The Work of the Modern Shoplifter

A dispatch from the front lines of the war on inflation and our ever-declining living standards

When it came to the work of white-collar shoplifting, Winona Ryder was ahead of her time

Today's article is something completely different. I recently sat down with a childhood friend — once a hotshot sales executive, now an underemployed professional making ends meet — who reached out wanting to confess how he's been making ends meet in these challenging times. What started as a casual conversation evolved into something more substantial — the beginnings of what might be called a “post-capitalist manifesto.”

What followed was a candid, sometimes uncomfortable conversation about survival tactics in today's increasingly strained, hyper-inflated economy. My friend, who asked to remain anonymous, described navigating a marketplace filled with overpriced yet almost worthless goods, obscene food waste, and retail environments seemingly designed to encourage certain behaviors while corporate profits continue to soar.

I've presented his story in his own words, edited only for clarity. It's not an endorsement of his methods,¹ but rather a window into how ordinary, professional people are adapting to extraordinary pressures. From his perspective, he's not stealing — he's refusing to participate in a system he sees as fundamentally broken.

Some of you may find his justifications troubling or his actions unethical. Others might recognize your own quiet rebellions against a consumer economy that feels increasingly exploitative. Either way, I believe his story offers valuable insight into the real-world consequences of our current economic situation and the moral compromises some have decided to make.

On Professional Necessity and Economic Reality

I’m a single guy that just became middle aged, and my mother lives with me under my care. Keeping the two of us fed, clothed and housed on a pension cheque and inconsistent independent contracting gigs — the new norm — is next to impossible in a major metropolitan city.

I'm in marketing and sales. I need to maintain a professional appearance, but the economics just don't add up anymore. When I get a $5,000 bonus, the government takes 40%, and then I pay 15% sales tax on purchases. I'm left with maybe $2,500. For that, I can get what — five blazers? Or realistically, two blazers, eight shirts, three pairs of pants?

At $100 a shirt with taxes, that's $800. Add three pairs of decent jeans at $50-100 each, we're at $1,000. Jackets used to be $150, now they're $300-500 each. I need socks too. This is just for a basic professional wardrobe.

Even H&M wants $150 for their crap jackets now. Fast fashion is taking over because no one can afford quality. It's the "Boots Theory" in action — the rich stay rich by buying quality items once, while the poor keep buying cheap replacements. But here's the problem: the retailers need quality to go away. Look at what the highest end of high-end offers now: Prada sneakers that couldn't survive a summer of being walked in, selling for $1,200. Pure polyurethane from "the finest purveyors of plastics," guaranteed to withstand at least three wears before looking like shit. The "Boots Theory" has fallen apart — there is no more escape from the cycle of buying crap, because the most expensive items have decreased in quality as cheaper materials are promoted as trendy.

The Strategy Behind It

This isn't some pathological thing like with Winona Ryder or any other stereotypical rich female shoplifter. I'm being strategic. It's brute survival.

I'm an underemployed marketing executive that discovered the lack of value in everything and the meaningless waste of the corporate system. I realized that exploiting security weaknesses in overweeningly large retail environments built to excess is simply the only way to continue pursuing the North American dream while every oligopolist seeks to make that impossible.

All guilt is shed as the scale of the odds against us becomes apparent, and the meaninglessness of loss to massive corporations compared to the meaningfulness of lack to an individual. Simply put, the consequences of non-possession of consumer goods is so much higher to an individual than the consequences of dispossession of consumer goods to a corporation.

I've reduced my monthly grocery bill to about $150. I feel zero remorse. I recently found out that Walmart has an exit next to the self-checkout and customer service desk. I actually found it by accident, thinking it was the entrance to self-checkout. If you just load an entire grocery cart up and walk through that exit, no one blinks twice. Security will even watch your cart for you while you hail a cab.

Here's why I need to confess: I don't feel awful about it, at all. They're selling gas station sushi for $15 a box. They're selling diapers for $1.50 each. It's ludicrous. And yet you can also just take whatever and not pay. It's maddening, this society. Thank god for these unorganized public spaces where every grifter and scam artist can just skooch by.

But what are we working for? To pay $49 a month for diapers? I don't think I can pay these insane prices even with a full bank account. If I were shoving steaks down my pants, yeah, I'd feel terrible. But they've made shoplifting with dignity a thing now — self checkouts designed to reduce staff, left unsupervised. Exits they can't afford to guard because of the sprawl of their greedily-planned stores. You don't need to wear a trenchcoat and be shifty anymore. And when you look over your shoulder to see if you're being watched, you just see someone else doing it, too.

