just a follow up to ‘ummmm’…

My child doesn’t have any need medically to be eating in the store. I’m the one w ho had to deal with emergencies in stores not only as a child but as an adult as well. If I need to grab an OJ while shopping, I will! I’m sure the store workers would rather me not pass out on the floor don’t you?

Think about it when you bring your own food and drinks in the store with you.. they are going to not assume you brought it from home but that you grabbed it in the store. It is easier to just throw a wrapper up to pay for than have to explain I SWEAR I BROUGHT THIS FROM HOME.. oh but no, I don’t have a receipt..

Something I personally find annoying is I always see -people stealing fruit. They will grab an orange, peel it, and eat it while they shop… and no, they don’t have a bag of them in the cart to pay for it either. THAT is stealing.

My son knows that we pay for things. We’ve never in his 4 years had a problem. He wants something and if I say he can have it, he says something like, ok now we have to pay for it. He knows you go to the register, put it up, and pay for it.

I wonder how many of the replies saying it’s so wrong to open a package in the store even HAVE children. It’s easy to judge when you don’t have a child yourself. I know I was guilty of that pre children.

This has been going on forever. Carly Simon’s then-infant daughter Sally (who just had her own baby recently) grabbed a teddy and stuffed it in the backpack when they were shopping, and Carly didn’t find it until they’d gotten home. Carly later wore it on the front of “Playing Possum.”

I don’t think it’s awful to open things while in the store if need be (even the best planners sometimes find themselves ill prepared for a hungry toddler) but an adult doesn’t suddenly “need” a Diet Coke. I’ve been shopping and gotten thirsty, but that just makes me go a little quicker, finish my shopping and get the bottle of water that I want at the register, pay for it, then drink it. I do think it’s very wrong not to go back and pay for something that you realize you didn’t pay for. It doesn’t matter if it was only $1, it wasn’t yours, it’s the store’s, you need to go pay for it! I’ve had situations where I’ve forgotten to pay for things (because my 2 year old grabbed something and put it next to her in the shopping cart cover) but you just go back in, tell them you forgot to pay for it and either buy it or return it to them (usually I return it to them, I don’t reward sneakiness by buying the item she tried to hide.)

This is not amusing to me. She could easily be arrested for this, then it would not be so funny. It is never ok to steal. What a great lesson to teach your children.

I’ve never let my kids eat anything at the store that we haven’t paid for. I have, on a couple of occasions, been trying to wrangle two little ones and don’t realize until I’ve gotten out to the car that they had something in the cart I didn’t know about. At our store, we have carts that are shaped like cars and have a place for the kids to sit that is in front (and on the bottom) of the cart. When we are putting the groceries in the car, and I see that we have a box of cereal or whatnot, I finish putting all the groceries in the car and we go back in to the customer service counter and pay for it. After having this happen on a few different occasions, I don’t let them hold anything in the bottom of the cart anymore. I also make sure to double check before we check out that they haven’t slipped one in the cart.

Now, I do believe this is stealing and it is important to teach your children right from wrong at an early age, but I am not going to get all up in arms over someone’s comment, especially when it is listed in the “Ha-ha” section of the website.

Opening and eating something in a store is not a big deal, particularly if you have children so please get off your high horses. Don’t you think if stores had a problem with it there would be rules against it?? Opening and eating something without paying for it is entirely another matter.

LJK, if your child has a medical emergency, chances are you aren’t leaving the house without the food or juice that your child needs. if you are, i’d say that’s pretty bad parenting.

let’s just call it stealing, because it is.

I never post here but I was just kind of shocked at people being that upset about this. I have two small, very hyper kids with disabilities. So it’s hard to go to the store with them most days. I usually bring food along with me to the store but our schedule is really busy and sometimes I forget. So, I do the same thing that most people do – grab a thing of goldfish in the store for the kids to eat or if my daughter (who is 3) sees the string cheese, she opens it immediately. No big deal, I’m buying this stuff anyway. If I’m thirsty, I’ll grab a soda and will drink it in the store. Occasionally, by accident, sometimes merchandise doesn’t make it to the register (usually a small toy that I didn’t see them grab like a hotwheel or something similar). I have gone back and paid for a few things they grabbed but there are things that we’ve accidentally “stole” that I never got around to paying for. But, oh well.

I honestly don’t feel that accidentally taking a $1 toy or drink is going raise prices throughout the store. Do you know how much a soda (just an example) actually costs? Less than a penny. I’m not condoning stealing – I’ve ALWAYS been weird about the idea of stealing and never did it. But sometimes things a small item unintentionally slips by without getting paid for and I don’t feel guilty about it. Many times I use coupons and the cashier doesn’t put them through right or something that was supposed to be on sale didn’t ring up right but I pay for it anyway. It all balances out in the end.

I’m really surprised by the number of people who think that stealing is ok (and taking something and not paying for it is stealing).
Don’t your shops have those security beeping things at the doors?

We have done this a few times with a cheese we have here in Holland called mini baby bel. It comes in a net of 6 and I would make a tiny hole and pull one out for my son who I could never get to eat and if he wanted a cheese, he was getting one! I put the net up on the counter to pay with everything else and I even doubt they knew one was missing.

Before you all judge everyone you see with opened food in stores, there could be a medical necessity for it. If someone is suffering from low blood sugar, they need to eat immediately… and usually that applies to type 1 diabetics who are most of the time, CHILDREN so please cut people some slack.

They have to deal with any consequences and it is none of anyone else’s business how someone else chooses to raise a child (with the exception of abuse).