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employees should be allowed to steal, actually

idk. yesterday was a slow day and at the end of it, I still stared into a cash drawer, one of three, that had more than my rent in it, even if you only count the 20s. I spent a lot of that day trying to calculate in my head how many hours of work equal one pair of pants, let alone how many hours of work equals the fun thing I want to do next month.

I feel a cough coming on, because I work in a drug store, and all of my customers are sick. I always feel a little bit sick, now. I can’t afford to eat well enough to keep my body healthy. Cough medicine is worth two hours and 20 minutes of work. Our store probably bought a case of cough medicine for they price we’re selling one box. If this cough gets worse, I might have to call out, which will cost me more than the medicine in the long run- but that doesn’t give me the money to buy the medicine right now. I stock a case onto the shelf. I don’t buy any.

A mom wrangling three crying, sick kids enters my line and sets two types of children’s medicine down, says they’re both on sale and thank god for that. I ring her up, and she gets very quiet, because she misread the sign, and her total is twice as high as she was expecting. Her youngest screams in the cart, because she’s burning up with fever. Her mother very quietly asks, please, she’s so sorry, if I could please take the more expensive one off her total.

I agree, I move the box below the counter, and when she’s not looking, I slip it into her bag. I pray as hard as I can that if she notices the “mistake” she says nothing, because I so desperately want her to have that medicine. The store has lost profit at the cost of a child’s health. I don’t bat an eye. This is a terminable offense. If I’m presented with the same situation tonight, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.

The myth of evil employees stealing from the company falls apart the second you realize the company would shoot you dead to make a profit. This isn’t two equal players, one of whom is stealing from the other. This is someone fighting for survival versus someone fighting to make an extra million. It’s not equal.

Employees should be able to steal, actually.

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Crime is a social construction. It has nothing to do with public safety, nothing to do with preventing harm or punishing immoral behavior. It has everything to do with maintaining the social hierarchy.

If you take $40 out of the till, if you shoplift, if you move out and take your landlord’s microwave with you, there will be a report filed on you for theft. Agents of the state carrying guns and the right to kill you if they get scared may show up; you will have to do exactly as they say at that moment or your life may be forfeit, and they may have some paperwork to fill out.

If your boss shorts you on your wages — even if it’s the last paycheck of the month — and you need that money by the fifth to not get evicted, the cops will not come threaten your boss with abduction or death at his house or work. If your landlord robs you of a thousand dollars in the form of a security deposit kept, the cops will not knock on his door and tell him to put his hands up, handcuff his wrists so tight he has nerve damage because he made eye contact with them too aggressively.

It’s appropriate to throw a child’s mother onto hot asphalt for shoplifting baby formula — a pregnant person can be arrested for testing positive for drugs that might hurt their own fetus later! — but no CEO will be thrown in a cage for poisoning ten thousand children, for bribing “donating to” politicians and judges to facilitate this, for working actively to cover it up for years, not if the result is more profit for the shareholders based on argument the market wouldn’t bear the cost of additional safety as easily as it could some more poor sick and dead kids.

“It’s trashy to steal” — OK. Agree to disagree. But if it is, ask yourself why you’re so worked up over someone tossing a soda cup out of their pickup’s window when all around you the rich are dumping coal slag into rivers.