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Freeze, Jellybean Thief!
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by Jordan Yerman | October 28, 2007 at 09:24 am
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My late grandfather used to take my brother and I to the supermarket sometimes when we visited. He seemed so big (mainly because I was six), and the whole vibe of a San Francisco supermarket was different from what I was used to. Anyway, whenever he selected a bunch of grapes, he'd try one to make sure they were ripe. This drove me a little bit nuts, since I assumed that if they were green then they were therefore edible. The Type-A in me was shouting, "But when we approach the checkout counter, how will they know how much the missin grape weighs?!" I was six. I got over it. Now, not only do I know how to determine the mass of a single grape based on a given bunch, I also know that such an exercise is pointless. It's a grape.
Here's a story, though, that I found via The Consumerist in which store management was unable to get over it:
A man was charged with petty theft after being caught on a surveillance camera taking jelly beans out of a bin and eating them before he got to the cash register.
The 34-year-old Fort Walton Beach man was buying groceries at Albertson’s when he stopped at a bin of candy and put an unspecified number of jelly beans in his mouth, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office report.
The deputy, who was working an off-duty detail, confronted the suspect after he had paid for the rest of his groceries and asked him if the candy was good. “Yes,” the suspect replied, according to the report.
The deputy told a manager that the suspect had taken about 10 of the “raspberry-flavored” candies. The man denied taking more than two. He added that he’d been shopping at Albertson’s for 30 years and that he was just trying the candy to see if he wanted to buy it. The deputy “advised him that Albertson’s did not have free samples of candy and he should have known that if he had been shopping at Albertson’s for 30 years.”
The man didn't buy any of the candy.
The store manager on duty told the deputy that he wanted charges brought against the suspect, who was also issued a trespass warning.
The jelly beans were priced at $6.99 a pound. The deputy estimated that the 10 jellybeans would have had a value of about $2.
Secondly, yeah, the guy should have purchases some jellybeans if he's going to snack on them, fair enough. However, store management really needs to choose its battles: the PR costs of prosecuting someone for eating a few candies is far, far higher than two dollars. Such loss is a cost of doing business, along with stems broken off of mushrooms and rotten bits of vegetable not taken to the till. A warning, in this case, would have been far more effective.
Oh, and you do it like this: weigh the bunch and divide by number of grapes. I concede that this method does not take into account the mass of the stem, but c'mon. I was six.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 19:26 on October 28th, 2007
jordan, Good stuff.
I guess the issue here is theft, whether it is two jellybeans or 100 jellybeans, the law is the law, this man should have known it. It may not be fair for some, but where do you draw the line?
In California where three strikes law was mandated and if this guy was living in California may have had one strike against him, making him wary of even crossing the street against a red light next time fearing a sdecond strike, and his wife would have him by the short and curlies for if he ever got mad at her, he could spend a lifetime behind bars, all for the beginning of a jellybean.
A Silly theory, but the possibility existed.
The Albertsons manager, should realise by economic judgement, this man a regular for 30 years, and spending umpteen thousands of dollars in groceries lost a customer and perhaps as word spread many more. Even though the manager was well within his rights under the law, stupidity prevailed.