Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

January 23 2007

One of Life's Little Dramas

It's a heat wave! Another few days like this and all our snow will be gone, at least for a little while. If the weather guys are right, I'll be able to roast coffee without boots, gloves, and a down jacket on Thursday.

I went out in a sweater this afternoon to do some errands and I got to watch a little drama unfold at Safeway. I was in the pharmacy, looking for my fix (that would be nicotine gum), when I saw the pharmacist come out from behind of the counter and confront a young woman about shoplifting. I've never given much thought to effective shoplifting technique, but it seems to me that stuffing something under your jacket five feet away from the raised platform with three or four employees looking on would not be the way to go.

Initially, she said that she didn't have anything under her jacket. As the pharmacist moved it a bit to look, she said that she forgot she had something she bought at Wally World there. When that didn't fly, she switched to some story about putting it there to keep her hands free as she did some further shopping. Eventually, she just looked defeated and quietly followed the pharmacist upstairs to the office.

On my way home, I wondered how it would all work out for her. I have no idea if the store will press charges, though I suspect they will. I guess a good outcome would be that the whole process makes enough of an impact in her life that she turns things around, and makes the kind of changes she needs to in order to avoid getting in this kind of trouble.

The other possibility is that this is just a little blip in a life that will be filled with more serious run ins with the legal system.

They say that in most cases, people who shoplift aren't taking something they really need, but can't afford to buy. In this particular instance, the woman was stealing a box of some sort of laxative. Chances are, she wasn't planning on fencing it or selling it on Ebay. Even if she really did need it, it's a sad theft, isn't it?

I hope it isn't just another chapter in a sad life.