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Hmmmm. A 2 year old picking up and keeping an item that has little value (don't know what this jewelry was worth) is not intentional. Unintentional actions aren't crimes - crimes involve intent. This would fall into "unintentional taking" on the part of the adult managing that child.
This is the same as if your husband is on an airplane in the middle seat and the woman in the aisle seat stands up to accommodate his getting out to use the bathroom, and they awkwardly rub fronts together for several moments before he is able to exit the aisle.
Unintentional action. That's the key here.
Hmmmm, it's not about the unintentional actions of the child, it's about the response of the adult who finds the item the child took. So if we play this game what's the appropriate response of the guy who gets rubbed, is it to mumble an awkward an apology or is it to leer at the woman and try to ask for her phone number, lol?
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMiller
What if you get home from an overseas family trip and find that your child grabbed a penny-whistle when you weren't looking? Are you going to book another pair of transatlantic flights and search for the street vendor so you can return one cent worth of merchandise, or are you a horrible thieving crook?
You call the company and you offer to pay by credit card, pretty sure most people would make that same call if they got home and found they had been overcharged.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
While I agree with your examples, that those are obvious acts of dishonesty, I think it's a little more involved than that. Every business "writes off" certain expenses. We don't know what the article was that the child took home. MaryleeII had some good points. I think if this child did same again, I'd respond more seriously than the first.
Every business that writes it off passes it on to the consumer. People who intentionally shoplift often use the very same reasoning to justify their taking things.
This isn't about the child at all, it's about the child's mother who is saying that it doesn't matter. One website says shoplifting (whether intentional or not) costs $35 million daily, so obviously those small losses do matter
I worry about toddlers who can't learn that things have to be paid for. I worry that they won't grow up well because there is something wrong with their ability to learn. Maybe they grow up to be parents who think it is adorable that their child is stealing?
Perhaps the concept of theft might be too much for a two year old, but by that age, my kid certainly understood that we had to pay for what we took. It is not a difficult concept for a two year old to learn, even of he learns it is a rule and not the moral reasoning behind it.
We had that lesson every time we went shopping: yes, you can have that banana but you can't eat now it because they have to weigh it before they know how much to charge us. You can eat it as soon a s we pay for it. Or, OK, you can eat this cookie now but it is your job to carry the wrapper and give it to the clerk so we can pay for it.
Or: what do you think? Should we buy this or not? If we aren't going to buy it, we put it back.
I also am a bit worried about a parent pushing a toddler around in the stroller, getting to the parking lot, removing the kid form the stroller and placing the child in a car seat, disassembling the stroller and placing it in the car and all the while not noticing that the child is carrying around a shop lifted necklace (not to mention, how many stores have necklaces down at toddler eye level). Either that is very extremely non-observant or else is it deliberately allowing the child to steal, thinking to get away with it.
OK, so you've acknowledged we're dealing with a toddler here, 2-3 years old at most. As many have said, these kids don't really understand about stealing. Someone upthread talked about telling her mom to write a check when mom said they couldn't afford something; one of my daughters told me to go to the ATM once when I said I didn't have any money! Kids just don't get it, until they're much older than you might think.
I don't think the bold is all that unusual. Strollers have little pockets in them, mom or whoever could have been distracted when folding stroller and not seen the necklace in a fold of said stroller. I do not find it unbelievable that a necklace at say a Walmart, Target, Kohl's, etc was displayed in reach of a toddler in a stroller.
If the necklace was of value, yes, I'd return it with child in tow. Maybe not right away, after all, I seriously doubt this was a valuable piece of jewelry, but certainly in the next day or so, even if I had to make a special trip. And I'd have the kid with me, and say something like "I found this when we got home and we did not pay for it. I'm returning it." The kid gets an object lesson.
BTW, I have rarely bought something and not found it in my bag(s). What I have found, when I looked at the receipt, is that the item in question did not get rung up. Why? Who knows? Things happen.
My first inclination would be to return it because the item wasn't paid for.
However, a situation did happen last year. Somehow a pair of hair clips ended up in our bag when we got home. Not sure if a kid grabbed it and it wasn't rung up or it was inadvertently grabbed by the clerk while putting stuff into the bag. In either event, I checked the receipt and sure enough, we hadn't paid for it. It was valued at 2.00. the problem was that returning the item to the outlet store was a pain in the rear and we just go so caught up with our weekend lives that to this day, the hair clip is still sitting in the bag waiting to be returned. So, I dunno...neither of my kids used the item, yet it is still in our house. Oh well, the intention was good.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by riaelise
My first inclination would be to return it because the item wasn't paid for.
However, a situation did happen last year. Somehow a pair of hair clips ended up in our bag when we got home. Not sure if a kid grabbed it and it wasn't rung up or it was inadvertently grabbed by the clerk while putting stuff into the bag. In either event, I checked the receipt and sure enough, we hadn't paid for it. It was valued at 2.00. the problem was that returning the item to the outlet store was a pain in the rear and we just go so caught up with our weekend lives that to this day, the hair clip is still sitting in the bag waiting to be returned. So, I dunno...neither of my kids used the item, yet it is still in our house. Oh well, the intention was good.
You need to donate that thing to Goodwill. It's bugging you - every time you see that sack you think ugh I should return that.
Would the store normally let you walk out the door without paying for a pack of gum?
No.
So their intention is to sell it for money.
It's pretty dangerous to start deciding on your own what constitutes a crime and what doesn't. Or deciding for other people what is or isn't valuable.
I know what you are saying, but this is a bit dogmatic. And you probably violate this maxim yourself every time you drive. Do you rigidly adhere to the speed limit and never go even 2 mph above it? If not, then you do in fact "decide for yourself what is a crime and what isn't".
To give an extreme example, if the store is 160 miles away, both parents work full-time, and it was a $3.00 item, I would scarcely fault parents for not returning the item.
But it does mean that the parents need to pay attention more closely the next time, and explicitly forbid the child from taking anything without asking.
My mom was telling me a story what my 2yr. old niece had done while out shopping with her mom and Grandparents. They thought it was funny. I didn't and told my mom if my sister-in-law don't send the money to cover the cost of the necklace, it's stealing and not setting a good example for the kid. My mom acted like it was no big deal. I was mad.
Not your business. I agree with you that it was wrong, but you don't get to police others' behavior.
LOL I actually don't believe people who say they would drive all the way back to the store to return a pack of gum. I think the moral indignation is really funny...
So do I.
I remember one time, AFTER I got all the groceries into the car, and AFTER I got the toddler in his car seat, I saw where he'd been sitting on a brand new bungee cord. Somehow he'd grabbed it, and somehow ended up sitting on it.
We ended up acquiring a brand new bungee cord. WHOO HOO! YIPPEE! WHAT A SCORE! No. I didn't take the toddler back out of the car seat, put him BACK in the grocery cart, and go BACK into the grocery store to give it back. I just didn't have it in me.
Shopping with babies is hard enough. Someone could've stuck a fork in me. I was done.
I probably would not turn around and take the item back to the store if I had already reached my house, but I would return it the next time I was there. I would just put it back on the shelf. If the item was worth more than a pack of gum, I would let manager know what had happened when I returned it.
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