i am sure you have all taken something that wasn’t yours.
anything of signifigant value?
i once stole $400 worth of cymbals.
a short while later, i took some deodorant from a grocery store and got caught. i haven’t taken anything since.
well?
When I was in middle school and early high school I got into the shoplifting thing. It was never anything consequential or anything though. One time my friend and I lifted probly 20 things from all over Epcot, Disney World and distributed them in odd places all over the park. Then I got caught stealing eye drops from the grocery store and he told my parents. I never stole anything again… ever.
I once tried to steal a fishing lure from the sporting goods section of K-Mart (IIRC). I didn’t want to be seen pocketing the goods in that department so I ducked around the corner to …
The jewelry department.
Busted, back room, hot lights and cigarette burns, phone call to the parents (by me), never stole again.
OK, I made up the bit about lights and burns, but it sure felt like it.
Thosands of dollars from someone or something. Seriously. I’m not sure what/who I stole it from though, maybe I just found it. I felt really weirded out about it and donated it to charity.
They use the same treatment at Target, but I don’t want to talk about it.
Does office supplies from work count? I’m not confessing of course, just asking.
. . . the hearts of thousands.
I got caught stealing from a hobby store when I was a kid. Taken away by the cops and everything. I was young and innocent (looking) so I got a slap on the wrist. My dad picked me up at the station, took me back to the store and made me apologize to the owner. I never stole anything after that.
Oh, almost forgot what I stole: A couple Dungeons & Dragons modules. Yep, a thief and a nerd.
SoSoMom said,
Now I remember, it was Target !
Ah, the memories.
They used to keep rolling papers on the shelf in the grocery store. Not an admission, just an observation.
Jesus, oldscratch! Lefty and Knuckles are still waiting down at the OJ Bar & Grill for you to show up with their cut!
You donated it? They’re not gonna be happy to hear THAT…
When I was seven or eight, I stole a “Battlestar Galactica” figure from the toy department at Sears. I felt so guilty about it, I took it out of my pocket and dropped it on the sidewalk as I was leaving the store.
Then, later, during my first-year-of-college job at Pay-N-Save (a now defunct drug store chain), I got into the habit of stealing tapes (both cassette and video, blank and pre-recorded) and magazines. My routine was simple; I’d get the big trash buckets from the back, put 'em on a flat wheeled cart, and take 'em up front to empty the trash bins at all the cash register stations. Then I’d take the cart with me as I swept the store, and I’d make sure the stuff I wanted to steal mysteriously ended up on the floor with the pile of sweepings. Each time I emptied the dustpan into a trash bucket, the item I was stealing would go up with the dustpan and get slipped between the plastic liner and the bucket. Then I’d take the buckets out back and empty them into the dumpster; the stolen items would be left underneath the dumpster, and I’d pick them up later, as I was leaving. Pretty good system, and I never got caught. I’m not a thief by nature; I was able to overcome my guilt only because I hated the job so much.
I quit stealing after I got to be the employee witness when the in-store security guy caught a kid shoplifting. I’m sure this goes into a gray area legally, but whenever the rent-a-cop would catch a thief, he’d take him/her into the break room, lock the door, and intimidate the hell out of him/her. As a CYA move, of course, there had to be a witness to make sure the rent-a-cop wasn’t doing anything really bad. I only got picked as the witness once, and it was a truly scarring experience. The kid had evidently been on a tear; he had stuff from various stores all over the mall plaza stuck in his backpack. One of the things he had swiped was a hunting knife, y’know, one of those cheap ones with the screw-top handle and the compass and stuff inside, the kind you think is really cool when you’re young and don’t know any better. The rent-a-cop went into paroxysms of glee when he found the knife in the backpack, and – I kid you not – used it to threaten the kid, brandishing it, pointing it at the kid’s face, shouting, cursing… Awful, horrible episode. I immediately stopped stealing, and I quit the job shortly thereafter.
…started at an early age, stealing candy bars form the local grocery. He got caught once and hasn’t been able to eat a 3 Musketeers since (his parents made hime write “I will not steal” 100 times and grounded him). Didn’t stop the shop-lifting though. About 2 or 3 years later he started again. Minor stuff: packs of cards from Hallmark, lighters (big deal when you’re a kid), model glue (not to sniff, to actually use on a model), etc.
In high school, he and some other friends found that they could pretty easily grab CD’s and books either by tucking them into the small of their backs or holding them under their armpit. Must’ve grabbed 15-20 books and an equal number of CD’s. The coup d’grace came when one of the guys started working at Walmart. Reather than steal things, they would simply re-tag them with bar codes cut from gum wrappers and take them to the cashier (their buddy) and pay for them. CD’s, pellet guns, CB’s, speakers, amps (this was early 90’s, when car stereos first started being a big deal), a microwave…ton’s of stuff. Pretty funny, too, when you’d see a cart full of stuff rung up, beep-beep-beep, and paid for but the only ones that realized they’d only paid about $5.17 were the cashier and the cart pusher.
