Baby Formula and Diaper Thief

[Lace Neil Singer]

I remember a woman trying to scam a load of nappies and baby food; she basically pinched a load of reduced stickers from the bakery (you can peel the stickers off the bread items very easily, I've done it before when I've needed sellotape) and put them on the nappies and baby food. That stuff never ever gets reduced, so I was on to her. I challenged her, she swore at me and ran out of the store.

[HappyFun Ball]

You know it's easy to say you can get help.. Until you're in that situation and you've looked for help. .

There's food stamps.. "Food", it doesn't cover other things you need

Churches.. Well they only help if you go to their church, at least the ones around here do, yours my be different

Charities? There's a few but I got the same answer "We have no funds"

Shelters? "We don't have any room"- I didn't need shelter, I just needed diapers, but they wouldn't even give me a few of those.

Begging? I got "Get a job", "We'll take your baby", "I'm calling the police".. It struck me odd that these people well give money to a drunk hobo, but not to a woman with a baby.

Child Support? They don't understand that you are broke, they want to drag theirs ass as slowly as possible. When I went a filed to get child support, the gave me a date to come back with all the info they needed, 6 weeks away.. And no they will not make that sooner if you need child support now.

Selling things? I pawned everything I could, they don't give you much for your things. The little bit I got lasted a month.

Relatives? Maybe you have some that are living.

Friends? The phrase "fair weather friends" comes to mind when I think back.. Those people had no problems asking me for things, but don't dare ask them.. Needless to say, I ended that friendship.

Job? Yes, let's leave a 5 week baby at home by himself, because daycares require money up front.

Sometimes, there is nothing to fall back on.

[Ree]

Sometimes, there is nothing to fall back on.

That's a very sad situation when it seems like ALL avenues are blocked and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to find help, and I sympathize.

The thing is, this site cannot be seen as condoning theft, and we don't.

Your situation sounds serious, but perhaps a discussion of whether stealing to survive is right or wrong belongs on www.fratching.com, and not in a CS thread.

[El Barto]

Our store was hit by someone stealing baby formula a couple months ago. We lost 4 cases of one kind of formula in a 4 week period and we didn't even know about it. One day I had a women come up to me and ask if we still carried this type of formula because she hadn't seen it here in over a month. I told her we did and went to check if we had any on order. I grabbed a Symbol and put it in the Item Review screen (some of the info that gives you is your Balance On Hand, Balance On Order, and the sales for the past 4 weeks). When I scanned the shelf label it listed a BOH of 6 (1 case) and the BOO as 0, but the shelf was empty, when I scrolled to the next page it listed sales as 0 for the last 4 weeks. We lost almost $600 on just that kind of formula, there were other kinds being stolen, but not as much as this one, all together we probably lost over $1000.

[Seshat]

You know it's easy to say you can get help.. Until you're in that situation and you've looked for help. .

I have been, and I have, and I still stand by what I said. But for further discussion, let's take it to Fratching as Ree suggested.

Fratching is here, and I'd suggest this thread would belong under Social Woes.