If You Are A Lifter, Please Give This A Loo
This is my shoplifting story, this isnât to scare you or to command you to stop; I just want to share with you my experience.
My name is Allyson and I am sixteen years old and I live in Texas. I happened upon the shoplifting side of tumblr earlier this day and it inspired me to share with you this.
Around this time last year, even more towards November, I shoplifted as much as all of the hauls Iâve scrolled through. I would go to Forever 21, Sephora, Ulta, Pacsun, HM, and basically stores of the kind. My hauls were anywhere from $10-$600. I was stealing makeup, clothes, accessories, and everything in between. The thought of getting caught always lingered in my mind. I canât describe why I wasnât as scared of it. Donât get me wrong, the sight of a security officer scared the shit out of me, but the idea of getting caught was almost a fantasy. I was getting all this cool shit, so it didnât really take effect on me. Even if it did, I wasnât going to stop. I had a bigger wardrobe, a bigger makeup collection. For the first time I had many expensive things. Getting caught was scary, but my savings definitely were not.
Around March 2013, I was at the mall with my friends. We went almost every weekend at this point. Never even getting noticed for our sneaky fingers. We went to JCP, Sephora, Old Navy, Claires, etc. We were about to leave when we decided to go back to JCP. Now let me tell you, we were sneaky. very sneaky. We were not blatant. We read hundreds of articles, found a million different snippets of information to help us out. It only takes one guy to notice you. One. To go âhey they might steal somethingâ.
This is the part most do not like to hear. Iâm very sorry about this, but I really want to share this with you all. A bored guy in a monitor-filled room notices you, and it could all be over.
I was caught. We left the store and a very large man walks out the door and bellowed, âcome with meâ. He even smiled, that sly bastard.
I remember thinking, âI canât believe this is happening.â âIs this real?â
That walk was the longest walk of my life. The walk to the back room. Time literally slowed around me. We walked into the back. We had already given him most of the things at one of the cash registers. Â
âIf you lie, we have to fill it out in the reportâ. Of course we did. We had over $400 of merchandise between the three of us.
He eventually checked our bags. He found things, obviously. This part is a bit blurry, but I will try my best to tell you everything that happened.
He separated the merchandise by store. Then we called our parents. That was literally the worst thing I ever had to do in my entire life. They sounded extremely disappointed. It was the definition of terrible. From that back room, we entered another room (this one filled with the monitors), while the man called the police. I still have scars from sitting in that chair and digging my nails into my skin from fright. Our parents came and sat with us until the police arrived. The whole time the large man telling us weâll have to spend the night in Juvy, obviously scaring the shit out of me even more.
Iâm going to get through this part a bit faster.
The police showed up and we were charged with a Class B Misdemeanor Theft. In Texas that basically meant we stole more than $50 but less than $500. If you are not a minor, that is a sentence of confinement in jail for a term of not more than 180 days a fine of not more than $2,000, or both. Though, we were minors. We ended up not going to juvy, but were let go to our parents.
Literally worst car ride of my life. No yelling, just complete silence from my parents.
My parents received a bill from JCP of $339 in the mail around 2 weeks letter and I was scheduled to see an officer about my misdemeanor. I was given three months of classes to clear it from my record, and three months of probation.
So Iâll leave you with this.
I desperately wished somebody had told me this, and more importantly, that I would have listened.
It feels like it will never happen to you, but why potentially ruin your life by trying? Sorry for that spiel. I remember hating reading that kind of stuff, but itâs so entirely true; its scary. Some instances, you could potentially ruin your chances of a job and college.
I relate to all of you, I truly do. I am the same teenage girl, going through the same things.Â
While writing this, I had to take multiple breaks because recalling this is truly an extremely hard thing to do. Iâve had nightmares about this. Itâs truly awful and I will never think of shoplifting the same way I did. As something fun.
If you have ANY questions, message me. Seriously, as long as itâs nothing rude, I will answer you. I promise.
. (Your choice) I do this so many of you all can see this. I am not sponsored by anyone to share my story; this is because I care about you all and I donât want to see you go through what I went through.
Thank you very much if you got this far with me!
[Note: Sorry if this post has some badly written parts, going back through it and reading what happened to me literally almost makes me cry, so I cannot go back and go through it! Very sorry.]
