Agreed, if it was a clear joke, the store may very well just throw it away and never think about it again. However, food tampering is a big deal. I don’t know what happened after the dust settled, but a while back when people were licking ice cream, at least some of them were looking at jail time and huge fines.
In my store, I had to kick someone out because she was opening all our deli containers, smelling them and putting them back in the cooler. She simply couldn’t wrap her head around why that was a problem. Looking back, maybe she had some issues though. I mean, I’d catch her doing it, I’d tell her to stop, she’d argue with me and I’d ask her to leave the store. Then a few days later, she’d be back doing it again.
I would think that intent or purpose would be the main determiner. If the action was in any way designed (or would have the obvious effect) of disrupting the store’s business any significant amount, then the charge would be the catch-all of “public mischief”. Things that would make customers disgusted, things that would drive away customers, or otherwise put the store in a negative light… for example putting CD’s with explicit lyrics or inappropriate covers in the store, or porn books on the shelves. Moving things around could also be construed as public mischief if the effort to fix it was too expensive.
Certainly anything with food and especially medicine would run afoul of public health laws and would be taken more seriously.
But sneaking harmless CD’s or books into the store - I think it would be difficult to show the result is public mischief as long as the quantities were not too large. Reminds me of the photo where someone has rearranged the initialed Christmas stockings to spell a political message. The legal system would roll its eyes and say “why are you wasting my time with this?” The cost of bringing someone to trial is not trivial.
I agree that intent is a key issue. I could place wine in a store that isn’t licensed to sell it, place expired foodstuffs, and generally create problems in a malicious way. Or…not.
I’m surprised we’ve gotten this far without putting a name to the practice. In ‘culture jamming’ circles this was known at least to some as droplifting, ie the opposite of shoplifting. I feel like I read about this in Adbusters magazine a long time ago, but more likely it was in some random blog. The article I remember also was about CDs.
Depends, as so much in law, by jurisdiction. California, for instance, recognises a right of freedom of speech, with reasonable restrictions, on “the property of a privately owned shopping center to which the public is invited”. So a mall owner could, for instance, not kickprotesters out for distributing political pamphlets in that mall, as long as they’re behaving reasonably.
AFAIK you can be banned for any reason (“inappropriate attire”, “noise”, etc.) as long as it is not discrimination against a protected group. This is often a difficulty with situations like strikes - the union cannot picket a store in a mall, all they can do is picket the mall entrances from the public sidewalk. Also why you cannot set up a soapbox, or distribute flyers, or anything else that the mall owners feel would disrupt their business. Except, it seems, in California. (IIRC wasn’t there even some decision that they couldn’t exclude panhandlers as long as they were not an aggressive nuisance?)