#like say shoplifting from walmart to give to the poor

[razorsadness]

So you wanna be a punk? Read a zine. Drive around in your car with the windows rolled down, smoking cigarettes and screaming along with Clash songs. Or quit smoking, and get rid of your car, because those things are bad for you and the environment and they support evil corporations. Ride your bike everywhere, with Mischief Brew blaring through your headphones. Walk everywhere, listening to Against Me!, because walking is still honest. Shoplift from stores like Walmart and Barnes and Noble, then spend the little money you have supporting independent artists and small businesses. Sell your zines at a benefit party, give all the proceeds to Food Not Bombs or Planned Parenthood, even though you’re broke and can’t really afford to be giving zines away. Fuck it, scam copies from Office Max so you can keep giving copies away. Give one to the cute person with the mint-green mohawk you always see hangin’ downtown. Sew patches crookedly onto your hoodie, with dental floss, natch. Spend hours putting studs on your black denim jacket, even though half of them will wind up having the prongs bent to the point of being unusable and it feels like an exercise in futility. Wheat-paste posters or put up stickers or tag with Sharpie everywhere you go—political messages, song lyrics, surreal images, it doesn’t matter. Leave your mark. Go to a show and lose yourself in the music and the pit. Or stay out of the pit, ‘cause you’re just not into it; stand in the back clutching your beer and nodding your head and feeling like an asshole. Start a band, write some songs, never play any shows; figure out that no one in the band is as serious about it as you are and quit. Record a solo home demo of your songs, spend months getting it to sound just right—or at least as right as it can sound without a full band—and never let anyone hear it. Constantly say you’re dropping out of the punk scene, but never quite manage to do it. Tell people you’re so punk you hate punk. Say you’re gonna be a rude boy, like your dad. Watch punk films and read punk books and have them remind you of so much of your own life that you almost can’t breathe. Think about your life and your old friends, the ones who are dead, the ones you never talk to anymore, and the few that you’re still close to. Start to cry. Feel emo. Make a t-shirt that says: “Don’t call me emo. It makes me cry.” Call your friends, the ones who’ve stuck around. Go to the grocery store late at night. Make fun of articles in women’s magazines, because even though some of you are part of the right age group and gender to be their target demographic, their articles are so far outside of the realities of your lives that it’s hilarious. Write your own zine, about the reality of your life. Call your friends, the ones who’ve stuck around, get together at someone’s apartment. Make veggie nachos. Eat til you’re so full you can’t move. Talk about what you’re doing with your lives and feel like losers ‘cause none of you thought you’d still be so broke and pissed off when you reached this point. Feel shitty ‘cause being angry, old, and poor isn’t as cute as being angry, young, and poor. Be glad, despite it all, that you’re still alive, still hearing new music, still hanging out with friends. Flip off cops who are harassing teenagers for skateboarding or some other minor infraction. Realize that flipping off a cop won’t bring the system down, but doing it still feels pretty damn good. Throw an MDC record on your turntable when you get home; blast that shit. Go to a show, a party, a zine fest, a coffeeshop, see another punk. Go up and talk to them. They’ll turn out to be cool and you’ll have a new friend, or they’ll turn out to be assholes but hey, most punks are assholes. Still get crushes on every punk you see, despite that. Give no fucks about anything, except the things you really care about, like music and books and art and your friends and family and the state of the world and… Tattoo and pierce yourself and dye your hair and wear mismatched, dirty clothes because that’s how you feel comfortable, not because anyone else is telling you to. Try sometimes to look normal, in situations that call for it, and feel like a complete fraud the entire time, like everyone can tell you’re only pretending. Call other people posers, but don’t really mean it. Call yourself a poser, and claim the word with pride. Spend a night alone, tipsy from booze or jacked-up on caffeine—pick your poison—singing along to all the old songs and realizing that most of them still mean as much to you as they did half your life ago. Refuse to grow up. Realize that you’ve grown up despite your best efforts not to, and you have a job and bills and a family and/or other responsibilities, but that you’ve still got that spark, that match-struck, steel-toed, silver-studded, loud as fuck spark hanging out in your heart. Sometimes, that’s good enough.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk” (c. 2012-2015)

[terminallytwee]

I am incredibly tempted to somehow sneak some "okay to shoplift from walmart" stickers onto the police parking signs there, but I know for a fact it would be incredibly easy to find the person who did it.

