I actually just filled out this exact question on a job application today.
When I was about 4 years old I stole a candy sucker from the grocery store, worth approximately $1. And by stole, I mean my mother was in the process of leaving and I had it in my hand at the time and she didn’t notice. I think that still counts, though.
I think I might have stolen some loose change around the house when I was a kid. And I do have a few books that don’t belong to me - books that I borrowed at some point and then the owner moved away or disappeared off the face of the earth before I could give them back.
The opposite has also happened (people borrowing my books and then disappearing), so I suppose it all balances out. Or something.
No the only thing you’ve stolen is my heart.
Or that is what I would say if i wasn’t already currently taken by a wonderful girl. /corny /true
Really? The lowest of the low? Literally?
Joe
As a total bona fide grown-up I’ve never stolen from an employer (on the contrary, I tend to give them stuff – for example, I personally supplied my copyediting division with fancy highlighters that the office would never bother to buy). But when I was 18 (which should be grown up, but in retrospect seems very young) I had a hellish summer camp job that, along with a trillion other responsibilities, included managing the camp store. Once in a while I’d get hungry in the middle of the night, go into the store, and help myself to a candy bar.
Really horrible behavior in my book, and I can’t explain why I did it, as I’ve always been something of a prig about honesty. I guess it was my secret little revenge on the camp for treating me so badly, but that still doesn’t justify it.
My friends prefer to call it grifting. Taking stuff from people is a big not cool, as is taking from anywhere that doesn’t deserve or can’t afford it, even little things like pens. But giant organizations with no inventory cause they simply don’t care? Places that throw out whole hams because they overbudgeted for some dinky event? Yea, gone. Dumpsters are free game as well. I’ve never stolen anything I’ve been remorseful about, definitely not anything from a store. Neither have I ever taken anything that was mostly worthless anyway, atleast not to the original owner. So yea, no, I’ve stolen, but I did so carefully!
I think I can go in the “never stolen” category, including music/films. The closest I’ve come:
I never did the petty shoplifting of sweets stuff as a kid. That was a Scary. Thing. that the Bad. Kids. did.
In my late teens, I stole a small amount of money from my employer (who paid me slave wages), and looking back, I still don’t feel that bad about it - I was an otherwise good worker, and we’re only talking maybe $200 over a couple of years. Employer was a huge corporation. At about the same age, I went to a record store to pre-order an album. I was given a chit, and looking at it, saw that it had been made out as a receipt for the price of the album. I turned it in on the day the record became available, and the clerk said, “Thanks! Have a good day.” I left the store, and immediately felt bad about it.
In the last twenty years, no. Not a cent. I will return extra change I have been mistakenly given, whether it’s a mum and dad corner store struggling to survive, or whether it’s a large corporation that might hassle some minimum wage clerk over it.
I’d consider ripping off the government if I could get away with it, but I’ll probably never do that either.
I was a rotten adolescent and stole a lot of things, mostly antifreeze (there was a shortage), candy bars, and the kind of trinkets that are marked to kids. I once fell backward off the elevator handrest at Dayton’s in Minneapolis with a shopping bag full of stolen junk, and all of the nice employees came and picked me up, helped me stuff all of my “purchases” back into my bag, and sent me on my way. That made me feel bad, so I stopped shoplifting.
When I worked in offices, I was always going home with pens and Post-Its in my pockets because my job required me to carry pens and Post-Its in my pockets, and I never remembered to take them out.
I have, however, never pirated any music, film, or games, and lots of people think I’m weird because of that.
Does swiping fries from your kid’s Happy Meals count? If so, I am such a thief. Otherwise, nothing.
And why did it “come up for one reason or another”? It wouldn’t surprise me at all that there’s a correlation between people having stolen things themselves and those people believing “everybody does it.”
Not that I can remember. It’s possible there’s been some minor youthful indiscretion that has slipped my memory.
No. It hardly ever comes up, but I wouldn’t expect people to find it strange.
