I use to work at a grocery store and for every food item that was stolen, dozens more of the same product was thrown out for being past expiration. Like many companies they want the shelves to be full at all times, which means they over produce and order product. Nothing was recycled or donated, just straight into the trash. If I ever saw anyone stealing while I was working, I just saw it as less work I has to do with taking count and throwing out food later. Plus someone actually got to eat it!
What?
I've watched people shoplift food several times, and they weren't poor people just looking to eat. I watched someone run out of a M&S store and into an awaiting car with a huge bag full of meat around Christmas time, probably several hundred pounds worth.
If someone was stealing a loaf of bread or something for themselves, I didn't see a thing, but let's not pretend that people aren't stealing to make some money. Lots of people steal stuff to resell, or because they're just dicks...
Unless you live where I do, where people steal mass amounts of junk food from convenience stores and then resell it at the nighttime markets to our struggling, marginalized, population of unhoused folks at an exploitative mark-up.
Because that is actively harming me, and the community I live in.
Though even with all that, confronting or reporting them isn't helpful. But if asked, and I saw it, I would say so.
devils advocate: what if that person stealing a sandwich turned out to be convicted murderer Robert Durst
On November 30, Durst was caught inside a Wegmans supermarket in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, after trying to shoplift Band-Aids, a newspaper, and a chicken salad sandwich, despite having $500 in cash in his pocket.
Shit if they're stealing a TV from major corporate retailer that has pushed out all the local competition: I didn't see that shit, either.
Oh and people who need baby formula from Walmart: The locks used on those cabinets use a universal key. Obtain one and even if they lock up the baby formula, you can still get it. Even if you intend to pay, it's a time saver if your Walmart is like mine and nobody ever shows up to assist you at the locked cabinets.
I ain't seen shit. I don't know nobody. Hell, I ain't even there.
Sure I saw them stealing. I most likely won't care enough to elevate it. I've got places to get to.
I didn't what ?
What if they're rich
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/middle-class-mum-shoplifting-m-s-b2451024.html
Remember kids, if you see someone shoplifting, ahhhh oh no I'm having an asthma attack on no my heart palpitations! ahhhhh! Oh I feel really faint I'm having a heat stroke or something!
I dunno, or something like that. In any case, it's pretty much always ethical to steal from corporations, most especially big box stores, as an absolute moral value, and I do indeed find it kind of hard to be swayed from this as an opinion at all.
People stealing stuff that you think they don't need? They probably needed it. Prices going up? Probably they should stop paying their CEO so much. Big box store pulls out, creating a food desert? Probably they were looking to downsize anyways. Increased security, decreased convenience and social cohesion because now thievery is allowed? I dunno, I'm pretty sure if beforehand your "social cohesion" was predicated on the poverty of some other class of person, it wasn't actually real, or was a farce, an illusion. The people who were robbing, were secretly rich? Doesn't commonly happen since the rich steal in other ways, and the relative impact is so small as to basically not be worth mentioning. I dunno, uhhh, what else what else. People stealing stuff so they can be scalpers? I dunno, harder issue to solve. Probably those people sound like they should also be stolen from, since they're kind of simulating the big box store at a lower level. Seems more, systemic, maybe.
Did I miss any?
