skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Sticky Fingers.
After blogging about peer pressure I started thinking of all the things that I've heard people talking about getting peer pressured into and I realized a common one was shoplifting. Then I started thinking of other reasons why people purposely shoplift. I've never personally stole anything from anywhere, I'm not really a big badass when it comes to that kind of stuff and I have the worlds largest guilt complex ever-not saying that its a bad thing but these factors just make it hard for me to really understand why people do it. The possible answers I came up with before I researched anything were: peer pressure (duh!), having no money & needing things & adrenaline rushes (the whole feeling like a bad ass thing). I found some articles that discussed the whole adrenaline rush aspect of it all but the most interesting article that I read taught me reasons that I never even would have imagined. The article "Shoplifting: the new middle-class disease?" takes a look at how a top PR executive 'Belinda Mowbray' shoplifts and why. It talks about how although Mowbray has the money to buy the clothes and jewelry that she decides to steal that she does it for reasons like knowing that she can and justifies it by reminding herself of the retailers that have ripped her off her whole life. Which I guess makes sense because lets be honest retailers are constantly overcharging for items that probably cost them very little to manufacture. Mowbray also defends herself by saying that she never shoplifts from a store that she has not recently purchased an item from-so maybe she's just trying to get her moneys worth? She also mentions that as she leaves these stores her heart rate barely changes. So I guess that when I read this article I realized that maybe everything that I thought about shoplifting, and the people that shoplift, could be wrong. I mean I'm sure that there are the people that shoplift for the reasons that I had first guessed but this puts a whole new twist on it. People that can afford to buy things but still choose to steal. So I guess my question now is: Is shoplifing "bad" behaviour or just "greedy" behaviour. For me I think that I've found it to be more greedy than bad and I kind of find it stupid. I mean I realize that there are the cases of shoplifting because a family can't afford to buy what they need, and lets face it the economy around the world is shit right now, so maybe just maybe they have a little bit of a reason to do so. But people that can afford the items that they are stealing but just do it 'because they can' kind of make me want to yack. How about you quit spending your energy on stealing from people, even if it is retailers who may rip people off' and put it into something to give back to people?
No comments:
Post a Comment