The Intelligence of It All

Most thieves are dumb. I’m not particularly smart, but I suppose there’s some intelligence that goes into it: mostly being able to spot and glaring security gaps. There’s ethics, too: I could never steal from a small, honest business just trying to play the game. I only go after the gigantic, over-reaching corporations that have built unmanageably large retail stores that are chaotic.

Failing legacy department store: a door 10 feet from the elevators with no one there, and the social disorder of bankruptcy — no incentive for employees to prevent theft anymore. Are they gonna get a raise or promotion for stopping me?

Huge corporate drugstore: zero self-checkout supervision. You're supposed to pay 30 cents for your reusable bag, so just use it to make the machine beep ten times and you sound honest.

Upscale overpriced grocery store: a store with a completely unsupervised escalator entrance/exit, designed to accommodate large volumes of shoppers and impossible to supervise.

The liquor store is the only one I use real guile at. I know they're not allowed to ask what's in my bag. I simply build a routine of buying one or two beers, put two or three beers in my bag quickly, and pay for one or two. Once in a while, I declare I have some in my bag to seem like I'm honest when I do have them in there.

The little Chinese grocery store? I pay for everything because they're not a giant corporation.

On Retail's Death Spiral

What this has made me realize is that "churn" or theft is a factor of these overweening, overreaching giant conglomerates creating unrealistically large warehouses of goods and expecting people to transport themselves there, act as warehouse employees, and transport their own goods back home in exchange for the "convenience" of trying before you buy or touching the thing before you buy it.

Put more simply: if you are making jackets for $50, this wouldn't happen. But because massive corporations seek to maximize shareholder value in every facet of society, while individuals emulate the same behavior, we are at a point where nothing is affordable anymore for almost anyone. What's worth more? A "$750" jacket sold for $200, or a tax write-down of $500 cost of goods lost due to "churn"?

The failing department store is never gonna fix that fucking door with no alarm because it makes them too much money. When these things leave the store and can't be found, they can be declared for the loss, instead of being obligated to find a way to sell them or, even worse, pay for them. No one wants to pay for this shit.

While some want to see things, this giganto-mart retail experience is dead. The 200,000 square foot, 10-story retail tower is dead. Why expose yourself to massive theft to underwhelm customers with endless aisles of merchandise that doesn't fit them? I walk through aisles, entire racks of suits made for people far more corpulent than I am.

If you described the business model as a premium-priced self-serve warehouse in the most expensive real estate in the country, no one would believe this could work.

The Online Alternative

What the online world provides that kills the retail environment is this: there's almost no need to go to the warehouse and procure your own inventory when you can see extremely detailed imagery, often in 3D, of what you're about to purchase. The flexible return policy based on purchasing shipping in bulk as opposed to a per-package basis seals the deal.

As these warehouses die, online retailers may attempt to be less flexible with their return policies and less tolerant of practices such as "wardrobing," where people purchase multiple items with the intent of returning most of them. Only in those moments of inflexibility will retail come up for any air before drowning entirely.

The value of seeing, touching, and feeling a product is greatly overstated, especially when online retailers offer a 30-day trial with limited to no consequences that often ends with you keeping the product and getting reimbursed if you're unsatisfied. The biggest and most successful retailers such as Walmart have always known that the key to retail volumes is a flexible return policy. Then Amazon figured out that trick and applied it to online retail.

On Food Waste and Inflation

One of the steaks I took was 30 bucks and could hardly feed one person. This is beyond ridiculous. They want $70/kg or $35/lb. What $100 won't buy you now is amazing.

I've actually had employees tell me they'd rather have the food stolen than "recovered" in the back. When you "recover" food that someone's abandoned or stashed, it creates more work for the employees. Customers don't care unless there's violence, but a butcher will have to restock the cuts. Same with produce. They'd rather the goods be stolen because it's more work when they find them abandoned. It's easier to toss it in trash cans. You lay out the new stuff tomorrow.

And don't get me started on these so-called "food waste reduction" companies. They're spending hundreds of thousands on freezers to lock about-to-be-spoiled food away, and instead of donating it to food banks, it's sold to yuppies who also need a break but haven't crossed the threshold of just not paying. Instead of offering great discounts on stuff they're about to give to the food bank, they divert it to these tech startups that have made an app to lock a freezer.

They don't want you to stop churning food over when you can't afford it anymore. Keep participating in the retail experience. Even if you just buy the bags and then put food in them, that's 75 cents they wouldn't have made.

They tell you if they want you to shoplift — you see the places that don't agree with it: no self-checkout, reasonable sized store, no way to exit without going through a register. It's the mega fancy marts that are greedy that have open layouts. Of course, you can't manage 80,000 square feet of retail space.

