That a dood one. Had me rolling!
I have an irrational fear that someone is going to do this to me whenever I have to park the cart to go use the bathroom - what if one small object is removed while I’m peeing, and I don’t even notice until I get all the way home?!
The total opposite of this happened once, and it was genuinely one of the weirdest experiences of my life. I was in the grocery store looking at packaged meats, and another lady comes up and parks her cart next to mine to look at them too. She starts making some choices, loading her arms up, but I’m not really paying attention because I’m comparing prices and thinking over my own selections… Until suddenly she starts putting the meat that she has chosen on top of my groceries, in my cart - that looked nothing like her empty cart, which she then grabbed the handle on and pushed away while I stood there watching, absolutely bewildered by what had just happened.
I did not buy the meats she had chosen for me, and I live in both fear and hope that our paths might someday cross again.
Not to make you more anxious about it, but I have a story you’re not going to like:
Back in uni, several years ago, I went to the movie theater with a couple friends. Being the broke ass students we were, we didn’t buy anything to eat or drink while watching the movie.
Anyway, we were searching for our seats when all of a sudden we saw an abandoned tray with a popcorn and soda, completely untouched, so we took it.
I had told the story about the abandoned tray in the movies a couple times since as a nice thing that happened to me. Until last month, when I was telling the story to my wife and her parents, and they said “what if the owner went to the bathroom before the movie started”.
That’s when I realized that me and my friends didn’t find the tray, but rather someone possibly went to the bathroom only to come back to their seat and find their food/drinks stolen.
Big oof, that’s most likely what happened. If someone goes alone there’s not much they can do if they end up having to go after they already bought their drink and snacks. When I worked at a theatre some people would leave their snacks with me temporarily when I worked at the booth where we accepted tickets to let people in, so for anyone who likes to go to movies solo, that’s usually a good option. That or you can find someone seated nearby in the theatre and ask them to let people know that the snacks you’re leaving at your seat are claimed and not abandoned. Or bring a note to put with your snacks as a last ditch effort.
Learned this working a Black Friday once. Store didn’t care who paid for the merchandise.
It still steal because other person have already paid part of the price for it. The price is time, energy to get that stuff and put in their cart.
If you want to get stuff from other people cart, you should ask, and tip that person $ for their work.
This is how you can get a mom killed.