For six months over the last 12, I was unemployed and broke. There was a variety of reasons for this, but I'm not going to go into them - essentially, we were living on 680 dollars a month in my fiance's disability payments and another 80 bucks in food stamps. If anyone has ever wondered if anyone can really live on social security, No. They can't. Most of our money was going into the rent and keeping the electricity on. I was keeping our internet going with some money I had saved from the last job I had been working.
During this time, every time we went shopping, we'd steal stuff. And I don't mean loaves of bread and packages of deli meat. Luxuries. I'd steal expensive spices, she'd steal organic candy and makeup. We went into whole foods one day and walked out with 80 dollars worth of Demeter fragrances. We almost got caught by the on-duty cop they used for security - if we hadn't gone around the store for another hour and blown our entire food stamp budget for the month on food there we probably would have gotten nabbed going out the door.
I'm working now, so we don't steal anymore. But a few times I've been back to places we stole from and been tempted to walk to the manager and pay for the things I took. I do feel a little guilty about it. Having said that, it's not exactly haunting me, either. I worked at a grocery store once, and I know that they account for this kind of thing. Theft is part of the business. It's shitty that it happens, but the company isn't hurting, and nobody is going to get fired or even in trouble because you tried to nick 20 bucks worth of pizza or 80 dollars worth of perfume. Even businesses that don't necessarily have to deal with theft often - such as a pizza place - accounts for product going bad, overuse of ingredients, abuse of employee discounts, etc. So don't let it it eat you up. You didn't hurt anybody.
