On the way home last night I stopped at the supermarket to pick up bread, mustard, pickles, and butter. The shelves there are now full for Hallowe’en sweets. A girl of about 3 and her mother were amongst the evening shoppers and the child was whining because she wanted the sweets she could see on the shelves. After some minutes of nagging, the mother became tired of trying to drag the child away from a 1kg bucket of trick-or-treat goodies. So she, the mother, broke the seal on the bucket, removed a single sweet, and gave it to the child. The child was then happy, and they moved on with their shopping.
To be absolutely clear, the bucket was a single item and the contents were not supposed to be sold separately, and the mother had no intention of paying for the sweet she removed. It was all quite blatant, and although trivial, most definitely stealing, and I imagine the bucket of sweets could no longer be sold since the seal had been broken.
What would you have done? I think you should try and answer this question now before reading on.
There are many issues here. The mother appears to be a lousy role model for a start. Now the child no-doubt thinks it’s OK to steal things from shops and is probably developing a habit of whining to get whatever she wants, because it appears to work. Stealing from shops makes things more expensive for those of us who chose to pay. And there is the question of whether society has a moral responsibility to uphold some level of acceptable standards for everyone.
I did nothing. But I am now turning the events over and over in my head. I could have challenged the mother, or alerted store security. I could have shouted at her, made a citizen’s arrest, or simply taken the item from her and put it back on the shelf (she wasn’t physically very imposing). The dragon, although shocked by the story, suggested that she might have bought the bucket for the child.
The fact that the woman was so blatant makes me think that a) she’s done this sort of thing many times, and b) no one has ever challenged her before. I started to consider that perhaps they were much poorer than me. But I pretty much dismissed that as an excuse to steal sweets. No one in my country is too poor to buy a few sweets. But there were other factors. The woman had a facial disfigurement, as though she’d been badly burnt or something. Had she had a very hard life and is that an excuse? They were also Indian, or looked Indian. Had they come from a cultural background where this sort of behaviour is more acceptable, and should that make a difference?
I have talked to a couple of people about this. No one seems very sure about what they would have done. It is however a very interesting thing to think about.
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