April 7, 2008
Who out there hasn’t, while gazing upon some luxury item that is beyond one’s means – a bottle of fine perfume perhaps, or a lady-in-a-bikini bottle opener – thought, “Would that it could be mine, but alas, I don’t have the requisite funds. If only I had the guts to steal it.” Barring a stint in our teens during which we may or may not have stolen anything that wasn’t nailed down, however, most of us feel that shoplifting is wrong – even when it’s a big corporation that couldn’t possibly miss one little item – or we just don’t want to be embarrassed by being hauled into some backroom and put under the bright lights for an interrogation by mall cops, so we either go without or go into debt when it comes to the things we want.
Call it nature, nurture, or Florida, but some people are unrepentant when it comes to availing themselves of the five-finger discount. A woman in Crestview Florida walked into a Tom Thumb 81 grocery store on Sunday, went straight for the cooler, pulled out a four-fer of Anheuser-Busch’s “Natural Ice Beer” – a 5.9% beer that scored 1.02 out of 5 on ratebeer.com, though one that is unlikely to be consumed by anybody who would think to Google a beer brand – and stuffed it under her sweater.
The clerk saw her take the beer and asked her if she planned on paying for it. The woman underscored the importance of non-verbal communication by walking out of the store silently and getting into her car. The clerk followed her out and said that she would write down the woman’s license plate number and call the cops if she didn’t return the beer, to which the woman replied: “You’re calling the cops for four beers?” And to which she might have added, “And four cheap beers at that?”
The clerk did not accept the woman’s attempt to put things into perspective in this manner, and decided that she would involve the police. A check was run on the woman’s car and her most recent address found. She wasn’t there, however — she was apparently enjoying the shoplifted suds somewhere else.
