My Criminal Past

Soul Sister reminded me of my criminal past today and I thought I would share it with you.  You are reading the blog of a law-breaker, a thief, a person of disrepute!

Some years ago our little family were grocery shopping on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  It was one of those large chain supermarkets and we had a trolley full by the time we got to the check-out chick (actually young man, does that make him a check-out chum?).  The check-out chum was learning the job and had a supervisor with him, someone I vaguely knew.  Anyhoo, the shopping bags were piling up when I saw one of the kid's school teachers at the beginning of one of the aisles and walked back into the store to speak to her.  The Lovely Husband stayed with the groceries and I assumed he would pay.  My chit chat finished I returned to find the Lovely Husband all stocked up and ready to go, trolley facing towards the exit.  And so we did, exit that is.

Riding the travellator down to the underground car park we saw supermarket staff and security guard rush past us.  Wow, we think, something is afoot.

Packing the groceries into the back of the station wagon we see more security staff rush through the car park, frantic, and with very serious faces.  One asks us if we have seen someone run off with a trolley full of groceries.  No we hadn't but wow, this is serious stuff.  A whole trolley load.

Walking down the street to deliver our small daughter to her dance practice we see yet another security guard rushing around looking for these unscrupulous people.  Again we are asked have we seen the culprits.  No, sorry.  The hide of some people.

Later at home we are unpacking the groceries.  Where is the ice cream I ask.  I don't know says my man.  Where is the cheese?  I dunno.  Where is such n such, where is this n that?  I don't know, you paid for the stuff.  No I didn't, I thought you did?!  The look on our faces as we stared at each other would have been priceless.  Bloody hell, we are the thieves that we told the security staff we had not seen.  Wow, we are wanted fugitives.  Wow, we are missing all our cold stuff.  Holy macaroni salad, the supervisor knew me.  We immediately rang the supermarket and explained ourselves.  Amazingly, they had very kindly put our cold stuff in refrigeration but we would have to come pay our bill.

On arriving later and paying our bill we were told that the young check-out chum was on his first day in the job, had been focusing so much on the job at hand that he had not noticed us walking casually away.  He thought we had done a scarper and promptly burst into tears.  The supervisor returned to find the poor lad distressed and feeling totally at fault.  Oh this story made us feel even better.  NOT! 

Except for the poor young man, it is kind of funny.  My man and I obviously read each other's body language to believe that the other had paid the bill.  We walked away, relaxed and innocent of all and so our body language relayed to the security staff that we were as we appeared, I nice young family who had paid for their groceries.  A whole trolley load (minus the cold) in one foul swoop.  We could have been known as Ocean's 4.

So there you have it.  Corrupting the little people in our lives at the tender age of, I don't know, very young anyway.   I feel better, having confessed to this heinous crime.  It could have been worse I suppose.  We could have walked out of a store with a fridge, a TV or maybe a wall unit or something like that.