Lachat.com

Riding most of the week on a bus has its ups and downs, mostly coinciding to potholes. My interaction with the other people on the bus has ranged from pretending to be asleep to discussing local politics and sustainability efforts. Mostly I just scurry myself to a seat and try not to attract attention. And so I found myself one day overhearing the conversation of two teenage girls that left me wishing I hadn't. If this pair is the future we have to look forward to, lets squeeze this planet dry of life before they get to it.

I was staring somewhere into space as is my wont, when the pair sat down a row behind me on the bus. Some conversations you can't help but overhear. So, I overheard:

"Where'd you get that shirt?"

"Macy's."

"Did you take it?"

"No, I actually paid for it this time."

Apparently it is the exception to the rule for these girls to pay for merchandise. At this point I was already a bit peeved at their audacity. Now, I'm sympathetic to people who are in such dire straights that they must steal food to feed their family. If someone asked me for food, I'd give it to them (if they ask for money, forget it). However, designer blouses at five finger discounts are hardly a necessity no matter how much you claim peer pressure is urging you to conform. 

And the conversation got worse. The girls began to chit chat about how often they shoplift, how they shoplift, where the good places to shoplift are. By the time they got off the bus at the pet store I could have written an entire Dummies Guide to Shoplifting. I wanted to round on them and say like many a bad stereotypic foreigner, "You are very very bad people." I wanted to photograph them and forward the photos to all the department stores in the array and get them banned for life. I wanted to grab their wrist and do an old-fashioned citizens arrest. But I did nothing.

Perhaps it was their sense of entitlement that I found most upsetting. Here were two teenagers, probably seniors in high school, who could probably afford to buy all the things they stole, but didn't. They see the big namebrand store from the mainland, that faceless corporation peddling overpriced goods, and they shirk the system stealing the merchandise. They could have chosen better, and for that matter, legal ways to upset the capitalistic status quo, but they didn't. Goodwill and salvation army stores provide such services, a great variety of name brands at cheap prices. However, in many circles it is social suicide to be discovered buying and wearing secondhand clothes. And yet it has emerged to be socially acceptable to shoplift. Apparently I'd stumbled upon the Ala Moana branch of their network. Perhaps on sundays you can see the kleptomaniac mentors guiding their brood through the Macy's fitting rooms. 

Seeing that pair walk into that pet store I had to wonder if shortly they'd be sneaking slyout out the double doors with two bunnies and a cocker spaniel down their drawers. You know, just a pick me up theft on their way to the mall.