People eating food they haven't paid for....

[maddiemookins16mum]

....It just really bugs me. To the point of utter revulsion.
In a supermarket, grown adults opening a pack of 4 pork pies and happily munching their way around the shop, only to toss the empty pack to be scanned as their shopping goes through. Why do people do that, have you ever, and why??? (DD had to wait until the car for her gingerbreadman biscuit from Waitrose).

[pleasetellmeImparanoid]

Helbel you mean you've never started wearing shoes immediately put your old ones in the box and paid on the way out?

[MaryMarigold]

The restaurant argument... When you go into a restaurant and order food, you are essentially entering into the contract (that they will supply food and you will pay) upon ordering.

This is not the same as in a supermarket where the food on the shelves is an offer to treat and you enter into the contract at the till.

Totally different situation.

[MerchantofVenice]

Cotswold umm most restaurants do let you do precisely that.

I'm intrigued that you actually think it's theft to consume supermarket food before payment. Theft?? Do you think somehow you are paying less if the bar code resides on a slightly flatter packet?

[Helbel82]

Helbel you mean you've never started wearing shoes immediately put your old ones in the box and paid on the way out?

No I haven't.

[maddiemookins16mum]

I bet the responses here would have been different had I not said Waitrose.
To clarify, no adult or child will starve or die of thirst during a quick shop or even an longer one, I stand by my point that opening food, eating it THEN paying is rude.

[brasty]

If I owned a supermarket, I would ban this.
But I would let people shop in their pyjamas. So I am not totally consistent about uncouthness.

[PacificDogwod]

I have been known to eat s few grapes

A-ha!!
Well, that's theft!

[MaryMarigold]

Brasty

[squoosh]

Is this going to go into the canon of Great and Recurring Mumsnet Arguments? Like 'do you wear shoes in the house?'

[dalmatianmad]

I've done this before, I was having a hypo and needed sugar so drank a bottle of lucozade in Asda and paid for it afterwards.
I've done it with the dc before, as long as you pay what exactly is the issue?

[WorraLiberty]

I wonder if anyone's ever been caught short on a period and turned up at the till with an open box - minus one tampon?

[WankingMonkey]

they'll be the gingerbread women that just identify as gingerbread men...

No matter what your identity, you still have a bellybutton though. Won't somebody please think of the children. We are teaching them falsehoods in the form of baked goodies

Absolutely outrageous

[WankingMonkey]

Oooh gingerbread zorgs may not have bellybuttons on second thoughts

[dalmatianmad]

Maddie have you been on the Gin darling?
Give it up and go to bed

[WorraLiberty]

[Helbel82]

I once saw someone walking around Sainsbury's eating a whole cooked chicken out of the bag!

[squoosh]

Gingerbread is such a dull biscuit that they have to shape it like a person or a bloody house to make it interesting.

[PacificDogwod]

brasty, I'd so come and frequent your supermarket to stare and point at all the onesie clad ones

[MerchantofVenice]

Ye gods.

The OP was pearl-clutching at very notion of putting food not yet paid for into your mouth. Other posters simply pointed out that we do this regularly. But, no, I will concede, a supermarket is indeed not a restaurant. .

I totally agree that eating some of ab item that is yet to be weighed and priced is theft. But that's not what OP was all exercised about. She specifically said that people eating something that they subsequently paid for in full was 'disgusting'. That is pathetic, I'm afraid.

[JellyPlum]

Not RTFT but spent close to a decade working in a supermarket. Eat/drink what you like as long as you pay for it, I used to throw used wrappers away for people quite happily after scanning them and thought nothing more of it.

But, I'm hoping other supermarket people agree or I look weird, why do the ones who don't intend to pay only do it it with hot food and leave empty bags of greasy bones behind other food? That is really disgusting to find!

[StStrattersOfMN]

How long is it since the last grape thread?

Worra I've done that, only I had to buy knickers and jeans too :(

[ItsABanana]

Supermarket shopping, for some reason, made me want to pass out, so I'd sip a smoothie (or similar) as I walked around, then put it through the checkout.
If you know you're likely to pass out supermarket shopping, why not pack something in your bag before you set off? Boiled sweet or something to suck on on the way round to keep you buoyed up. Eat lunch before you set off as well.

I also used to pull a piece off a baguette/loaf for the DCs to munch if they were threatening to kick off.
Just don't get that either. Kids play up so stick food in their gobs to shut them up? Did they say they were hungry? Or is it just pre-empting a squabble and giving them food to keep them quiet? Give them a game to play on the way round instead depending on age.

[PacificDogwod]

Merchant, stop being all analytical and rational and stuff.
We are frothing and wish to froth some more.
Desist.

[squoosh]

I once saw someone walking around Sainsbury's eating a whole cooked chicken out of the bag!

Not that is uncouth. I bet they were smearing their greasy paws as they went.

[maddiemookins16mum]

Funnily enough, look at my original post......it wasn't about kids, but adults.