In college, he joined others stealing CD’s from parties of people he didn’t know. He had this code: you don’t steal from your friends. I think you grabbed about 3 bikes over the course of college, too.
Fate finally stepped in and 3 months before he graduated, his apartment was broken into and he had over 260 CD’s stolen, his bike, comforter off his bed, etc…about $6,500 worth of stuff.
I’m pretty sure he quit stealing at that point not because of what happened, but because he was making good enough money that he didn’t want to jepardize it with some stupid incident of gripping $20 worth of shit. Last I heard, he was about 3 years, grip-free.
This didn’t involve waking up hungover in a small wooden floored back room with a dead body, knife in it’s back, lying bloodstained and covered with flies in the corner, did it?
Nah, they don’t count. Everyone steals office supplies. Except me 
I stole a few candy bars, laffy taffies, and a pack or two of baseball cards when I was 12 or so.
How did this come about?
Damn, that’s why people keep calling my mom and threatening her, I thought they were just pranks.
And as for Izzy’s question. As before, I’ve come out on this board as someone with major problems with bipolar disorder (rapid cycles). I’m generally much better now, but for a while it was pretty bad. My mind would shut down for days or semi-shut down for weeks. This isn’t my strangest story, but it’s the one of the few that feel comfortable sharing. I woke up on a Tuesday, at a friends house, in Chicago (I was living in Madison at the time), lying on the floor. I was somewhat hungover (I’m not sure from what). She told me that I came to her house the night before, and was really out of it, she being an angel, let me in. When I got up I looked in my bag, and was extremely extremely frightened to find money in it. Lots of money. At first I thought it was a hallucination. Then my mind just flipped out. I held on to it for about a week, and checked out the papers and everything. I was extremely paranoid for a long time. I didn’t want anything to do with it. (I probably would have felt better if I knew I had stolen it from someone, then I could just avoid that person/thing). So I went and gave it away to some places. They needed it, I didn’t need it as much, there you go.
I also went and blew a big wad in Reno one time, and didn’t really remember it.
and sorry bout the bold.
When I was about 14 I accidentally stole a rubber chicken keychain. Really, it was accidental.
Here’s what happened: I was with two friends at the mall and we went to Spencer’s Gifts, a sort of gag-gift goofy store. Anyway, I had picked up this keychain with a rubber chicken on it to buy (don’t ask me why…) and slipped it over my finger while we continued shopping. I had a shopping bag in the same hand so after we had been there a little while, I sort of forgot I had put it on my finger.
We were standing right near the door because there were some cute boys, and one of my friends picked up some sort of toy that started making a whole bunch of noise, which, because there were cute boys nearby, caused us to nealy collapse into paroxysms of embarrassment and flee the store immediately.
No beepers went off, nobody chased us, and I didn’t even realize I still had this stupid rubber chicken hooked to my finger. So 30, 40 minutes later when I switched my shopping bag to the other hand, there was the rubber chicken! I was mortified and immediately began thinking we were being followed, etc. I felt so guilty but my friends convinced me not to go return it because the store would never believe I didn’t do it on purpose.
So I kept it for a while, but it was like the Tell-tale Heart, there in my drawer, silently clucking at me…bok…bok…bok…BRAWK! I had to get rid of it so I traded it to my boyfriend for a Mr. Happy.
When I was a lad, I stole the centre-fold from a Playboy magazine, from a drugstore.
Nowadays, I only steal them for the articles.
I got lucky in my youthful foray into a life of crime.
I’m 12, thereabouts, I’m in the local Rexall drug store with my delinquent friend Bird. He stuffs a superball in his pocket and dares me to steal something too. My treasured booty? A Binaca Blast Breath Freshener.
The manager comes sprinting down the aisle and grabs me by the scruff of my neck and hauls me into the back room. Meanwhile Bird is looking shocked like he has no idea what’s going on, the little shit. But I didn’t rat him out. Them’s the rules of the mean streets.
So the police take me downtown. When we get there he sits me down for a little lecture and then calls my parents. Luck of luck, they were out of town for the weekend. My older sister gets the call and she comes down to claim me. Lucky for me my sister was also a little heathen and she didn’t rat me out to our parents. I only told them about the incident a few years ago.
Here’s the funny part - at least it was funny to me at the time.
The cop says to me, “Go back to the cells and take a good look at where you’re going to end up.”
So I stroll back to the cells. One is open so I go in and take a seat. I thought he wanted me to stay there until my sister arrived. I got a little bored sitting there so I laid back and closed my eyes.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” the cop is screaming at me.
“What? You told me to come back here.”
"I didn’t mean for you to stay in here, I just wanted you to see where you would end up if you continue stealing.
He was trying to instill a little fear in me and all I found was boredom. If I continued my life of crime I probably would have been a model inmate.