11 Ways to Resist the Urge to Shoplift

Last Updated on December 20, 2025 by Michael

Look. We need to talk.

You’re standing in Target. You’re holding a candle that costs $24.99 and smells like “Autumn Whisper” which isn’t even a real thing—whispers don’t have a smell, that’s not how whispers work.

Someone in marketing just smashed two cozy words together and called it a day.

And somewhere in the back of your brain, a tiny gremlin wearing a ski mask is going “what if you just… didn’t pay for this?”

No. Bad brain. We’re not doing that today.

1. Remember That You Are Being Watched By Like 47 Cameras

You think you’re slick?

You’re not slick. There are more cameras in a single CVS than in the entire Pentagon. Every time you scratch your nose, someone in a back room is zooming in on your face like you’re a particularly suspicious episode of Planet Earth.

“Here we observe the suburban shopper in her natural habitat, eyeing the clearance rack with deeply concerning intensity. Notice how she checks over her shoulder. Fascinating.”

2. Do the Math on Whether Jail Is Worth It

Let’s get real. You want to steal a $7 lip gloss.

Here’s the cascade of consequences about to rain down on your entire life:

• You get caught (and you will, because cameras, so many cameras)
• You get banned from the store forever
• You maybe get arrested depending on how bored Officer Steve is that Tuesday
• Your mugshot goes online
• Your aunt finds it while Facebook stalking her ex-husband’s new girlfriend at 11pm
• She screenshots it
• She calls your mom
• Your mom calls you sobbing
• Thanksgiving is ruined forever
• Christmas is weird now
• Your cousin brings it up at Easter even though nobody asked
• Ten years later someone mentions it at a funeral

Is that worth seven dollars? Is slightly sparkly lip product worth becoming a permanent feature in your family’s group chat?

3. Physically Leave Your Hands at Home

Okay obviously you can’t do this. That’s not how bodies work.

But hear this out for a second.

What if you kept your hands shoved deep in your pockets the entire time? Can’t steal if you can’t grab. That’s just physics.

Walk through Target like a very suspicious penguin. Waddle past the merchandise. Make eye contact with absolutely no one.

You’re not a shopper anymore. You’re a ghost. A pocket-dwelling specter who definitely isn’t thinking about pocketing anything because your hands are already pocketed.

…Okay this one needs work.

4. Bring a Loud Friend

You know exactly which friend this is. The narrator. The one who processes everything externally at maximum volume.

“OH WOW YOU’RE LOOKING AT THAT REALLY CLOSELY HUH”

“ARE YOU GONNA BUY THAT OR JUST HOLD IT FOREVER WHILE LOOKING NERVOUS”

“WHY IS YOUR PURSE OPEN”

“HAHA THAT’S WEIRD THAT YOU PUT THAT IN YOUR PURSE”

“ANYWAY”

They will make theft impossible simply by being the world’s most annoying inadvertent witness. You can’t commit crimes when someone is essentially live-tweeting your movements to the entire home goods section.

Bring the loud friend. Thank the loud friend. The loud friend is keeping you out of jail.

5. Develop a Paralyzing Fear of Confrontation

Here’s the thing: this one’s easy if you’re already like this.

(And statistically? You’re probably already like this. This is the internet. We’re all just anxiety in a trench coat pretending to be functional adults.)

Picture it: You pocket something small. A lip balm. A hair clip. And then—a security guard clears their throat behind you.

They say “excuse me.”

Two words. Just two words. And suddenly your entire skeletal system dissolves. Your bones have left the building. You are now just skin and organs and shame, collapsing into a puddle on the floor of the home goods section.

An employee has to put up one of those yellow WET FLOOR signs. Over you. Because you are now floor liquid.

Is that the life you want? Melting in a Bed Bath & Beyond that’s probably closing down anyway?

6. Calculate Your Hourly “Freedom Rate”

Quick math that’s about to ruin your whole day:

You steal something worth $15. You get caught. You get sentenced to 20 hours of community service picking up cigarette butts in a neon orange vest while your neighbors drive by and wave.

$15 ÷ 20 hours = $0.75 per hour

Seventy-five cents. That’s less than minimum wage in 1987. You’d literally be valuing your freedom at the cost of a gumball.

The juice is not worth the squeeze.

7. Pretend Everything in the Store Is Haunted

This requires imagination but stay with it.

What if every product you considered stealing was cursed? That mascara? Haunted by the vengeful spirit of whoever returned it after an allergic reaction.

Those AirPods? A demon lives in the left one now and it only plays mattress commercials on loop forever.

That cute $3 succulent from the impulse buy section? It has seen things. Dark things. Things it will show you at 3am when you’re trying to sleep.

Do you want a haunted succulent on your windowsill? Watching you eat shredded cheese directly from the bag at midnight? Judging you with its tiny cursed leaves?

You don’t.

8. Get So Mad at the Prices You Don’t Want Anything Anymore

Honestly this is the most reliable method on this entire list.

Just look at the prices. Really look.

• $8 for a greeting card. For folded paper with someone else’s words on it.
• $14 for chapstick. Fourteen dollars. For petroleum jelly with marketing.
• $47 for a throw pillow that does nothing. It doesn’t throw itself. It doesn’t grant wishes.
• $6 for ONE avocado that will be brown and disappointing in 11 minutes

Let the righteous fury build. Let capitalism’s audacity wash over you.

Get progressively angrier about “premium pricing” until you storm out empty-handed, muttering about shareholder profits and late-stage economic collapse.

You didn’t steal anything AND you got free cardio from rage-walking to your car.

9. Remember That One Person From High School

You know exactly who just popped into your head.

Everyone knew. EVERYONE. Fifteen years later and the group chat still references it whenever anyone mentions shoplifting.

“Remember when [REDACTED] got caught stealing body spray from Claire’s?”

“Oh my god.”

“Their MOM had to come get them.”

“From the MALL JAIL.”

“There’s a MALL JAIL?”

“There’s a mall jail.”

That could be you. That could be your entire legacy.

Decades from now, people eating lukewarm chicken at a high school reunion will whisper about how you got tackled by a security guard named Doug—it’s always Doug—over a $4 item.

Is that the legacy you want? Being the person Doug tackled in accessories?

10. Just Be Too Anxious to Function

This isn’t advice you can follow on purpose. But honestly? Some of you are already here. Just permanently living in this headspace.

Your internal monologue while holding literally any product:

• “What if they think you’re stealing”
• “You’re walking weird now”
• “Stop walking weird”
• “Do arms usually swing this much”
• “That’s too much swinging”
• “Okay now you’re not swinging at all and that’s worse”
• “Why are you sweating”
• “The security guard looked at you”
• “They definitely think you’re stealing”
• “You should leave immediately”
• “You should move to another state”
• “You should become someone who simply never shops”

Anxiety: Keeping you honest through sheer paralyzing terror since forever.

11. Just Pay For Things Like a Normal Person

Boring? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.

Buy things with money. Hand them money. They give you a receipt. You leave through the front door with your head held high.

Nobody tackles you. No sirens. No mugshot. No aunt crying. No becoming a cautionary tale at family gatherings for the next forty years.

Just you, walking to your car, receipt in hand, legally owning a candle that smells like Autumn Whisper.

That’s the dream right there.

So In Conclusion

Shoplifting is bad. It’s illegal (like actually illegal, not jaywalking illegal). It’s going to make your mom cry. It’s going to get you tackled by Doug.

Buy the candle. Pay for the lip gloss. Leave the haunted succulent where it is.

Your clean record, your family relationships, and your ability to ever shop at Target again all depend on it.