Listen points just for considering it, ily comrade 💕

[spageddy]

Dio x Reader - Shoplift and Chill

ao3 link

As one of Dio’s most trusted servants, you were assigned THE most important task in the fuckhouse: shopping for Froot Loops. It was his favorite food in the world and the only thing that brought him joy. Unfortunately, Dio had not been budgeting very well as of late, so all you could afford to buy him this time was the store brand, “Fruit Rings.” Dio was not pleased.

“What. The fuck. Are those,” he hissed when he saw you unloading boxes of them into the evil cupboard. “Y/N, I feel betrayed… I asked for Froot Loops, not this poverty cereal… Do you think I, Dio, deserve to live like a filthy poor? You had one job, Y/N… ONE job, and you fucked it up. I just can’t trust you anymore, Y/N... I might have to demote you to Pet Shop’s personal pooper scooper.”

“Please no, not the pooper scooper!” you cried, tears involuntarily rolling down your cheeks. You couldn’t bear the thought of having to go back to being a lowly pooper scooper after you’d come so far. “Just give me one more chance, I swear I won’t let you down again!”

Dio didn’t say anything for a long time, pretending to ponder what he should do. “Well,” he said finally. “Since I, Dio, am very generous and forgiving, I will give you one more chance. However--” he raised one finger in the air-- “I, Dio, will accompany you to the store to make sure you don’t fuck up this time.”

You were so relieved you almost peed your pants. “Thank you Dio!” you screamed.

“Whatever,” said Dio.

You got an evil Uber to Walmart since neither of you could drive. The atmosphere in the car was tense; Dio didn’t talk much, which was typical for him, but you couldn’t help but feel it was because he was still mad at you. After you arrived, you had to wait a few minutes as Dio left a 1 star review, but soon it was time to get down to business.

There were a lot of security cameras by the entrance to the store. You and Dio put your middle fingers up at them. After that, you were quick to locate the cereal aisle; this skill had come after many months of being Dio’s professional Froot Loop provider. You might have just been imagining it, but you could have sworn Dio looked impressed by the speed at which you could navigate such a moderately-sized store.

“Here we are. The cereal aisle,” you announced. “And the Froot Loops are right over here.”

Dio had his arms crossed over his bodacious chest when you turned to look back at him. “Now explain to me why you were not able to acquire the right cereal last time,” he said accusingly. “Cereal shopping seems to come easy for you, so why? Did you really think you could get away with cutting corners when it comes to something as important as this?”

You were shocked; you didn’t think Dio would try to make a scene in the middle of Walmart. But you weren’t going to just stand by and let him ridicule you in front of the other cereal shoppers. “I’m sorry, okay?!” you yelled, clenching your fists. “You told me to buy 6 boxes this month, and all you gave me was a crisp $5 bill. The only thing I could afford was the store brand. This isn’t the 1800s anymore, Dio. You can’t buy shit with $5. Or were you expecting me to pay for it with my own money?”

Dio put his wrinkly hand on your shoulder. “Y/N, Y/N... I didn’t realize you were so foolish.”

“What?”

“That $5 wasn’t to buy Froot Loops, Y/N, that was your paycheck for this month. My funds have been running low, so I couldn’t give you the usual $15. So sorry about that. I didn’t realize you were spending it on this.”

