The Joe Biden Presidency I :: Hallelujah!

Not just idiots; it is astonishingly easy to get out to the car and then discover something in or on the bottom part of the cart which never got rung up. The checker or the bagger would have spotted it, but the self check out register is half blind and doesn't care anyway. Inadvertent theft is surely almost as common as intentional.

 

I've had the opposite happen to me plenty, where I have left stuff in the checkout and didn't realize until I unpacked at home.

 

And from people who left cities in the 70s and 80s but haven't been back.

I mentioned this before, but I have a relative who lived in NYC from 1998 to 2013. He was hesitant about taking his kids to NY because of crime (In 2022). I had to point out to him that he grew up in 70s and 80s Detroit and takes his kids there no problem. Or point out the infamous Average White Band incident*, something that is unheard of today.

Cities in general are not what they were. Hell, every time I go to Detroit I keep seeing more signs of positive changes.

*: For those that don't know, a gang known as the Errol Flynns (On brand for Detroit) raided an Average White Band show at an arena in Detroit and proceeded to beat and do much worse to concertgoers.

 

My local Kroger has me so annoyed that I try to go to Meijer's when I can. Only time I go to Kroger now is for the sushi.

The biggest annoyance is that it's situated in a spot that converges with several towns, is near I-75, and yet they don't have much open when it comes to registers or self checkouts.

Gone there at 9 P.M. and there's a line at the self checkout to the back of the store. It's ridiculous.

 

I recently had a senior moment and put stuff in a bag without scanning anything. Fortunately there was a nice young lady who followed me out so reminded me I had to pay.
They only tend to call cops on repeat offenders.

 

I've done that many times.

 

Oddly enough, this video popped up in my tiktok FYP today.

it noted that while there are whole groups dedicated to stealing from stores in the self-checkout, the bigger issue is people forgetting to scan, mis-scanning, punching in the wrong thing, etc.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT85t83Kf/

 

I used to have a habit of leaving stuff at airport security and remembering after I got on the plane.

 

Another complex activity that is best left to the professionals.

 

In general, people develop an irrational fear of crime as they get older. I think back to all the times when I was young and would be staggering around town drunk and aimless, without the slightest worry of crime (not even days later in hindsight). Now, I don't even like to wear noise cancelling headphones at night because it makes me feel like a sitting duck.

That said, its not just "cities". Older people will write off entire countries because of crime.

 

It's such a weird phenomenon.

 

Especially since young people are much more likely to be victims of crime.

 

I think young people are more likely to put themselves "out there" in a situation where they might become a crime victim.

 

I'm the opposite. I walk anywhere.

 

it's probably because usually the older you get, the more you have to lose (house, kids, etc.)

 

Sheesh!

How hard is it to grasp that anyone is physically conscious that, at 72, we are no longer a match for most random bad guys, no matter how confident we felt even 10 years ago. It is vulnerability, not likelihood that make us think about how to avoid it. Especially since we can feel that in 10 more years we will be even slower, weaker, and shakier...

 

We are a gun society. We are basically all equally vulnerable.

 

That doesn't explain why old people would also encourage their kids and grandkids to take over-the-top precautions including simply avoid going to certain entire countries LOL

Fewer years to lose though, especially fun ones.

 

It's not really an age thing though and that argument is a myth. The whole crime thing comes from people whose experience of cities was in the 1970s and 1980s. A time that was not that great given the horror stories I've heard. People forget that cities in the 70s especially weren't the best places to be, look at NYC's census for 1980, it's drastic. Detroit's too. Lot of family members left Detroit because of crime. To put it in perspective, there's a spot right on the border of Detroit/Ferndale where my dad was robbed at gunpoint. Now? It's where rich gay people and arty types live.

And wearing headphones in public is something one shouldn't be doing. That's just common sense. Or as my track coach would tell us, "I cannot tell you how many times people jump when they wear headphones and I run past them."

 

That's pretty much just a Yank phenomenon. Even if you just jump across the border from Detroit it wasn't like that at all. For e.g. Toronto's murder rate hardly changed at all in the past 50 years. In fact, it was slightly lower in the 1980s than it was in the first two decades of this century.

 

If I have stolen something it was more than likely I was in a hurry and didn't scan it, thinking I did. Usually there is a long line at self-checkout and people are in a rush, causing me to rush.

I can't remember where I saw it, but some comedian said something along the lines of "of course more items are being stolen, you try spelling radicchio. It's easier to steal it." NGL, there have been times where I didn't buy something because they are difficult to scan.