I am not advocating shoplifting, but we all did something dumb as a kid. What is your story?
Me, I was 2 years old and at Tim Hortons with my mother and a family friend. This was almost 50 years ago and Tim Hortons still had servers back then, so there was a cutout in the counter for them to go in and out. The donuts are in racks behind the counter. I had had a chocolate donut paid for by my mother, and apparently I decided I wanted another, and I was so little I nipped behind the counter when nobody was there, helped myself to another, and was only discovered when my mother noticed me polishing off a different donut. She did pay for it and everyone laughed, I was just little and it was funny. Sadly the quality of Tim Hortons donuts has gone way downhill over the intervening years, as older Canadians know.
In first grade? There was this little Hot Wheels style car that could transform into a robot man. I loved that little thing. Top favorite toy in the classroom.
Took it home one day. I was too afraid to play with it, so I just stuffed it into the box with the other toy cars. I was also too afraid to return it after a while. I still have it, and the guilt over taking this thing lives rent-free in my head.
When your kid goes to first grade, take it in, donate it, and tell the story.
Breakroom at my father’s office had snack and soda vending machines, and also a change machine. My younger brother and I discovered the change machine was faulty, and would dispense way too much change for a dollar bill. We fed it every single we had (4 or 5 dollars between us) and got back $20 or so in quarters, nickels and dimes. This was in the late 1970s. $20 was a lot of money, especially to a couple of dumb kids. We thought we’d hit the jackpot.
Oh 20 dollars was a wad back then! Nice find.
Was gonna say maybe they did it on purpose expecting you to dump it all back into the vending machine (which probably way overcharged) but yeah $20 for 5 seems a bit high for that.
It was a red and green plastic pencil sharpener shaped like a dachshund. You stuck your pencil in his butt. I stole it from a desk in Sunday School. I stole from God.
God wanted you to steal that sharpener. Such an unholy object does not belong in Sunday School.
In 5th grade I discovered that my hand and wrist were small enough to reach up into 25 cent bathroom pad and tampon dispensers. I didn’t really understand what they were for but I thought it was funny to empty them out whenever I saw them.
I am advocating for shoplifting but the only thing I ever stole was a small packet of seeds from home depot when I was 7
I have no problem with people taking what they need and don’t care about big box stores. I’m just not wanting to get in trouble with the mods.
It’s interesting seeing it from the admin side. Here, at least, they’re largely just trying to stay out of trouble. When lawyers or police come knocking at the door, it’s already too late, and we’re not always sure where that line is.
A couple things we absolutely know will cause trouble. I don’t know if/where that line would be with shoplifting.
And of course the mods have their own opinions.
I just mean I’m not trying to start off anything controversial. Haha. But I’m not angry at the tent encampment people in my city swiping food from Walmart at all.
Same. Just without talking, people always think the worst. The admins for Lemmy.World are a non-profit in the Netherlands.
They’re a bit more professional than Midwest.social, who I absolutely respect. But there’s a different level of professionalism here than the guy hosting a server out of his Ohio basement.
On the other hand, they don’t have the big corporate backing and structure of something like Reddit. LW doesn’t have a team of lawyers if they get into trouble. Do they even have one lawyer? How involved is that lawyer if they do exist? I can’t say.
Well it’s hard to see a grocery store here charge 8.99 for deodorant and care a whole lot about the ethics of swiping it.
Understandable
In the first grade, I was bullied by a popular kid in my school.
Back in those days (early '90s), the cool thing was to have pencil grips. Kids loved to show off an assortment of colors and styles of them. This bully of mine happened to have a single pencil, covered from tip to eraser with pencil grips, which was his prize possession. He was always showing it off to everyone. It was rumored he’d been stealing them off other kids, but no one could definitively prove it.
When he wasn’t looking one day, I snatched his favorite pencil with all the pencil grips. It was justice for all the times he picked on me in grade school. I enjoyed watching him frantically turn his backpack inside out, trying to find it.
I didn’t get to keep it for long, though. A week later, one of the stricter teachers found it in my backpack and told me I had too many pencil grips for a single pencil, so she confiscated it. I didn’t know any better at the time, or else I would’ve complained about her stealing my property. But it was already stolen, so I didn’t really care to fight it.
That was the first and last time I stole something. I actually agonized over it for a long time afterward. I was relieved when the teacher stole it from me because it was finally out of my hands and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. I never stole anything else again; the anxiety of holding onto stolen goods etched itself deep into my psyche.
Also calling out my sister: When I was maybe 6 or so, my mother found a stash of candy in a cabinet of our kitchen; mostly Lifesavers. She asked me where it came from and I just shrugged. She then asked my sister, who was 2 years younger than me, and my sis immediately broke down crying. Turns out, every time my mother went to the gas station, my little sis would grab a couple rolls of Lifesavers and pocket them. She thought my parents would never look in the messy cabinets of our kitchen. I'm pretty sure she never stole again after getting caught. She was a wreck for a while afterward and almost terrified of candy when offered.Wow, that’s a Dostoyevskyian level story right there.
When I went to malls as a teenager I would often get stopped and searched as if I was shoplifting. Was over 6’ at 16 and often wore hoodies. When I started getting into cross-dressing I was too ashamed to go through checkout with it. So I dressed in nicer clothes then hoodie and jeans, and shoplifted women’s clothing from every clothing store that ever stopped and searched me incorrectly previously. Part shame part revenge part kink.
A prop gift in a store after holiday season. It was just about tiny enough to fit in my pocket. Imagine my disappointment when I tore off the wrapping paper and found a cube of Styrofoam. I was like 5 at the time.
I found a porno mag my sisters boyfriend had
Did it have 70s bush?
In my teens, I stole some CDs. This was pre-napster. I didn’t have money to spend bit it’s hard to deny the importance of music to people, especially in those formative years. I only took 2 maybe 3 total, because the guilt of taking it a CD each time wasn’t worth it.
To give you an idea of how much guilt, I don’t like people offering me food… Because it was theirs and now it’s not. The fact they offered it means nothing. (Of course, the reverse isn’t true)
I saw a grey snubnose pistol toy somebody left lying around at a rental shop when I was like… 5? It was exactly like the one I had, but mine was green and I wanted the realistic grey. Felt so bad about it once I got home that I hid it and never touched it, and then it eventually went missing.
According to my mom, the calcium off her teeth.
“My dentition was so great, but then you came.”
That’s a real thing.
A tiny dinosaur eraser when I was like 6 or 7?
Idk if it was the first but I stole a bunch of pens from one of my teachers after i found out she was fired.
I stole a snickers bar when I was like 5. My mom knew before I got home. She kicked my ass when I got home.