Wait a minute, you were getting real money for this job? That was news to you. You had assumed your “paycheck” would be a handful of monopoly money like everyone else in the fuckhouse. Dio really was generous <3 But still… “If that’s my paycheck, then what the fuck am I supposed to buy your Froot Loops with?”

“Well, Y/N, it seems like you need to be taught a lesson in shoplifting. I thought you would be evil enough to figure it out on your own, but--”

“Shoplifting isn’t evil though,” you interrupted. “I’d say financially supporting a megacorporation like Walmart is way more evil.”

“According to this braindead society’s black and white morality, all stealing is evil,” said Dio. “But yes, you are correct. Shoplifting from Walmart is objectively right and just, and also the only way to get into heaven. So from now on I expect all of my Froot Loops to be stolen, understand?”

“Of course.”

“Good, now let’s make like a baby and head out,” he said, handing you a couple of boxes. “Just put these under your shirt, it’ll look like you’re pregnant.”

It did not look like you were pregnant. It looked like you had cereal boxes under your shirt.

“HOLD IT A RIGHT THERE,” came a man’s voice with a light Italian accent from the next aisle over. The strange man, who had on a dark robe with a deep v-neck, long gray hair, and purple lipstick, rode forth on a Segway and stopped in front of Dio. “What are you doing with all those a Froot Loops?”

“What are you, a cop? Fuck off,” said Dio.

“As a matter of a fact, I am,” said the man, pulling his identification out. “Officer Leone Abbacchio. I keep a this Walmart safe since a 2001 when I was a fired from a da mafia.”

“I think the only thing Walmart needs to be kept safe from is you, freak,” said Dio. “Let’s go, Y/N.”

“OHHH!! I did not a say you could leave!” said Abbacchio. “I just a hear you say something about a shoplifting.”

“You must have misheard, officer,” you said. “We were just talking about how the atmosphere in this Walmart is so warm and uplifting.”

“Yes,” Dio concurred. “That is, until you showed up and started interrogating us. Can’t you see my partner is heavily pregnant? That kind of stress is terrible for the baby. Shame on you, Leone. Shame.”

“Ohhh, I’m a sorry, I did not a notice. Ciao e buona giornata,” said Abbacchio, segwaying away in shame.

“Can’t believe that worked, cops are so stupid,” you said.

“True,” said Dio.

You continued toward the exit, where another cop was standing waiting to check people’s receipts before they left. “Damn, how are we gonna get past--”

One moment you were in Walmart, and the next it seemed as if you’d teleported out to the parking lot. “--that guy?” Dio must have used his time-stopping ability to sneak past the guard. You could see that he’d snagged about ten Walmart gift cards along the way too.

“Here, these are for you,” said Dio, placing them in your hands. “I hope this will compensate for all the money you’ve wasted buying Froot Loops for me.”

“Um, they don’t have any value until you put money on them.”

“I don’t want to hear it. If you can’t cultivate an attitude of gratitude then we’re done.”

You really were grateful, though. Things could be a lot worse. You could be Pet Shop’s pooper scooper right now if it wasn’t for Dio’s extreme kindness and generosity. “...Thank you,” you said, and meant it.

[elaphaemourra]

Have a WTF ask starring your Sith Inquisitors inspired by me needing to never have Internet access. It's time to visit the store to buy things, but whoops, instead of a Sithly market, they're now inside an average Walmart Supercenter. What do they buy and how do they handle the ~Walmart Experience~? :D

Oh hell yes, we back on our bullshit tonight y'all.

Eleikiri shoplifts half the store. She can do the Invisible, and she's a cheeky bastard who Causes Problems On Purpose. She shoplifts half the store. It's a whole mess. She shouldn't have taken that much. But she did. Oops.

Malaré would be... taken aback. Like. She'd VIBE and just get her shit done, hope nobody questions it, and leaves. Probably be startled by the greeters, but otherwise just do a quiet in-and-out.

Voremoura would just glare at people until they went away. Sometimes u gotta shop in peace and walmart isn't the place for peaceable shopping.

