To be furious that a cashier at supermarket told me off for DD eating a bite of an apple...

[pavlovthecat]

... which I paid for?

Apparently, it is paid for by weight, so could I not let her do it in future? No please. Nothing else.

She is 23 months old. So charge me the extra f**king half pence then tosser!!!

It came to 21p. She had taken two 23 month old sized bites. Which is why I was buying it in the first place!

Qui vole un oeuf vole un boeuf.

Oh come on, it was hardly stealing!

"Xenia - when you go for a meal you don't usually pay until after you have eaten - what if you don't have your purse in those circumstances? Is that theft also?"

In a restaurant and at a petrol station you are given permission by the owner to take the goods and pay after just like when you buy goods on credit. In supermarkets there is no such express or implied permission. I am just telling you the law. You don't have to like it but that's the law.

How many of those commenting on here are/were cashiers? Is it that I have annoyed the cashiers of MN?

Elephant How very dare you?! . I am with you on this one I have to say.

We cant all be saints now can we?

Morning all.

Shall this debate continue all day? If so can you slow it down a touch as I have to go to work and wont be home until gone 6pm.

You know, all this nonsense about theft is just outright silly. Said already I know, but deserves to be said again....

and, to the comment about "I mean they're not like free nibbles for toddlers are they?" from 4cento. Sure, not technically, no-

But, in a lot of continental supermarkets, this is exactly what is offered- free nibbles for toddlers/kids et al. Little piece of sausage here, crust of bread there, cube of cheese elsewhere etc etc....

aaaand, then for the parents? Well, a lovely automatic FRESH coffee brewing machine so you can slurp coffee on the way round All rather pleasant if you ask me.

IMO it is not theft to have a few bites, as a toddler, of anything. If packaged, present said empty packaging to be scanned. Otherwise, just bloody well let the child eat it. Noone wants screaming children running around causing mayhem. Better they are sitting in the seat eating quietly, than charging at shelves threatening to throw jars on the floor, and grabbing at everything that looks interesting, ie, most stuff in the place!
I mean, don;t be brazen about it, but no issue. (re pesticides, just let them 'steal' an organic apple!! )

Pavlov - Yes, I do tie DD into the trolley - with the straps provided. She is normally a little houdini, but by the time I've crammed her in there along with her 4-year old brother, there's hardly room to breathe, let alone climb back out!

I suspect my time as a supermarket cashier, may have something to do with my dislike of food being eaten in the supermarket. Hmm - yes, I really want your child's drool on my fingers - it will mix nicely with the leaky shampoo residue and sticky raw chicken juice that is there already. Lovely!

YANBU - if you had given her the apple to eat and produced the core at the till then it would be different.

I agree some check out staff can be very rude.

Pavlov ? I?ve just noticed the last sentence in your reply to me last night. I find the suggestion that strapping my children into the child seats of a shopping trolley, using the safety straps provided, is treating them like pets, rather rude tbh. Obviously there are different ways of teaching a child to respect what is not theirs, but to imply that yours will learn quicker than mine is a little rich, particularly given that it is not my child who has just stolen two bites of an apple!

If we go to the local shop in the village then usually both of my children will be walking around the shop with me. They help me choose the fruit and vegetables, and count them into the bags. They still don?t help themselves, so obviously I have managed to teach them something, despite treating them like pets!

I buy apples in bags for this purpose

I do feel guilty if they eat an apple when it is done by weight yes. Although in Waitrose you can print the sticker by weight before you pay so THEN I dont feel guilty

The legal definition of theft is to "dishonestly approriate property with the intention of permanaently depriving the other of it"

There is no dishonesty in this case - it is not theft.

So mad to think it isn't theft

but I know this has been done to death before

Haven't trawled through all of this, but to the original poster, yes you are being totally unreasonable.

There is almost never a need for anyone to open anything or let anyone eat something until it has been paid for. It is just bad manners and setting the wrong example.

You choose the goods, pay for them and then you decide if and when your children are allowed to eat them.

Teri - I think the argument technically revolves around the fact that pagwatch would not have been able to pay for the bit that her dd ate, even though she may or may not have had the intention to do so. Technically there was no way of knowing EXACTLY HOW MANY MILLIGRAMS OF APPLE FLESH the little thief had consumed.

Has MN actually gone through the Looking Glass?

Actually, having read slightly more carefully, I see you only bought it BECAUSE she'd bitten it.

That's slightly different, although I think the assistant was still probably right to mention it, she probably gets lots of people letting their children eat stuff. It sounds from this thread that it's quite common! So in that sense I do have sympathy with the assistant.

Although I have to say most two year olds would probably know they don't eat the food until it's been paid for.

but it wasn't a conscious decision to let the toddler have a snack, the toddler grabbed it and bit it quickly, bit it again as the op tried to get it back, like they do

then she PAID for it

but sadly, not for the two stolen bites

many mnetters are better mothers and would not have allowed this to happen.

OP is going to have to live with this guilt now. I think she may need support getting through this tricky time.

yes indeed MrsC. She alone can know the full burden of her guilt, and how it will eat at her soul like a worm in an apple, till kingdom come (quite possibly)

I have a rule - no eating before its paid for. Having said that you can never police it 100% of the time so YANBU....if half the apple had gone then YABU but 2 bites is way OTT for a telling off.

exactly, some have tried to help already with gifts of tea and biscuits further down

NO, the OP screamed, and crumbed the offerings into her hair shirt.

Hmm. tricky.

I think the solution is to do two rounds at the supermarket: locate apple and pay for it. Exit store and give apple to child, then come back into the store and do the main shop at leisure with child's jaws legally occupied.

Or maybe we could all get a life. YANBU.

So how are the gals in shoplifter's corner today? What were the spoils this morning?

I once weighed a bag of grapes and got the bar code for the amount due. I then let ds eat some of the grapes while I did the rest of the shop. The cashier wouldn't let me use the "pre-weighed" bar code and insisted on weighing the grapes again, even though I told him/her that ds had had a few, which is why I had weighed them

BTW - people on here obviously had more advacen 2 year olds than mine: while ds, aged 2, might havde known "No" when told know, he didn't underastand the concept of theft, paying for things - not of waiting! So while I could have told him "No" if I'd seen him, and he might would have listened, unless I could watch him every second of the day (and I haven't hey grwon the eyes in the back of my head) then this scenario could have happened to me.

Ds is now 7.8 - and he does know right from worng and that you can't get something until you have paid for it.

Well I'm just about to go off to Tesco where I will be having dinner and Tink will possibly be having her dessert walking around while I pick up things I need. But hey, it keeps her quiet and sitting in the trolley instead of running off, I'm happy.

It is theft in my view. How can they weigh the bit you've destroyed. A more interesting legal issue is who is responsible. Children under 10 cannot in law commit theft. So if she did it with your knowledge and connivance then I suppose you might be responsible but if she sneaks a bit without the parent seeing the parent may not be responsible. I had to pay for damage to someone's car which my under 10 year old did when he rode his bike into it without looking but I wasn't that sure at the time whether the parent is responsible.

Anyway it just looks so tacky and working class to see parents letting children take bits from the food shopping as you go round so for the sake of appearances desist. It is like wearing a sign saying we don't care about the law. We have children we cannot control. We have children who cannot wait until meal times to eat.

Xenia, I'm not breaking the law and I don't care what you think I look like.