Very young shoplifters

At work, if they catch a female shoplifter, they have to have another female in the room at all times. I am sometimes the one who has to sit there with our Loss Prevention team.

Last night I once again got a page on the walkie talkie to go back and wait for them to bring the female in. I have yet to be paged and not had the "female" turn out to be a very young teenager. They have ranged from 11 to 16. The 16 year old happened to be very pregnant and was stealing for her boyfriend.

Last night it was a 13 year old. It is so hard to bite my tounge while sitting there and not lecture these young girls.

Every time I witness this I thank God my kids (ages 15,14,12,11) are good kids with high self esteem and make good decisions most of the time.

Funny thing was last night when the mother got there she looked at me and said " I know you....what's your name?" She happens to be on the same message board about cruises that I have been on for years. I have a picture in my profle there. Small world....

Thanks for letting me vent

Bobbie

Wow ... too me 13 is old ...lol... did you get to talk to her parents??

Yes I tlked to her mom for a while. She was shocked. This girl is on honor roll and an alter girl at church. Just picked bad friends


How old are you if 13 is old? LOL I must be over the hill at 31....

a young 28..lol.. I was thinking 13 is old since many of the shoplifters here are pros by then... I saw a 7 or 8 year ols shop lifting ( she was caught)

wow 13 is young

If I had to go back there for a 7 or 8 yr old I don't know what I would do. UGH

It is sad more than anything.

Luckily our LP guys all have kids and know how to talk to these kids in a language they understand. They can be tough without scaring them.

Truth be told, I used to shoplift when I was a kid. I mean I got away with a LOT of stuff, not just a piece of candy or a lipstick. 15 years later now, and I feel HORRIBLE and HORRIFIED with myself for doing it, and have tried to make amends with it. I did get caught eventually, and learned my lesson. If you ask me why I did it, I guess it was the thrill. Plus having the stuff was kinda cool too, but not worth it! Once I got caught, I realized how wrong it was. Too bad it took getting caught to make me realize it. Yes, I had low self esteem and bad friends too. It can happen to anyone, and hopefully she learns her lesson too!

I think many kids shoplift candy etc. It's just a phase for most of them, at least I hope so. I was always too much of a wuss to do that, but my brother was caught stealing sweets when he was 10. He's quite law abiding now. Not nice for the owner of the business, though.

Originally Posted by 4kids4cats

Yes I tlked to her mom for a while. She was shocked. This girl is on honor roll and an alter girl at church. Just picked bad friends

How old are you if 13 is old? LOL I must be over the hill at 31....

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sounds like a cry for help to me. i hope she gets the help she needs rather than gets punished.

I stole sweets from a vendor in Paris I was only eight. My mom had figured out the currency wrong and didn't give me enough money, so we just stole some. The woman caught us the third time we did and yelled at us, it was in French and I didn't understand much of what she said (something about us coming from a zoo) and I never did it again.

That's sad. Shoplifting speaks so much of their characters, too. You rarely get caught for it, so for the majority of the time you're on your own honor code. People either don't do it because they know it's wrong, or they don't do it because they're scared to get caught. So these little girls either don't think it's wrong (or wrong enough), or aren't scared of getting caught (or think they're too good to get caught). Of course, peer pressure would play a role if their friends/boyfriend were asking them to do it. I used to have a friend that had a daughter who stole and lied all the time. She was a bad parent. I still worry about how she's going to turn out once in a while.

I used to work with a girl at Target who thought it was okay to use the store's goods as her own medicine cabinet. She would spray on perfume, hairspray, use scrunchies, and even open bottles of Tylenol and take a couple. I guess she thought that it wasn't "stealing" if she just took what she needed. She was really nice, though, and it was really unfortunate. She got fired, naturally. I don't even understand how someone could feel that way--especially to the point where they think it's SO insigificant that telling people about it and suggesting they do the same is just friendly banter.

Yipes! I have a co-worker who has an adult child who has had this problem his whole life. Usually the people that I see who steal either are stupid kids, drug addicts, or are occ in survival mode. You hope that once they get caught they will learn.

A lot of kids try things...even good kids sometimes...the very best thing that can happen is that they get caught and have to pay the consequences for it, so that hopefully they will not think it is "worth it" to try again.
Linda

as its been said before, its very very easy to get away with shoplifting.

quite often those who get caught actually want to get caught. maybe its an attention thing?

It's embarassing for me to say this, but I used to shoplift when I was about 10 or so. To be honest, it was almost a kind of kleptomania, because I certainly didn't need the things I stole (bookmarks, buttons, weird things like that) and to this day (almost twenty years later) I can't for the life of me understand why I did it. I don't even think I was trying to get anybody's attention, because I remember being fairly happy at that stage in my life. Besides that, I was one of those "good girls" who never did anything bad, and the stealing was completely out of character for me. Eventually, however, I got caught, and I begged my parents to help me return everything I had stolen. It was horribly, horribly embarassing, but I'm glad I was able to do it (return the things, I mean, not steal them in the first place!), and once everything had been returned--actually, once I'd been caught and made the decision to return things--I stopped. The compulsion to steal, for whatever reason, had gone away and has never returned. Thank goodness! Now, I'm pretty much so very straitlaced I can't even cross against the red light ...