Dear Mum,
Last week Annik walked past a person who may or may not have been lying dead in a park. She didn’t stop to help, but she thought about it, which was nice. She’s a writer so she wrote about it. It was an interesting moral dilemma.
I have a confession mum. I bought some roma tomatoes from Coles the other day (four to be precise) and I was using the self-help checkout counter. Roma tomatoes were $4.99 a kilo. On the checkout screen they have a list of favourite items you can pick from and tomatoes were on the list. Not roma tomatoes – the normal ones. They were $2.49 a kilo. Half the price.
I was about to scroll through the A-Z list of fresh produce items to find roma tomatoes, but I didn’t know if they’d be under ‘T’ for ‘Tomatoes: Roma‘ or ‘R’ for ‘Roma Tomatoes‘. I suspected it would have been ‘T’ but I wasn’t sure.
I knew if I scrolled through it would have taken me an extra 10-15 seconds and I was in a hurry to get home. It was at that point a little voice inside my head, let’s call him Satan, said:
“Hey Matt, just pretend they’re normal tomatoes and you’ll save money and time. No one will ever know.”
So I did.
But then I felt really guilty. I was considering explaining my ‘mistake’ to someone in charge, but I decided they’d think I was an idiot. I got in the car and felt really guilty about it, such were the values you impressed upon me mum. I drove home and made a mental note to make atonement.
Next time I was at Coles you know what I did mum? I bought five normal tomatoes and put them through as roma tomatoes. Proud much?
So, although I technically shoplifted the difference between roma tomatoes and normal tomatoes, I paid it back with one tomato interest, which is, like, way more than they would have got if they’d just had the money in the bank. I think that technically anulls my shoplifting record back to zero shoplifting incidents. Apart from the time I wagged school with Luke and stole a steak knife from the op-shop so we could go fishing. But that was his idea. I was just an accomplice. We’ll talk about me wagging school some other time. Sorry about that.
Matt