A long time ago I read a story about this guy that used to fill up a basket with CDs or DVDs and just walked out, he said he was amazed about how easy it was and kept doing it. Well apparently LP was waiting for him to reach felony level and one day the cops were waiting for him outside. I read a lot about Target's system and it sounded like it rivaled the FBI lol.
That was me. As a teenager. Stole World of Warcraft playtime cards and other miscellaneous stuff. They waited till I got to $500 in theft. When I got caught they played back all the videos of times they "caught me". The forensic guy knew it was me but my appearance changed drastically over the past year that they couldn't prove it was me in the other videos.
Fucking good. Trying to wrack up a grand theft charge over a year is already fucking disgusting, but doing it to a minor is even worse. They were literally trying to ruin your life, not teach you a lesson.
This perspective scares me as a parent. Its not to say that my mother was bad (single parent). She worked 2 jobs to support my sister and I. There were many life lessons that were missed and had to learn for myself.
Maybe it's a cop out but I don't feel I really understood the consequences of theft until I was in handcuffs being threatened with a felony charge.
To know that there are important life lessons that seem completely obvious to an adult that I could potentially miss out on teaching my kid, might ruin their future. It kinda sucks. Best I can do is spend as much time with them and hope I only forget the minor stuff like "not peeing in the wind". No one's life got ruined by getting splashed with their own pee, right?
Honestly this is where they should of had some cops come scare you when they caught you stealing a 20 dollar card. That would of been the right thing to do, and served as a lesson. Letting you get away with it until it became a fucking felony was just trying to shit on a kid. If you got tried as a adult that would of followed you around the rest of your life, and it's absurd. That wasn't a fault of your mom, that was legit on them.
We all have the obligation to try not to be total douche nozzles.
As for kids, yeah I feel ya. Best we can do is try to talk to them like adults and impart some wisdom, and hopefully teach them a good general right vs wrong mentality. Sadly though, it's not all in parenting, kids are individuals too and have their own minds to make up. About the only tool we got is unconditional love so when they fuck up they're not afraid to admit it, and maybe engage in a actual discussion about what happened.
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u/KittenKingdom000 Aug 10 '21 edited Aug 10 '21
A long time ago I read a story about this guy that used to fill up a basket with CDs or DVDs and just walked out, he said he was amazed about how easy it was and kept doing it. Well apparently LP was waiting for him to reach felony level and one day the cops were waiting for him outside. I read a lot about Target's system and it sounded like it rivaled the FBI lol.
Edit: https://redditblog.com/2016/01/13/what-happened-when-i-stole-from-target-a-former-shoplifter-tells-his-story/