I think Kehsk would get a little too into the whole 'they have to be nice and pleasant to you' thing, not knowing that's what it was, and he'd end up when someone was like 'can i help u' he'd just 'i can't read i have no eyes, can u point me at the snacks I'm trying to figure out if my uncle's trying to pull some shady shit that maybe involves murder and that kind of thinking needs brain power.' Like holy SHIT, Kehsk u can't just say that to random people. It's bad form.

I... can't tell if Zal would be the most or the least perturbed out of my inquisitors. On one hand, he's the most functional adult out of all of them. On the other hand tho, he spent the first 27 YEARS of his life not really registering that capitalism existed and didn't go into a real store for another 2 years after that, when he figured out he was allowed to exchange Money for Clothing. Like, either he'd find some poor overworked retail staff and give them a pep talk, or he'd be Overwhelmed by how MUCH there is.

Like, I came back from France and went into a meijer and went 'WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS HUGE' and it wasn't even the big one. Like. Odds are he'd be overwhelmed, he's not used to Stuff as far as the eye can see. He'd get out as soon as possible. It's just a Lot.

[dgcustomer-blog]

12 Secrets of Dollar Store Employees

1. PAPER GOODS ARE THE BEST DEAL IN STORES.

You can discover essentially anything at dollar stores, including solidified nourishment (more on that in a minute), toys, and cleaning items. Collections can fluctuate broadly by store and by establishment, however as per Brenda, the store supervisor of a Dollar Tree in the Midwest, clients get the best arrangement staying with paper items. In any event, that is the thing that representatives purchase generally much of the time. “The things that my representatives and I buy at Dollar Tree for esteem would be tissue, paper towels, birthday cards, treats, inflatables, plastic product, paper plates, envelopes, stationary items, and the every day paper,” she says. At her store, bathroom tissue and the neighborhood paper are the top venders. While the previous is a quite clear need, papers at her area are commonly less expensive than in different stores; the Sunday release specifically is up to a few dollars less expensive. (Like a great deal of their stock, the chain likely gets a gigantic rebate for purchasing the papers in mass.)

2. THEY KNOW YOU WON’T BE IN THE STORE FOR TOO LONG.

Dollar stores ordinarily have little signage, couple of laces, and a little land impression (Dollar General’s is around 7300 square feet, or one-tenth the extent of a Walmart). However, having constrained space with effectively open things is by plan—the normal shopping trip for a Dollar General store is only 10 minutes. “Arranging the store around quick outings is one great approach to improve the quick experience numerous clients are searching for, while additionally keeping deals high by enabling clients to see numerous items,” says Hank, an associate Dollar Tree store director in Canada. Clients “will in general need to get in and out quick. They are regularly occupied and have different designs for the afternoon and would prefer not to invest an excessive amount of energy meandering the store.”

3. THEY WANT CUSTOMERS TO FEEL LIKE THEY’RE ON A TREASURE HUNT.

As per Moody’s, an income and credit examination firm, Dollar General pivots its stock all the time to make clients feel like they have to purchase things presently on the off chance that they’re not around later—sustaining what it calls a “treasure chase” feel. That enables the stores to contend with online retailers like Amazon, which regularly keeps up load of famous items and may not incite a similar feeling of earnestness in purchasers.

Dollar Tree’s methodology is somewhat extraordinary. While new stock arrives from providers, it’s not as often as possible. “When we are doing the truck we get truly energized when we see another item,” Brenda says. “We just observe perhaps 10 to 15 new things for each week out of 1500 things that are falling off of the truck, so when we get something new we quickly cut open the case and inspect it.”

4. THEY CATCH A LOT OF SHOPLIFTERS.

You can leave dollar stores with an armful of merchandise for $20, $10, or less, however that still doesn’t hinder individuals from swiping even the least expensive targets. “The shoplifting is incredibly wild,” Brenda says. “We get somebody pretty much consistently.”

