What do I think about this?

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Something is confusing me.

The couple who live next door to me seem nice. When we are in the garden we often see them in their garden. They are friendly and helpful. They have a cat and a dog who came from abusive homes, and with love and kindness have made them happy. Their children are nice, which I think shows that they have taught them by setting a good example. They are good neighbours, don't make a lot of noise or anything like that.

But yesterday the woman from next door was caught shoplifting from where I work. She stole a bottle of vodka.

On the one hand, stealing is wrong, and it's a bad example to set to her children (who were with her at the time), and she might have been stealing for ages.

But on the other hand, a company as big as who I work for can afford to lose the occasional bottle of vodka; it's not like any person suffered loss or injury. In the scale of things, it's not exactly evil. Even if she has made one mistake, she still is a nice person and a good neighbour.

I don't want to judge, but I can't get over the thought that stealing is bad.

How strange. Perhaps it's a pathological thing. People who are unhappy or discontented will steal. Perhaps they're not the happy family they seem. The fact that it's vodka suggests a drinking problem.

Nobody's perfect unfortunately....

Taking a balanced view, your neighbours seem pretty good - there are worse things than being a bit light-fingered. If the worst any of my neighbours did was shoplift, that'd suit me, lol... Its not really right, but considering it was from a large company no harm done in my view - but I detest stealing from small shops/businesses. That bottle of vodka wouldnt even register on a supermarket's radar, but its loss would be felt by a family owned grocer.

Dunc

In my opinion stealing is wrong no matter how or from where it is done. A thief may seem like a nice person on the outside but I wouldn’t trust them, they are not honest.

I think it has to do with one thing... pressure from friends.

Use extreme caution, a person my family loved and trusted ended up stealing $16.000.00 from our church. Just be very careful, and don't go anywhere with her, you wouldn't want to get blaimed for her mistakes.

Shoplifting tends to cost large companys hundreds of thousands of dollars per year that could be better spent on employee wages, so it really does hurt someone even when done to a large company.

It is a proven statistic that more women than men shoplift and that it is often pathological. Wanting to get an alcohol buzz or being an addict could be a big time contributing factor, too. I hope your friendship survives her embarassment, but it may warrant further suspicion.

I'll second that. My mother works for Wal-Mart and could use a raise. (and I could use better health insurance from those f***ing pennypinchers)

Perhaps she steals it so that the Vodka doesn't show up on the receipt if she gives the receipt to her husband? Have you ever known her to have problems with alcohol??? (I mean, drinking on the sly so her hubby doesn't notice.)

I think Sophist's on the right track. When my parents were married and my dad was an alcoholic, he used to hide it as best he could. He controlled the money, so that wasn't a concern for him, but he'd hide the bottles and try not to be drunk in front of us.

Even if she'd gotten the vodka on a seperate receipt, there could still be the issue of the husband wondering where £10-15 just went, leaving theft as her only option for hiding her problem.

Stealing is very bad and wrong.

^_^

Until i read about aspergers i was pretty convinced i was a sociopath.

I don't look at stealing as bad and wrong. I think that is a foolish, childish way of looking at it. For the most part i consider stealing unacceptable. That for a society to function at least part of it, and preferably a vast majority of it must not steal the vast majority of its produce. A society could still function when a large part of its produce is stolen by its members if the produce is large enough. Even though i say that it is unacceptable, i don't mean that I don't steal myself. I steal mp3's, and some other goods.
Besides the math of proper society function, there is little reason for stealers to be judged bad, evil, or wrong. The function for such feelings in society is that dumber people - and most smart people, work much more reliably off of strongly internalized emotions than logic and reason. And these emotions in part hold together the structure of society. That is not to say that logic and reason don't also play a part.

If the item is small enough in value, it doesn't impact the society as a whole very much. And if your country is rich, a small item doesnt impact it nearly at all. So the theft of one vodka bottle is not a very "evil" act, if you were to quantify evil by how much it impacts society.

Although how you judge people is your own business, i suggest you should take this act with a grain of salt. If they don't want to talk about it, act like it didn't happen. And if she wants to borrow something, be careful, but not too obvious. Build your trust slowly, and be aware if this is a repeated offense. If she continues to steal, know about it, and be friends but don't put too much on the line. This could have just been an impulsive spur of the moment thing, and even she feels very guilty about it. So wait for more evidence before you pass judgement on her. Unless you learn otherwise it may have even been an accident.
You will become even deeper friends if you don't immediately pass judgement on her. People like that.

Oh dear! I can see where this would be upsetting, Tally.

I agree with duncvis that no one if perfect. On the balance she seems like a good person. I hope you can still accept her as a good, but not perfect, person and nieghbor.

BeeBee

They might have a drinking problem.

Or they might secretly be master thiefs, who get caught steeling vodka....

I would say 100% that is a drink problem, no doubt. If you want to be of help I suggest you find some tactful way to address it, even not tactful actually and even if she doesn't appreciate it at the time she may well in future. I work for a charity that deals with alcohol issues and it's such an unrecognised thing - we're far too polite and don't want to talk about these things and so many suffer as a result.

I don't think the moral issue of stealing from big companies or not is the main thing here, the person needs help.