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
Dude, coles self check-outs were invented so we COULD steal. I’m currently putting together a guide on the many ways to fuck the system and get your 50 cents right back in the pocket!
Yeah, but you don’t want Coles Karma haunting you. They may be a faceless organisation (if you don’t count Curtis Stone I suppose) but every field grown tomato you pretend is a roma tomato is a nail in the coffin of the poor Aussie farming industry. And the more you hurt Aussie farmers, the more people vote for the National Party. And the more people vote for the National Party, the more chance Tony Abbott has of getting in power. So really, by stealing from Coles, you’re voting Liberal and that means you hate asylum seekers, which means you’re supporting the Taliban, who support Osama Bin Laden, so really, tomato stealing is the reason they blew up the World Trade Centres. I hope you’re happy Annik.