Strangely, the cost may help encourage the robbery. “The thing with the low costs is that there is no genuine obstacle from individuals taking since none of the items have any security around them,” Brenda says.

5. THEY RECOMMEND YOU SKIP THE STEAK.

Looking for solidified nourishments at the rebate chains can be all in or all out. A few things may be OK: “I’ve had the little pie cuts, the wiener and flapjack nibbles, and the Cinnabon chomps are astonishing,” Brenda says. “The solidified meals are great too. Individuals likewise love the solidified vegetables and natural product.”

Be that as it may, with regards to natural sustenance, similar to meat or fish, you ought to likely consider a visit to the neighborhood food merchant. “I don’t eat any of the solidified fish or rib eyes since I don’t confide in solidified fish or meat that costs a dollar,” she says.

Nate, a Dollar Tree chief in Minnesota, concurs. “I could never purchase the steak,” he says. “I’ve gotten notification from more than one individual that it doesn’t cook [well] and it feels like elastic.” In 2016, TV member WCPO in Cincinnati endeavored a trial, presenting the four-ounce $1 ribeye alongside a butcher’s and grocery store sliced to some zone firemen. Among the reactions: “I get it was meat” and “It’s not awful.”

6. Different STORES USE THEM TO STOCK UP.

At the point when most everything is a dollar, it’s anything but difficult to perceive any reason why markdown chains wind up going about as a distribution center for neighborhood independent ventures. Hank says that he’s watched autonomous owners coming in to stock up on things. “There is limited who runs a comfort store and purchases boxes of chocolate bars and containers of soft drink,” he says. “We likewise get a lot of occasion coordinators purchasing supplies in mass, now and again many things at once.”

7. THEY DREAD THE SIGHT OF HOT WHEELS TOY CARS.

While many toys at dollar store areas are of suspect quality, there’s at any rate one piece of stock that causes a ton of energy in walkways. “We get a great deal of the notorious ‘Hot Wheels Hunters,’” Nate says, alluding to gatherers of the prominent bite the dust cast toy vehicle line from Mattel. “I surmise they scour the web and discover when stores are getting shipments. I’ve had individuals show up multi day after my 2000-piece truck [arrives] and request I go get the one box of Hot Wheels I got so they can be the first to get them.”

On the off chance that they’re amenable, Nate will attempt to oblige them. A portion of the more pleasant Hot Wheels fans even nominate themselves as true workers. “The one person that is an incessant guest will take the crates I have and stock them flawlessly on the racks while he searches for what he needs,” Nate says.

8. THEY SELL PREGNANCY TESTS. Furthermore, THEY’RE RELIABLE.

In case you’re careful about the exactness of a home pregnancy test pack that expenses $1, well, you likely ought to be. Be that as it may, as per Nate, his store stocks a solid brand. “The pregnancy tests we sell are similar ones utilized in many medical clinics,” he says. Most all pregnancy tests recognize a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, which is created during pregnancy. Progressively costly tests can identify lower levels prior in a pregnancy, while less expensive tests—like the ones in dollar stores—probably won’t enlist a positive until a lady is somewhat further along.

Be that as it may, they’re as yet compelling. What’s more, as indicated by Brenda and Nate, they’re likewise among the most-stolen things in their stores.

9. Inflatables KEEP THEM ALOFT.

Most Dollar Tree and numerous other dollar store areas have a counter dedicated to mylar inflatables planned for birthday parties and different occasions. That is on the grounds that the ease and simple stockpiling of the un-expanded inflatables makes them a truly gainful undertaking. “Inflatables complete a huge amount of business for Dollar Tree,” Brenda says. “A ton. Particularly for enormous occasions.”

In a given week, her store may pitch 150 to 200 inflatables: “Things being what they are, each day is somebody’s birthday, infant shower, graduation, or commemoration.”