The closest thing to stealing that I’ve ever done is to sneak into a second movie after I finish the one I paid for. Yes, technically I feel it’s stealing, because I didn’t pay for the seat. But I never sneak into a blockbuster on the first weekend, depriving others of that seat. The film is going to run anyway, and the seat is otherwise empty, so I’ll do it occassionally. I also sneak in my own snacks.
StG
I don’t really remember the details, but once I went to Best Buy to buy new RAM for my laptop (I had 512 MB and wanted 1 GB, or something like that). I took it home and installed it (swapping out my old sticks). Somewhere along the way a friend of mine called and we talked on the phone for a while. Finished, I booted up the computer, and still saw only 512 MB of RAM. It was a cheap Dell, and I figured that the motherboard just didn’t support more than half a gig. So, I returned the memory.
Some while later, I noticed the computer was now reporting 1 GB of memory installed. Oops.
One of these days I am going to go back to that store and buy some RAM, then sneak it back onto the shelf, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Damn, now I feel guilty. I should take care of this today.
When I worked at the movie theatre, tickets for the first show were $2.50, the second show was $3.50, and every show after that was $4.50. Seniors and kids got in for $2.50 all day long.
When we sold tickets for the second show, sometimes I’d “accidentally” charge $3.50 but issue a $2.50 ticket. If the customer caught this, it was easy to explain away as an accident. If they didn’t catch it, I’d pocket the extra dollar. I took maybe $10-20 out of the theatre that way.
Of course, when they made me a manager, they got all that back and more, mostly in the form of my soul.
I borrowed a couple of video games from a friend. He moved away and I forgot to give them back. On the other hand, I think he still has a couple of mine so we’re probably square.
I steal time from my employer when surfing the Dope. I don’t remember ever stealing anything; if I get something for free by accident I make every attempt to pay for it but I let it go if it’s completely impractical. I do then try to donate the money somewhere.
Yes, I am a friggin’ goody-two-shoes.
I have never stolen anything.
But . . .
My first job was as a lab grunt with the EPA. My boss gave me a couple of really cool old reagent bottles (the kind with the chemical formula stamped in the glass, with cut-glass stoppers). They belonged to the government, not to him. I’m not sure whether he stole them or <gasp> I stole them. I feel kind of squirmy when I think about that.
I still have those bottles. They’re really cool. Oh, crap, why’d you make me think about that? *Squirm. *
I really don’t think I have, under your “except for digital info” exemption. Even from work. Maybe I’ve walked off with a pen or two from work inadvertently, so under the strictest definition, then I suppose. But even as a little kid, I never was tempted to just take something I wanted. First of all, it was wrong, and if caught, there would be hell to pay. It wasn’t just a Little Wrong, it was a Big Wrong. Who wanted to pay the price for something stupid like that!
In high school, I pirated a few computer games. I have occasionally left work with a pen in my pocket. And I have, on occasion, printed out copies of copyrighted pictures.
Other than that, to the best of my recollection, I have been honest.
I work at a hotel. When someone steals from one of my customers, it causes me a hell of a lot of extra paperwork. I am starting to feel that theft should be a capital offense. Catch them while they are teenage shoplifters, and get them out of the gene pool, before they grow up and go on to larger crimes.
Oh, and that lovely rationalization, “I only steal from rich people and big corporations, who will never miss it”? Someday, someone will use that excuse when they are stealing from you.
When I was 10 or so, I was in a drug store and my mom wouldn’t buy me any candy. So when we got up to the checkout I grabbed a roll of something off the shelf, and got caught by the store’s security. They dragged me into the back and did the whole ‘we should call the cops but your mom is here’ stuff, filled out hours of paperwork, and then let me go. When we got home my parents took turns yelling and beating me with a belt for an hour, and then grounded me for a year. No going out, no TV, no Atari, nothing, for a year.
Years later my brother was caught stealing lighters while skipping church at the same drug store, and went through the same thing. My mom lectured him for 10 minutes, and then told him he should go think about the sin he committed. I think maybe he wasn’t allowed to go out and see his friends for a few days.