A few days ago, I felt as if I had suddenly entered a security-camera film in which someone is caught stealing at a store.
But It wasn’t me! If this video had existed, it would have been made at ALDI, with me in the background and the “purloining star” in the foreground (well, an “extended foreground”: out the entrance and headed towards the parking lot).
It all started as the cashier was ringing up my loaf of bread, dark chocolate, and a pint of blueberries. I list these only for drawing a comparison between the healthy items, of which I chose to pay, and those unhealthy items (to be later enumerated), which she chose to steal!
“Shoplift” almost sounds like some sort of calisthenic or something from an industrial art class. The Lord called it what really is, in that famous “list” of things, each beginning with” “Thou shalt not.”
Just as the cashier was about to give me my receipt, she jumped up from her seat and called for the aid of a fellow worker; then both bounded out the entrance doors.
They evidently knew to always confront any suspected shoplifting culprit outside of the store. I’m sure this is ALDI store policy; and besides, any of us “Mayberry” fans know what to do, from having watched that episode where, inside the department store, Andy bumped into the little old lady who went “clank!”
Well, the thief, in this case, appeared to be in her 30s and in good health (probably could have beaten me up). She had filled her grocery cart over the brim; and the extra weight of the items no doubt overcame the advantage of the cart being on wheels, helping the two cashiers catch up with her.
The thief relinquished the cart without a struggle, and my cashier told the thief to never come back. Then said to her fellow cashier, “We’d better make sure that other door is locked.”
The thief had gone out one door not designated for an exit. I later thought about how she had been like a faucet-sprung stream of water, which finds its way towards filling every empty space within a glass of ice cubes.
When my cashier wheeled the cart back in, its wheels creaking under the weight of the store goods, I saw for what that lady had risked her reputation.
The stolen items were as plain as day (being not bagged, as to have had that happen, she would have properly gone through the checkout line).
Starting off, there were several bottles of wine which were giant (having made the decision to steal, she evidently decided to go big). There were bags of candy, cookies, and one of those huge bags containing many varied little bags (kind of “Matryoshka-like”) of “cheesy-doodledy” things (both soft and crunchy), along with the usual plethora of various flavors of corn chip offerings.
The mega-bottles of wine, along with the cookies, candy, and “doodles” reminded me of when some of us would be having a party back at Appalachian and coming down with a case of the “munchies” (only “the beer and wine munchies.” I neither “lit” nor “inhaled”).
The thief had properly placed (gravity-wise) the “magnums of the vine” below the “boxes and bags of the crumb and crunch” (if there had been eggs, I feel she would have properly placed them on top, like the Great Pyramid’s white limestone “cap.”
At the grocery cart’s bottom was another layer of “magnums,” but these were “magnums” of Tide clothes-washing detergent, along with some bath soaps. So, it wasn’t all “party goods.”
In the end, the base of this lady’s “food-cart pyramid” was made up of things which aid in cleanliness.
But even though “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” her “ultimate choice of the day” crossed out that old standard, as if it had been crossed out on a list!