Food is always thrown away. What's the difference between discreet shoplifting and the rubbish bin? None.

These companies pretend to be saving humanity while actually turning what would have been a food bank donation into a profit center — not just for them, but for the retailer too. "BAG OF NEARLY EXPIRED MEAT, NOW FROZEN" they'll advertise. "Was $39.99, now on special for $19.99!" But it was never $39.99. It was always $19.99, and there's $9.99 of meat in there. $5 for the grocery store, and $5 for the guys that paid for the freezers and made an app to divert the food from food banks. And the sushi, oh god, the sushi — $16.95 for a 10-hour old roll of hardened rice.

Sheer Absurdity

I just haven't been able to reconcile the absolute hegemonic wealth of the three companies that control groceries in my area and their outrageous prices. I find myself scanning one bag of groceries and then getting so pissed off that I pay for it and "forget" the other three.

It's reached levels that can only be described as obscene. A can of Zoodles is $3.79. The real change is... I can’t afford the worst groceries, the absolute crap no one should eat,, and even if I made five times as much, I'd still be offended at paying $4 for a can of Zoodles.

I know my rant about the universal lack of quality in goods seems like a cheap justification for no longer seeing the value in paying for these goods. Surely, I”m just calling it all crap to lessen the moral quandary of taking it without paying. But when I said that there is no quality left and that the “Boots Theory” is obsolete, I absolutely meant it… One of the “$400” jackets I took split in the back after 2 days of light wear. Imagine if I'd just spent actual money on that.

I sometimes think about making content all about "hacking your budget" and "check out this cool grocery store hack" and "did you know there's a library for clothes and it's totally free?" And all the content would just be about shoplifting, returning products the day before the return date, filing fraudulent porch piracy complaints, etc.

"This one simple traffic hack can make you thousands of dollars."

So yeah, I got the solution for the masses: late night grocery auctions. From 11:00 to midnight, for those cheap enough to crowd around yelling for discounts. Limits per customer to keep the wholesalers out. Just normalize heading to Walmart at closing time and fighting for deals on expiring meat.

Until then, I'll keep accidentally deleting half my purchases on these confusing new self-checkout computers. Funny how that happens when you're distracted by inflation.

Beyond Justification

Look, this isn't about bragging or saying "check out this sweet score." We have more important things to discuss. Is it wrong to steal? I don't know anymore. But isn't it also wrong to hijack the necessities of life at exorbitant prices?

The real rub is that I was making 150-200K and after giving 40% of it away for taxes, plus paying $2000+ in rent, plus 13% sales tax on everything I buy, despite being in the top 1% of earners, how long would it take me to save the down payment to "own" a house on a 30-year loan?

It would take me at the age of 40, saving $25,000 a year, 10 years to accumulate a down payment of $250,000, which would cover 20% of a million-dollar home — and there are almost no homes worth less than a million left here. A million-dollar home is three bedrooms, maybe two.

And guess what? In 10 years, my $250K won't cover 20% of what prices will be then. There is no hope, and that's with squirreling away your average 50K-a-year worker's take-home salary for 10 years to get a 30-year loan. And having to keep that pace up until I'm 70 — sorry, 80 — because I'll be 50 when I can afford to buy.

Am I going to get a $200K a year job in advertising and keep it until I'm 80 while AI is phasing every soft skill out of the job? As AI replaces everything I'm good at — and probably what you're good at too — this is the future we're staring down. More people finding better ways to survive in systems that care less and less about them.

The realization that I won't die of starvation, that I don't have to choose between diapers and looking like I am employable, and that as long as I can keep the roof over our head, that hope for a semblance of a normal life is there — it relieves the kind of anxiety and desperation that would cause society to truly collapse.

Food banks don't tell the whole story. How could they? The food banks are almost empty because they're being looted by Silicon Valley and their giant freezers that can only be unlocked with an app. But at least you can pay for them on Klarna.

Here’s the straight tea, sis: Easy shoplifting means fewer people in balaclavas patiently waiting in line to rob the bank. I'm not proud of my little operation. But I'm not apologizing, either. When the rules of the game are rigged, you stop playing or you find a new way to play.

1. As a general note — since some are already asking — this person isn’t American and the companies he’s frequenting aren’t headquartered in America, so he’s not up against the increasingly sophisticated inventory controls seen here at Walmart (which is also scrapping self-checkout lanes) and its peers. His local prosecutors have a fairly hands-off approach to anything outside of major gang/gun crime (if that).