To tell you about my accidental shoplifting and ask - has it happened to you??

[Spice17]

Mortifying and please no flaming, this was 100% accidental.

Shopping with DM, her DH and my DD in her buggy yesterday and we're sharing a basket, I plonk loads of baby essentials in it and then wander off to get some toothpaste, leaving them looking at crockery. Anyway, I chat to a friend I know on the till next to the one I'm paying at and leave.

An hour later, I go to top up the car parking and find the toothpaste in my bag! Can only asume I absentmindedly chucked it in the bag as I had it over my arm as you would a basket. Imagine if someone pulled me aside, I genuinely would have had no idea and they would have been thinking 'heard that one before Darlin'.

There's another one too can you tell I'm ridiculously 'Miranda' in my general uselessness!

On my lunchbreak a few years back, popped into a clothes shop, when I got back to work, a size 8 sequinned playsuit was attached to my bag by the hanger. The odd thing was, not only did no one stop me in the shop but I walked all along the high street and no one batted an eyelid. I took that one back but it was extremely embarrasing and the shop assistant was looking at me like I was a little bit loopy.

Please share, I feel like a total klutz!

I did this in Holland and Barrett. I had a couple of items in the sale, went to pay, the assistant signed me up for a loyalty card which took forever so I started packing the shopping away into my bag. I assumed I'd paid before she signed me up for the card, I hadn't paid for anything. I don't know why she didn't ask me where my shopping was when she gave me the card. I did go back and pay, very embarrassed about it, never shopped in there again.

Well I swear shop security look at people who are acting suspicious, not people who actually nick things.

I have a vast handbag and whenever I put it down to try something on, I get a little crew of watchers - I've no intention of nicking anything.I expect vast handbag is a trigger, but one does think well you're wasting your time mate. But, as upthread, the one time I did swan out with buckets of stuff, entirely in ignorance, no one said a word.

Oooh aren't we all a bunch of unintentional tea leaves/leafs (??)

It's amazing how many have done it, I'm sure having kids and being tired/stressed/distrated has a lot to do with it. I was NEVER this scatty before DD, it's like she's taken my common sense away - cus she'll need it when she's older!

Can't think of a time Ive done it, but a few weeks ago a woman in front of me at Sainsbury's had all her food scanned through, packed her bag and started to walk away when the woman at the checkout shouted -

"You've not paid for it yet!"

Woman rushed back and was really embarrassed but could see the funny side.

I was on a date in my student years and was clearly so distracted by it that I managed to walk out of the cafe without paying. I realised about 5 minutes later, was so mortified that I ran back. The cafe owner was and just said you should have just paid next time you were in! I spent the rest of my date sweaty from the run back

Once, in an Italian supermarket, we must have put something from the customer behind us in our bags - we got back to the hotel and discovered it and panicked all the way back to the supermarket, as we don't speak Italian. Luckily they had noticed and not charged the other customer for the item - and were fine when we handed it over.

Also, my old changing bag used to set off the alarms in most shops. I searched it to see whether the shop had forgotten to remove the alarm when I bought it, but never found it - it was such a pain.

I walked off with a large bag of loo rolls, hung on that very useful hook at the back of the trolley.... Wonder how many other people have inadvertently (or not) stolen things by hanging them on this hook? I didn't take them back.

I once managed to pinch four 2l bottles of pepsi max- I popped them under the buggy. Worst thing was I didn't discover them til I was leaving to go home for the weekend- I'm a nanny, it wasn't my buggy! They were from Tesco, and I did keep them Would have been different had it been an independent shop.

As a pre-teen I was a little bugger- me and my mates used to go to the newsagents with big coats on and push stuff up our sleeves. and another newsagents in the next village had a display of individually priced sweeties- 1p, 2p etc. You just filled a bag and told them your total... I can't take all the blame for the amount I pinched from there, you'd go to the till with a brimming bag and say it was 20p worth. Oh dear, oh dear, at least I grew out of it before I hit my teens.

One Christmas Eve I accidentally stole our turkey but I realised when I got home and phoned them. They told me to just pay next time I went in, which I did. Worked out well for me because they were lovely and insisted I only pay for the smallest size turkey as they hadn't been able to weigh mine!

In the post office one Christmas, sending parcels and buying a lot of stamps. Paid up and left thinking 'That was cheap'.

Went back, jumped the queue and offered to pay for the stamps. The post master was extremely grateful.

We bought about 4 coffee machines from asda, the checkout girl was really chatty and helpful and checked every box for the security tags, then forgot to put any of them through. When we paid for the shopping we thought it was cheap (we had other stuff) and got home looked at the receipt and she hadn't scanned any of them!