near the registers and leave in such as way as to appear to have paid for their purchases. Sometimes they'll even bring in an old receipt so at first glance, it looks like they paid.

@fjordtjie: Well some concession has to be made for the theft of food. I personally think it should be treated with a lower punishment than say theft of a DVD. You have to eat to live and most people no longer live near a free and natural food source. If you truly are starving and aren't getting aid otherwise it should be generally forgivable. No, I do not think that means they get a free pass.

However, steal the cheap shit not the brie. These people are jerks.

@Mike8813: You do realize that regular condoms can stretch to fit an arm inside right?

@thisistobehelpful: I could also stretch my son's beanie to fit over my head. But it would be far less comfotable than a beanie sized right for me.

@RandomHookup: Yes, I've found your empty condom boxes in the store where I work at - hidden behind the toasters, or the crayons, or the sleeping bags.

Condoms, expensive skin cream, and cologne are three items I find the most empty boxes of.

@golddog: Yeah, so wake up! You're not being hassled. Obviously, it's to prevent theft, and they have a good point.

Who puts items in shopping bags BEFORE they are rung up, anyways? Don't you have to take them out in order to scan them? So, you are putting them in the bag, taking them out of the bag, and then putting them back in the bag? That's a little to OCD for me.

Put them in the cart, and the cashier will place them in your precious bag while he/she is ringing you up. Sheesh!

I believe middle-class women constitute a large portion of shoplifters anyway -- them and teenage girls -- partly because those two groups are so concerned with appearances, and shoplifting helps stretch the apparel/accessories budget. Stealing food, though, I think that's a new one for that demographic.

@mamalicious: If you are only getting enough stuff to put in one bag, a whole shopping cart is overkill. Excuse me for not wanting to maneuver a barely-working cart through wandering people to pick up 6 things.

@fjordtjie: fairvilla megastore [adult store] in orlando has polaroids of people holding the items they stole on the end caps of the aisles.
much more embarassing i think. a little old lady stealing cough syrup makes more sense than the guy who tried to steal a 3 foot long double ended dildo. hint: one of these is something you might actually need

@Copper: the whole foods near me assumes you can't afford to fill up a whole shopping cart and they have those narrow, tall wheeled frames that you set the little stacking plastic rectangular basket on

@catastrophegirl: Would that be the double-header? ;)

solution: lower prices

prices for goods in stores go up for no reason, it doesn't match with the rest of the economy, the only thing that people notice from the price increases is the reported earnings of the companies responsible for the price increase goes up significantly.

@thisistobehelpful: But would you want to leave your arm in there very long? A rubber band can stretch to fit around my whole hand, but that doesn't mean it won't leave an uncomfortable mark around just my wrist.

I think that point is advertised in health class to try to prevent boys who don't need them from getting condoms that will slide right off -- but it's really a disservice to the guys who *do,* because it might just not occur to them/turn them off of condoms. It's not that condoms are totally sucky and uncomfortable, it's that your boybits are turning blue! Blue is not an acceptable colour!

@golddog: Weird. I'm not much for Whole Paycheck's hipster employee psuedo-green overly priced schlock. They do sell "whole foods" branded reusable bags near the checkout though here in Portland. It's fun to take a reusable bag to an "unhip" store, like Slaveway, and use a reusable bag there. It's so confusing for your fellow shoppers and the employees.

That stuff is bought by the "middle class"? You mean the same "middle class" spoken of by a judge who considered an income of US$180,000 per year to be "middle class"?

It sounds more like Leona Helmsley than Leona Homeless: "Little people pay at the cashier!"

@Taed: I hate self-checkout when I have produce particularly.

Once at a Home Depot, I had picked up something that either didn't have a barcode (like a piece of cabinet hardware), or it simply didn't scan. I stood around for ten minutes, unable to get anyone's attention, because they'd used the self-checkouts as a method of firing all the actual workers. >.<

Just do what us poor folks have always done - buy ground beef and a 40.

@Spider Jerusalem: Bloom in my area had these stations in the produce section so you could weigh your produce and print off a label, or if it was priced by item and not by weight, you could type in the four digit code and the number of that item you have, and it would print off a label with a bar code. It was so helpful. All I had to do was bag my produce, enter in the number, and scan it when I got to self checkout.

@mamalicious: Actually, I do this all the time. I take public transportation so my trips to Whole Foods are pretty short. I can't carry a ton of things with me, so if I know I'm stopping there, I bring a big canvas bag. Since I'm already carrying the canvas bag, I usually just fill it up with what I need to get, instead of carrying a cart or a basket. It's so much easier to carry heavy things on your shoulders than in a basket in your hands. And by filling my own bag, I know how much room I have. I just go to the checkout and get in line. I've never been hassled for it.

@P_Smith: There are several tiers of middle class. Generally, there's lower middle class, solidly middle class, and upper middle class.

Well, it's no surprise with self checkouts never well manned in any place but the local TESCO back in the UK (that's because the chavs hung out there). I almost bet you could get a lot of stuff out of Marks&Spencer if you tried.

@Taed: What I find with shoplifters and people who cheat companies is that they always find justification. "If they didn't make it so easy..." you'd what? Stop? Not do it? They always find a way of rationalizing what they do because they think it's someone else's fault.

@fjordtjie: Old people steal a lot! It's just that they usually go through the produce section and try a grape off each bunch as they consider whether to get it.

@Taed: Well sure, it has to be someone else's fault. Otherwise we would all be responsible for our own actions and that can't be allowed. pfffffttttt What on earth were you thinking to even question such sound reasoning?

@colorisnteverything: Ha..all the Tesco's and Marks & Spencer's here in Prague have cashiers and two or three security guards/manager type people who hang around by the registers to make sure there's nothing amiss. No self check out here!

@catastrophegirl: You're really not doing the Fairvilla pictures justice. The captions that accompany them are the real treasure. For instance the item you mentioned would say something like "How appropriate Jim got caught stealing a double-ended dildo as he got screwed twice, first when we caught him with the item and took this picture, then again when he got taken to jail by the cops.

@catastrophegirl: Do you mean the one on Aloma/Fairbanks? I went in there a few times but they were a little snobby for my tastes. I do go to the Mellow Mushroom next to it more than I should though.

@ipaidipod:

The Tescos I have been to in Europe have foreign exchange booths near the entrances so they usually had guards near the front but I don't know if they were there to protect the exchange, the store or both.

And/or their husbands do. "What, pasta AGAIN, dear?!!"

@CumaeanSibyl: Niiiice. Because teenage boys and middle-aged men don't care at all about appearance related things like new tire rims, hair implants, cool sneakers, flashy electronic equipment, etc. Oh, wait, they do!!

Hello, it's an article about shoplifting in GROCERY stores, where women do about 80% of the shopping anyway. Do you really think that car accessory/game stores/men's clothing stores haven't seen a concomitant rise in theft?!

@akuma_x:
The Mellow Mushroom sounds like a head shop. Is it?

@Copper: One word: basket.

If your going to commit a crime to feed yourself what idiot would steal cheap food?

@jfwlucy: I said "a large portion," not "every shoplifter in the world." Besides, men are a lot more likely than women to break into stores or to hold up a register.

@Rylar: An ethical person forced into stealing would steal the least expensive item, so they hurt the person they steal from the least.

Also: "you're" not "your."

@Cantras: Blue is a perfectly acceptable color. Just not for the "boybits".

On a sidenote Boybits is hilarious. Though if a girl ever called my manhood boybits it would certainly be a mood killer.