To wonder what would drive someone to steal milk?

[PigFaceForever]

I've just cancelled my milkround after getting my milk stolen yet again. I've requested that the milkman puts it behind some bushes as I live on a main road, but he's continued to put it on the doorstep.

So, after it's gone missing yet again, I'm just wondering why someone would steal my three bottles of milk? I'm pretty pissed off at this point.

I will admit to taking toilet roll from a university toilet. I was a student with a young DS and an abusive (now ex) partner. Due to his controlling, refusing to work and wasting money things were so tight at the end of term that buying even a single toilet roll from the corner shop would mean us missing meals. I had to feed my child. I never did but possibly if there had been milk or food lying around I might have taken it on a desperate day. Leaving my ex was the best move ever because I have at least managed if not thrived since.

IM(extensive)E of dealing with petty thieves there is very little stealing through desperation (unless desperation to score crack counts) and very very much stealing for the hell of it and because it's just what some people do

I have known some people taking milk off the doorstep after night out. It's just something that happens. Especially, if you are on the main road.

very very much stealing for the hell of it and because it's just what some people do

That's it, I think - for some people, it's just in their nature to take whatever they can for themselves in life and give nothing to anybody else. Like a very young child, these will be grown adults who still see the world as there primarily for them and other people are just satellites in their world. Often, they will be all about the victim blaming and genuinely believe it serves you right for being too trusting.

We used to nick it as teenagers on the way home after staying out all night.

[quote BurgerAttack]@MoltenLasagne do you know many foxes who can carry three bottles of milk? Do they use a trailer, maybe?[/quote]
Is it wrong that I really hope this is what happened?

We have someone in our area who goes out with a backpack stealing milk from peoples doorsteps along with parcels, shoes left in porch etc. he’s known to police numerous people have him on camera and nothings done so he continues doing it.

I remember stealing a bottle of milk when I was a child from a doorstep. I remembered being allowed to drink it before my parents split up. Before my pretty evil dad took us all away from my lovely mum and moved us in with his evil girlfriend while she battled family courts to get us back. We weren't allowed milk. Or fruit, veg, sweets, cereal. Anything like that. It was bread and jam at home. Occasionally cheap pizza or porridge made with water. So once, on my way to school I took a bottle of milk from a doorstep that had six bottles on it. I shared it with my sisters and we three drank it in a before school. I knew if I was found with a glass bottle in my bag I would get in trouble at school and then get battered at home. Schools weren't brilliant at noticing neglect then!

I remember that day, feeling like I'd committed a terrible crime but also feeling like I'd had a breakfast for the first time in a year. I was eleven.

@JoBrodie

I have a lidded metal bread bin outside my house for the milk to go in. This was actually to stop foxes ruining it, but might discourage the thief if they have to open a lid (noisy) to collect the milk.

Of course it's possible that they'll just pick up the entire container!

In attached pic you can see how bold the fox was (tip of my foot at the bottom of the photo) but the milk is now safe, until evolution produces opposable thumbs that is ;)

Jo

Hilarious picture of anonymised fox. Given me a much needed lol.

I'm sure a random poverty stricken child with bare feet and an Oliver Twist outfit isn't waiting outside your house at 5am to nick your milk because to them it's a luxury.

Which is what some posters will have you believe.

It will be a cheeky fucker who walks his dog by your house or similar every day.

Am slightly amazed at all the posters who grew up on streets with milk deliveries. I am very old and remember when our milkman decided to jack it in after they all got made into franchisees, back around 1980 or so. I worked for one of the old milk companies in the 90s before they all folded, merged and died and even at the point I joined there were barely any milkmen left because it was such a bad deal for them.

I know there are companies that do deliveries now but where I live at least it's only been in the last 5 years or so.

Where did you folks all live?!

My mother still gets her milk delivered in glass bottles by the milkman.

Must be a local private company. Dairy crest was the only one who still had the old franchised delivery system till the most recent takeover and even they ditched the glass bottles around a decade ago.

We had it delivered in glass bottles in the late 80s/early 90s and quite a few of my neighbours still do.

Lol I'm happy for you. This was literally my industry though hahaha, I got canned, got moved, lost my pension, got it back through a massive multi party court claim. I lived in, worked in and was fucked over by the demise of the UK dairy industry via hawkish supermarket pricing, anti EU competition practice and venture capitalists, watched my employer go from being FTSE 100 with a fleet and prime location properties to bought out purveyor of low grade convenience food before eventually and ignominiously folding like the rest of them and I find it incredible that all the customers of the very few milkmen we've had in the UK since 1980 are all gathered on one thread. As it goes.

Ok well I’m absolutely not disputing your industry experience, but milkmen (or probably more accurately milk delivery services) including those with glass bottles are becoming much more frequently used where I live and it’s really not that unusual. They’re all small local companies as far as I can see, so probably part of a trend towards people trying to shop more locally, (although whether that’ll survive the cost of living pressures I don’t know).

We have our milk delivered by a local Midlands dairy. They offer pints in glass bottles, but it works out much cheaper to have the bigger cartons. Plus, modern big family fridges aren't designed with accommodating several pint bottles, they assume that you'll have 4-pint cartons and design the shelves in the door accordingly.

@MoltenLasagne

We thought someone was stealing our eggs from the milkman - turned out it was a local fox who was doing the rounds of the houses! Any chance it might be wildlife?

A crafty cat might knock one over or a blue tit might peck at the lid, but animals nicking entire bottles?

@BobbinHood absolutely those services are restarting in the last few years as I said previously, but for around 40 years they were in massive decline.

I've asked the milk man to put it somewhere it can't be seen via a note on the ordering site but he started putting it on the doorstep in clear view of everyone, which is stupid on a main road in quite a deprived area.

I've cancelled my deliveries now. If the milkman can't follow a simple instruction to leave it somewhere not visible, he's not getting my custom.

I was born in 79 and milk was delivered in glass bottles throughout my childhood and well into teens when. Most of the people on my estate had it delivered, some kids would steal it as a sort of fuck you to the woman who would phone the police on children being too noisy in the park but the adults

It's would sometimes be frozen or have the silver top pecked away. When I got into my late teens I'd be walking home after staying out all night.

My husband is mid 40s from different area to me and had a job on the milk van delivering glass bottles from 12 onwards so that would have been the late 80s.

Both from north east if that's makes a difference.

Poverty, desperation, uncertainty, hardship, neglect, to name a few..

I did hear some people go by drunk in the early hours last night so it might have been them. It's really riled me. If it is an opportunistic thief then I hope they choke on it. My milk delivery is one of my little luxuries and I can't even have that! If it was someone in poverty, then obviously I'm glad they took the milk for themselves.

A lot of people will steal if they can get away with it.
We live in a very different society than even 40 years ago when people doing this would feel ashamed. It's an easy way to steal from you. There is no punishment at all, and they know it.

More likely to just be because they’re cunts than because they are Oliver Twist

Yep.