10. THEY MIGHT WARN YOU AWAY FROM A BAD DEAL.

In case you’re going back and forth about whether a dollar buy is advantageous, you can generally ask a worker. They may let you know whether it merits the money. “I realize that the nature of our items isn’t generally the best and I clearly am not going to always bring this up to clients, however I am not reluctant to give them a touch of heads up when I realize a specific thing is particularly poor, or could be discovered a lot less expensive at a contender,” Hank says. “I realize that the organization will get by without those couple deals, and I like to satisfy clients over adding a couple of more dollars to the wallet of the organization.”

11. THE STORE MANAGER IS OFTEN OVERWORKED.

Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and different chains have experienced harsh criticism lately for entrusting store chiefs with a ton of duty so as to keep the expenses of staffing low. As per Nate, that looks at. “In my region they are preliminary running having the stores empty the semi-trucks rather than the drivers,” he says. “In any case, they won’t allow us the hours to include an additional person, which means I’m the supervisor on obligation while being in the back of a semi tossing 1800 cases.”

12. THEY CAN’T KEEP DONALD DUCK ON THE SHELVES.

In stores loaded up with a ton of new brands, clients like to see one conspicuous face: Donald Duck’s. The Disney character is up front on Dollar Tree’s squeezed orange, and his grinning bill is a standout amongst the most famous things in the stores. (The beverage is created by Citrus World, which possesses the Florida’s Natural mark and licenses the Donald symbolism and name from Disney.) “The Donald Duck squeezed orange is our third most-sold thing,” Brenda says. “Frankly, I don’t know why it’s so famous. Many individuals stop at our store while in transit to work or any place, so it’s sort of a snappy get.”

[erythrai]

The “Crazy” Ex-Girlfriend

While scrolling through good ole Facebook, I happened upon a list of stories from the point of view of the “crazy” ex-girlfriend. This got me thinking about my (disastrous) dating past and I landed on the one time I could have been called a crazy ex.  Story ensues. 

Of course, some back story is needed.  I was working as an RA in my sophomore year of college when I struck up a friendship with one of the residents. She was an outgoing, super friendly, super nice, but takes no prisoners type of girl (blond, Texan, and fiery as hell). Eventually, she got to talking about her boyfriend who lived near Philadelphia (about 4 hours away) and his family.  Turns out, he had a brother who she thought would be “perfect” for me. 

Eventually, I gave in and added him on Facebook. We began chatting and he seemed interesting, sweet, fun to chat with, and his pictures showed he was handsome. He was a beyond talented musician and that only added to the appeal. He sent me packages and handwritten letters, and eventually, I developed feelings. Once he surprised me by showing up to a dance I had only wistfully admitted I would like to attend with him, we got together. 

The relationship was a TRAIN WRECK. Turns out, he was a heroin addict with some form of undiagnosed mental illness and an aversion to work. Highlights of our tumultuous relationship include: 

- Him never having a job until the bitter end, causing me to pay for almost everything. My parents always knew when he was visiting as my bank account would always hit 0. He even asked me to get a job while I was visiting him for 3 weeks in the summer while I was still taking summer online classes 

- Daily emotional caretaking for his extreme highs and lows 

- What I later accepted was daily emotional abuse and manipulation. Apparently, he didn’t like it when I was having any fun without him...which was often in a long distance relationship

- Him lying to his parents about working at Walmart when he had been banned from all Walmarts due to shoplifting (guess where my gifts came from?). He later got kicked out of his house for lying and I missed the Avengers premier to console him (he was fine really, his grandmother gave him a lovely room) 

- Him getting back on heroin, then going through withdraw

- His pushing me away after I got him to seek help, get medicated, get a job, and go back to school  Eventually, he fell out of love with me and, although he was the one who clearly wanted it to end, made me actually say the words even though I still loved him. It was over, and I was absolutely heartbroken. 

I couldn’t have expected the fallout.  We never spoke again, but that didn’t stop him from lying through his teeth about me. 

