The Idler

SHOPPED

Confessions of a female shoplifter, by SARAH JANES.

There I am coming out of Sainsburys. Two “bags for life” straining at the seams with gourmet grub and booze. I’m just approaching the barriers and then, lo and behold, the bastard alarms start going off. I think for a little while I can still talk my way out this one but… oh dear, now they’re on to me.

I put the shopping down and walk briskly out of the store. I’m at the bottom of the travelator when the security guard catches up with me. Apparently the manager would like to have a chat with me. I can’t think what about I say, no thanks, maybe some other time. He lets me go for a while, then I cross the road and he decides it might be an idea to chase after me. Oops. So I start hot footing it too and before you know it, I’m backed up against a wall at the back of a bus garage and there’s nowhere for me to go but down.

I’m starting to get quite worried now. I’m having flashbacks of my numerous shoplifting jaunts into town. Freebie dinners and dresses and booze and electrical equipment and all sorts. I have a minor panic attack as I’m escorted back up the travelator. It’s like being at school, when you think you’ve really blown it this time. I’m imagining my flat getting searched, CCTV footage meticulously scanned, my face on posters in the backrooms of chain stores. Now I’m really getting the fear.

I sit upstairs in a cramped little office, with a very bored middle-aged woman unable to look me the eye, but casting an air of being in the presence of a genuine villain. I think maybe a few crocodile tears will help and she does soften a bit. Then, the most red-faced man I have even seen bursts in with a kind of cartoon flourish to admonish me. The security guard is rather smug and tells the manager that he saw me steal a bottle of champagne earlier in the week. I’m sure this is not true but I think it does kind of sound like me so I wonder if perhaps I’m going mad.

The manager poses a question. He’s really furious. I may as well of broken into his home and robbed him personally. I may as well have raped his better half and crapped on the living room carpet for good measure - How would I feel? No, I say, I wouldn’t like that at all. I’m an animal! Call the pigs. So the pigs are called and next thing you know I’m being driven down to the Hollingbury Detention Centre or whatever in the back of a filthwagon.

My rights were read to me back at the supermarket. They took a mugshot of the stolen items and then incinerated them, which I thought was a little unnecessary, I haven’t got the lurgey, y’know. Maybe it might be a better idea to send it off to a donkey sanctuary or something? They added up the cost of my loot to be about ��80. Well, I always figured if you’re going to nick stuff, it might as well be the good stuff.

The two pigs that picked me up, after two hours of waiting at Sainsbury’s, went off to collect evidence, and I had my details taken and was put into a police cell. A very nice man incarcerated me. I had all potential suicide tools removed and was searched a couple of times. This made me feel kind of naughty. Then I got given a copy of Company magazine from 1998 and sat down on my plastic covered mattress. I decided to have a little bawl to myself. Then I felt better. Then I read the magazine. Then six and a half hours later they let me out to talk to the duty solicitor. I felt I might be able to enlighten him with some of the tips I had memorised for maintaining a healthy all-over tan.

My solicitor was super. He looked like Hugh Grant, he came out of a sort of mist wearing a cream suit. Maybe I fell in love for a little while. He was very charming. I told him everything. He asked if I might pinch him a nice Pouilly-Fum?� by way of thanks, we had a great laugh. He had a dinner date but he wound up missing it because, as it turned out, the filth were not rifling through my flat collecting evidence of an up-until-now lucrative shoplifting career, but rather had eaten fish fingers and chips in the canteen, gone home and had in fact forgotten all about me languishing in my cell, albeit, learning some handy beauty tips all the while.

Another pig was put on the case and we went off for the interview. By this time, the old solicitor and I are a bit of a double-act. We run rings round the pig, who winds it all up pretty sharpish with a warning and an apology for keeping me hanging around so long.

I still have to have a mugshot taken and all that gubbins but by now I’m starting to enjoy myself. My solicitor pulls faces behind the pig taking the mugshot and makes me laugh. Then he laughs at my mugshot when they’re looking at it on the computer screen but the pig won’t let me see it. I have to give a DNA sample so the pig sticks a swab in my mouth. She says I have a very clean mouth and then she has to wait quite a while as I nearly choke on the swab laughing.

All in all getting caught stealing was a quite good, if slightly peculiar brand of fun, but I can’t guarantee it would be the same for everyone. I did think it would put me off thieving forever, but I’ve nicked quite a lot of stuff since then, and I really can’t stop. Apparently it means I’m sexually frustrated. That sounds about right.

Taken from Idler 33