Joanne has a very honest post about stealing.
The post has given me a rich vein to write about this morning. I was always uncomfortable with stealing, and never really stole anything. The 'big boys' in the estate near where I grew up built a BMX track, it was a rather impressive one they brought diggers and JCB's in to do it, not sure where they got all the soil nor the machinery from but none the less it was great. I trundled over on my Grifter to have a go,and they wouldn't let me or my mate on, probably because we didn't help build it. They asked for 20p to have a go, so I cycled home, opened my Mum's bag and took 20p out. I hid it in the lense of a pair of swimming goggles which I had sitting in the rockery. (that sounds really random but it was summer and the plastic paddling pool was up). I'm not sure if money was tight or how they found out, but the 20p was uncovered and I was given the opportunity to confess, I jumped at the chance and admitted my dastardley deed.
Dad told me that there was only one thing for it and he would be taking me to the police station, I was 8 years old, and remember the drive down well, I was crying all the way. We gets down to Edward Street in Portadown and Dad parks up at the security barrier that blocked the road. I was absolutely convinced that he was going to take me in. He gave me a lecture about stealing, turned the car round and drove me to Robb's shell garage and got me a strawberry cornetto. To this day I have not stolen anyhting else except a MySQL and a Perl Programming book from Deathstar but that's the least I was owed so I won't count that.
Now I will admit to plenty of scams which were technically stealing, but none the less I have a definite moral divide in my confused head between these scams and stealing.
If anyone remembers the old pick and mix's in Wellworths, an island with the cashier in the centre filling the surrounding shores with all sorts of delights. There would be two weighing machines opposite each other on the East & West shores. You'd go round filling your bag with loads of sweets and watch carefully for another customer going to the first of the scales, when the cashiers back was turned you wedged a jelly teddy bear under the scale so that any amount of sweets would always cost the same 32 pence in 1986. She could never see the wedge from her side just the reading on the scale.
Another scam in later years was to fill the returned coins shoot on the coke machine with damp toilet paper so it dried and formed a plug. Someone would put a pound in for a coke, the can would be dispensed and 60p would fall down the shoot and get wedged by the plug. You'd come alond later in the day, remove the plug and your hard earned would fall out.
I remember a family in Portadown who shall remain nameless but they were four brothers and all members of my local scout group. They used to run the scout tuck shop and would be go to Holmes cash and carry to pick up supplies. They'd go up the back and get a 48 pk box of Tayto open it up and dump 20 odd packets out, then wedge in a box of Mars Bars for instance they'd then pile the flat bed trolley with more un-tarnished boxes on top of the scammed box and got to the cashier. She'd just scan the top box and multiply it by 5, thus making the brothers a tidy sum when they flogged the chocolate later.