Through the girl who originally set us up, I found out he had been calling me a c*nt, and telling his parents we broke up because I couldn’t handle him having a job (seriously). He even blocked me on Facebook for years. Who knows what he told the girlfriend he had after me. Poor 17-year-old didn’t stand a chance (he was 25). 

So, next time a guy offhandedly refers to his ex as “crazy,” try to give it a second thought. Writing a girl off as crazy is easier for a new girlfriend, I get it. But, remember, you could be the next one he calls crazy.  

[okbyokaybye]

Francesca- Actually Stealing From Companies Is Okay Making a case for workplace theft, shoplifting, looting, and other forms of taking stuff from businesses

VIA THE ANARCHIST LIBRARY

You’re reading this because you work too much and still eat and live like shit. Or maybe because you’ve given in to the feeling we all have — that having a job feels bad and you don’t really want to work that much...and you also eat and live like shit. You’ve been told all your life that criminals like you are bad people. I hope to convince you not to believe that and to stop playing a game you were designed to lose, or at least to cheat it a little. I think you’re worth it.

WHY DO PEOPLE STEAL FROM BUSINESSES?

I steal because I’m hungry or need something I can’t afford comfortably or at all. I steal because some days I’m just bored and frustrated from either working on the clock or trying to prepare to clock back in (days off/ vacation) and it feels good. And I steal because I don’t have any real choices in most things I do in day to day life (work to pay for rent, feverishly try to decompress in my time off so I can be ready to go back to work, repeat) and stealing dumplings from Whole Foods might be the only thing I do today that was truly my own freely made decision.

Most people who would advocate theft might begin by reassuring you that stealing from businesses doesn’t hurt anybody. They would tell you that employees working for a wage don’t tend to see those wages influenced by product theft, and that most stores actually factor product loss into their budget so the store revenue itself is also barely affected at all by your theft. While those things are true, I’m not exactly that person. I WISH I could hurt or even inconvenience a company owner by taking some of his investments from him. If I could get back at even one of the bosses I’ve ever worked for through workplace theft, I would love to do that. Sadly though, at this point, things are so unfathomably overproduced, wealth is so unimaginably hoarded, and power is so terrifyingly concentrated, I could spend the rest of my life looting as much as my arms could carry and I would never be able to make my crimes pose even the smallest threat to a single lowgrade millionaire. And that’s the bad news.

The good news is, I do steal to survive, and because of that, I’ve given myself a life where I can wage work a little less than the average person and while I wouldn’t call myself “free” because of this, I have stolen time in my life that I use for more important things than either a job, or day-off-style leisure, both of which I don’t think make my life worth living.

And I’m not scrambling to justify theft beyond that. I’m uninterested in deserving anything that a person with more cash has easier access to than me. If I’m not going to be given a choice in participating in the game of law and order, then I’m not going to feel badly about cheating it. It’s not my game, and I’m not going to be given a chance to win so I’m not going to play where I’m able to opt myself out. I don’t want to be ‘deserving’ in the same way I don’t want to be ‘tolerated’ (for example, straight people exercising tolerance of the gay people). I don’t want to be ‘tolerated’ in the same way I don’t want to be ‘innocent’ (I’m not against crime, I’m against law, I don’t want to fight for my innocence, or legality, I want to fight against anything that would classify me as either a criminal or a citizen).

I see tolerance as just a quiet, suppressed hatred in the same way that being deserving is just being softly restricted. I don’t want to DESERVE food, clothes, books, etc. I want to HAVE those things because I’m alive and because it’s available and the dumplings from Whole Foods taste good. I don’t want to be trained into gratitude for the opportunity to deserve food, like a pet.

