In an effort to forcefully reclaim value from this feudal slavery system, I’ve started exploiting holes in the home improvement store sales systems and gotten almost a grand of things to improve my home with in the past month. $300 worth of paint, stainless faceplates, anchors, paint brushes, loads of plants… but it’s all been hiding the good in the cart and relying on the cashiers negligence to attain them. I started getting a bit more bold and just loading plants and shit into my car before I leave and whatnot.

I figured why not extend this to groceries, and I tried to conceal some small items like Larabars and some cheese which was good and all but doesn’t really help me with my grocery bill which is frankly getting ridiculous. So I built up a little courage and tried a walkout on two stores that I never go to. I loaded up my reusable shopping bag with $40 worth of coffee, $14 of butter, 6 avocados, 2 pints of dairy free ice cream, some Red Bulls, organic raspberries, guacamole… just some luxuries that we can’t really justify right now.

I just left, and it was so easy. The second store actually had locks on the carts that I failed to notice, so as I tried to wheel it out, it froze and beeped, attracting some attention, but the employees didn’t seem to think I was trying to steal anything and unlocked the cart for me, and then just let me leave. That was pretty crazy and taught me a lesson.

I’ve been thinking that I need to not use my reusable shopping bags repeatedly for this, and be more perceptive of the security systems.

One reusable shopping bag trick that I use is that I have one of those “insulated” shopping bags with two layers, and it has separated in one spot, and I can slide small items into the slot which looks like I’m just bagging the item, and the bag looks empty at the self checkout or if inspected.

Happy bagging.

Comments

Dazey wrote on June 6, 2022 at 5:05 PM

I have another method you can use that you touched on at the Home Improvement Stores. I'm specifically interested in helping people get groceries back as an Anarchist.

If you DM me, I will give you a few more tips on how to refine your game further.

If not, well played anyway!

throwawayaccount wrote on June 15, 2022 at 6:30 PM (edited on June 15, 2022 at 6:31 PM)

The most commonly-stolen item from grocery stores, based on me trying to research what LP talks about, is meat. Which makes sense--even BEFORE our price explosions, meat's pricy.

At least one store I've shopped at uses rf tags, the kind that look like a little metallic spiral, on the stickers for their meats. I'm told if you break the line of the metal--something that i think could be done with a pocketknife or multitool scissors, there's no circuit and no RF signal.

But given that meat is $$$ and a high-value target, I think there are less-suspicious ways to save money with theft

Occasionally, I've considered peeling stickers from cheaper by-the-pound cuts and slapping them over the barcodes for more expensive family packs, then going through self-checkout.

intellectual wrote on June 16, 2022 at 11:53 PM

How are you sneaking out of home improvement stores without being noticed? Also how do u not set the door alarm off? And what if someone stops u & asks to look at ur receipt?