Does anybody really take a lot more than a few swigs?
However, one thing that does bother me (related in an unrelated sort of way) when someone specifically asks for water at a fast food restaurant, get a cup and they proceed to fill it up with soda. Now that’s stealing!
That’s really dumb. Are you talking about those tiny clear clups at Panera Bread? To get caught stealing 6 ounces of coke isn’t worth it. Now if they gave us like a 64 fl oz. cup for water and we fill it up with soda, then I think it is worth taking a chance.
don’t read here much, eh?
(ftr, I think the OP’s nuts, but nowhere near the stupidest thing I’ve read here.)
Is it me, or are their a lot of soda-related rants lately? Who would think a fizzy beverage would inspire so much emotion? Not to mention profound ethical debates about how much you can slurp and refill before you’re a thief.
If I were to have a dog in the fight, it would simply be that given the vast size of many soda fountain containers, it’s overkill to slurp and refill, and many of the people doing it really DON’T need those five extra calories. There may also be a line you’re holding up. Outer ring of hell for you, sorry. You’re probably the same guy who spends five minutes elaborately supersaturating his coffee with sugar while I’m trying to get around your great big ass to get my splash of skim milk.
S/he may have used the phrase in a different context, but it still applies. The OP certainly contains Moral Absolutism & Recreational Outrage.
If the owners don’t consider it theft, it’s not theft. End of fucking story.
I occaisonally find loose change on the ground. Dimes, nickels, pennies, sometimes even quarters. When I do, I’ll just pick it up and put it in my pocket. I won’t even try to determine who’s quarter it is. This money doesn’t belong to me, I didn’t earn it. Someone else earned it, and never consented to me taking it. Clearly this is theft. This is theft 25 times bigger than the theft posited by the OP. Will the OP pit me for finding coins on the ground?
Did you find a Ohio quarter from the Denver mint? Because I lost one.
Good point. Sometimes I see loose change and even loose dollar bills around the house. Sometimes I happen to find the bigger bills under rugs and mattresses. How they get there? I don’t know. I just scoop them up.
If by “Recreational Outrage” you mean, “someone I disagree with,” then you’re absolutely right.
What is happening to the pit?
What’s next? “I pit the air for selfishly taking up all the extra space?” “I pit portraits for staring at me all the time”? “I pit people for breathing their greenhouse gases near me”? “Taking a picture is stealing”?
I thought the “cruelty to babies by anti-Bush liberals” thread was as stupid as it could get. Boy, was I wrong.
No. By “RecreationalOutrage” I mean someone who is angry enough about a certian action that they take the time to start a thread in the "BBQ Pit"section of an internet message board. ie. there is some sort of “flame” involved.
Ah. So every thread in this forum is recreational outrage. Gotcha. Completely unlike what anyone else would take the prhase to mean, or uses it to mean, but what the hell. Excalibre is a descriptivist anyway, so what’s he gonna say?
Hey DWC, I was thinking about you today after my run when I went to 7-Eleven and sipped an inch of soda to test the mix before filling up. Didn’t bother me at all 
On a side note, a month ago they were selling this massive mug called the “Ultimate Gulp”, and I purchased one. It looks like it holds a gallon of soda, but that is deceiving since it has insulated sides. Even still, it holds 64oz of beverage, a solid half-gallon.
Every time I fill the darned thing up, they try to charge me something different, mainly because they don’t know what to make of the huge thing – they must not have sold many of them.
I calmly point to the “Refills .89” sign and explain that its 64oz content is the same as a Double Gulp, which they offer refills for. Folks stare as I walk out with this mug in my hand.
I was using the phrase to mean “someone who is outraged over something which doesn’t affect them at all, for the sole purpose of wallowing in their own moral righteousness.” Not quite the same thing as “someone I disagree with.”
Now, if Excalibre disallows this use of the phrase, I will of course retract it, unless of course the two of us can work out some sort of licensing arrangement.
You need to do a browse through danceswithcats’ Pit threads. Your threshold for stupid will be immeasurably enhanced.
Well…as several posters have already indicated, in my neck of the woods it is expected and done with the full blessings of the store in question. Many fountains even have signs that state something the effect of “Refills for current visit only” or some such.
I would wager that not all “sipper/stealer’s” are doing it to “stick it to the man”, but because they are used to places where free refills are the norm.
And by the way, if I get one of those “18 ounces of ice 2 ounces of soda” cups from a drive through? You can bet I’ll be going back and getting a reasonable amount of soda.
But I won’t be all sneaky about it either, I will tell them that they’re replacing it with an actual drinkable amount of soda, and tell them why. $2.39 for even a small soda? SHEESH, I could have a cold 16 oz. Diet Rockstar (with vitamins and everything) for that. Unfortunately, most drive-throughs don’t have DRs. 
As I said, he’s a descriptivist. He can’t disallow anything. However, the phrase is usually reserved for threads such as:
And the teacher of the year is
Talk About a Wicked Stepmother
Baby Raper kills 17-month-old boy
Nobody is contradicting the OP in these threads. There is no pro-babyraping position, no pro-peeping argument, no defensible position that involves deliberately straving children. This thread, by contrast, has people saying it’s not stealing, and people saying it’s stealing but so what, and people saying it’s stealing just like a cat burglar in the Louvre is stealing, and a few beleaguered sensible souls asking for a point at which taking free soda without asking becomes stealing, irrespective of whether it can get you arrested.
This thread is not an opportunity for us all to get together and express our disgust at the latest outrage that someone stumbled across in the Outrage Gazzette. You can still call it recreational outrage if you like, but the phrase then becomes meaningless.
So, if the phrase is used to describe something different, then it becomes meaningless? Got it.
This whole exchange is ridiculous enough as it is. When you went off to school, how many degrees in “Nerd” and/or “Hair-splitting” did you earn?
Well, yes. If I say “My truck is a Ford F-150,” and you say “My truck is a Mazda Miata,” then “truck” is a meaningless distinction.
Truer words were never spoken.