Whether you’re a hard worker or a cheat (a good-poor or a bad-poor), you’re still the designated loser in the eyes of the game of law, work, economy, whatever. But that’s in THOSE eyes. In my eyes, you’re doing what you have to do to get by. I once talked to a houseless guy busking in the French Quarter who recalled living in New Orleans just after Katrina when he and a few other people from his neighborhood would periodically go out and loot (as many others famously did) what they and their neighbors might need to survive the hellscape that week. He told me his block thought of him as a hero and he probably did save or improve a few lives by taking what needed taking. Which is of course miserable in hindsight, given that now he lives as a homeless criminal, hated by upstanding citizens, policed by the police, etc. The law doesn’t ‘misunderstand’ what looting meant to Katrina survivors, I think it actually understood very well that theft is necessary for survival in that case. We are not experiencing a misunderstanding or a bad translation with law, we are experiencing a conflict with it. There is no state or economic power that needs truth spoken to it. What we want is on the other side of it, not within it.

WHAT ABOUT SMALL BUSINESSES?

The handful of often repeated arguments against taking things from businesses rely on a few hypothetical exceptions that get waved around like a weird fantasy flag. The most common hypothetical perfect victim is The Downtrodden Business Owner. The shitty-apartment-renting, poverty stricken, unpaid-bills-having business owner makes up such a tiny, barely visible percent of actual real life company owners, it actually pains me to give this strange desperate argument page space. Plus, if your definition of a victim has about $30,000 just lying around to startup a small business, we have very different definitions of a victim.

Regardless, the attempt to personify a company is so weird to me. A company isn’t human, it’s a series of investments made, often intended to turn around to create a profit margin which expands as you pay employees less and sell things for more money. So I mean, yeah I would prioritize a person having a meal or getting Advil over a company keeping one of its many investments on a shelf. That’s easy.

I really hate throwing numbers around in a piece like this because you can just do that on your own time, but I’ll data drop one thing here so we can be done with numbers and get on with it. The qualifying criteria for obtaining a Small Business Administration loan states that a small business is one with fewer than 500 employees and less than $7 million in annual sales. Also, the vast majority of this very small percentage of business owners you’re waving around like a mascot to represent your defense of investments are paying their hundred or so employees next to nothing an hour and working them to the bone, not that that totally makes a difference to my argument, but it’s worth mentioning if that’s what it takes to cut down a fictional argument tool.

Look, I’m not telling you what to do, if you walk into a store and think the owner has it worse than you, you can go snag your shit from a Walmart. I wouldn’t stop you. The small business owner anomaly that fits the downtrodden narrative will go out of business, almost guaranteed within the first year, and it will usually be because they just didn’t and couldn’t have the tools to compete with bigger companies selling the same thing. It’s bullshit to imagine a scenario where stolen eyeliner could be the straw that breaks any business camel’s back.

NEED VS. WANT

Unsurprisingly, I’m not going to attempt to split hairs between stealing for “need” and stealing for “want.” I’m not trying to claim that theft from businesses is ‘right’ (yo it totally is) and stealing from a company is a victimless crime (again, I wish it wasn’t). I think defining ‘need’ is a lot hazier than people with slogan-length talking points like to admit, especially given all the multitudes of ways poverty, or even just not being rich, is unbearable. It’s not just hunger and illness that makes living difficult -- modern living is also just extremely boring. To me, a need can be relaxation, a night out with a friend, a book, etc. People are more than just eating, shitting, sleeping machines and we do “need” more than food and shelter. Rather, I want to simplify my argument and say that company theft is good because paywalls are bad, full stop.

Company theft isn’t good “in the instance of ___” but is actually always fine because paywalls are always a punishment/reward tool and refusing to be trained by an economic system or state is empowering.

Unfortunately, we won’t often be able to opt out of the law and money game we’re trying to cheat. Some of us will get followed around stores because of the way we look. Some days, we’ll have to go to work so we can pay rent. We’ll have to use some of the rent money to fix a tire or go to the hospital and hope we have enough left over to not get evicted. But we’ll take what we can get, share when we can get it, and survive to pull other stunts.