To each his/her own. It certainly has no impact on my life.

My response to the OP’s question. Personally, I do not want my kids to think that it is always appropriate to take stuff of the shelf and start eating it. When they are with me, I can frame that message. However, they are frequently with their caregivers or their grandparents in stores and the kids might not understand the distinction. Plus, I would never attempt to dictate that they be allowed to do it if I am not there. So that is not something that I encourage with my kids. Then again, I am crazy paranoid about things like that because of an incident in my own youth. I do not even let them take things out of the bag until we are out of the store. But if other folks think it is fine, I do not care.

You can't eat the Harris Teeter cookies if you have a nut allergy, so that doesn't work for us.

Anonymous wrote:The issue is straightforward. You're teaching your children it's fine to steal, all they need to do to get what they want is have a screaming meltdown, and that they don't need to develop any patience for snacking.

A lot of pretty bad lessons there.

Bring a snack from home, or sample what the store offers you. Pretty simple.

Again, how is this stealing? Can you cite some...you know...actual law that defines it as stealing? Or should we just all take your word for it?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Come ON. Are you people really trying to convince yourselves that the Harris Teeter police are going to arrest you for letting your kid eat a cookie before you pay for it? BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA! I'll take my chances. (In spite of the fact that your aunt's best friend's dogwalker in another state once had this happen.)

I'm pretty sure Harris Teeter has free samples of cookies. I'm a PP who talked about samples earlier, and just about every grocery store has free samples of some kind and a water fountain, so again, I guess I just don't understand the necessity of eating food before paying for it when there are free options that the store IS condoning available? If the issue is being completely famished and not being able to wait another second to eat, then certainly eating something that the store is offering for free will suffice, no?

They run out of those cookies a lot. And the word cookie was just an example.

Anonymous wrote:Come ON. Are you people really trying to convince yourselves that the Harris Teeter police are going to arrest you for letting your kid eat a cookie before you pay for it? BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA! I'll take my chances. (In spite of the fact that your aunt's best friend's dogwalker in another state once had this happen.)

I'm pretty sure Harris Teeter has free samples of cookies. I'm a PP who talked about samples earlier, and just about every grocery store has free samples of some kind and a water fountain, so again, I guess I just don't understand the necessity of eating food before paying for it when there are free options that the store IS condoning available? If the issue is being completely famished and not being able to wait another second to eat, then certainly eating something that the store is offering for free will suffice, no?

Anonymous wrote:The issue is straightforward. You're teaching your children it's fine to steal, all they need to do to get what they want is have a screaming meltdown, and that they don't need to develop any patience for snacking.

A lot of pretty bad lessons there.

Bring a snack from home, or sample what the store offers you. Pretty simple.

This is so retarded. #1 it is not stealing in any shape or form. #2 the kids are not having a meltdown - we give them the food because they are hungry (or eat it ourselves) because there is nothing wrong with it. If the store says that is now allowed then I wouldnt do it there, but I would likely start shopping someplace else.

The issue is straightforward. You're teaching your children it's fine to steal, all they need to do to get what they want is have a screaming meltdown, and that they don't need to develop any patience for snacking.

A lot of pretty bad lessons there.

Bring a snack from home, or sample what the store offers you. Pretty simple.

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, yes, I do this almost every time I go to the store with my almost two year old and I pay for it at the check out. So what.

Me too. I don't understand the issue with this at all. I did it before kids if I was hungry too. I always keep the wrapper in the cart if for some reason we didn't just eat something from a box. No cashier has ever raised an eyebrow-- seems like common behavior to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So letting a toddler eat a cracker in the grocery store is "tacky," but walking around your neighborhood drinking on Halloween while accompanying your small children is perfectly acceptable?

Okay. Carry on, DCUM hall monitors.

Finally, the Halloween drinkers and the grocery-store eaters collide!

Proud to be a member of both groups. if you lighten up you'd enjoy life more. Relax

Come ON. Are you people really trying to convince yourselves that the Harris Teeter police are going to arrest you for letting your kid eat a cookie before you pay for it? BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA! I'll take my chances. (In spite of the fact that your aunt's best friend's dogwalker in another state once had this happen.)

Honestly, yes, I do this almost every time I go to the store with my almost two year old and I pay for it at the check out. So what.

At the Safeway I go to with my son, they always have free samples at the deli counter and bakery, so if he is hungry, we can go to one of those sections with no problem. I personally would never eat something without paying for it, and if my son asks for something in our cart, I let him know we can eat it when we get in the car.

I have never had the experience of my child being excruciatingly starving while grocery shopping, but it that occurred I would pick out something small and go purchase it from the self-serve check out line and then continue with my shopping. If I had a consistently excruciatingly starving child (which I don't) I would learn to either make sure he eats before going to the store or bring snacks with me.

I don't really understand the necessity of eating something before paying for it since there are so many other options that are much more legal.

Anonymous wrote:I certainly do not care if anyone does it. It doesnot impact me one bit. However......

In all this talk about intent, etc, no one has reconciled one basic fact. Technically, the item does not belong to you until you pay for it. The fact that you intend to pay for it does not make it yours at the time your child is eating it. Your child is eating something that belongs to the store. Plain and simple. Once you pay for it, maybe it is all good and the store may not bother saying anything. BIt there is no escaping that your child is eating something you have not paid for yet.

so if I buy a pair of fresh new sneaks and wear them out I am stealing them when I put them on and lace them up? Do you realize how idiotic you sound?

I frequent these boards looking for advice from time to time. Reading this thread has made me think twice about asking advice from this crew since I really don't see what the big deal about this is at all and it is shocking that some of you find it so offensive.

I do not let my kids eat something that doesn't leave "evidence" sufficient to enable the store to charge us appropriately for it. By this I mean box of animal crackers - fine. Still a box with a bar code. But, for example, fruit that is charged by weight - no. They would have to guess how much the fruit weighed before they could properly vcharge me. And something completely consumable like a donut from the bakery rack? Another no.

Maybe that's nuance, but that is how I see it, and I really don't have the time or inclination to look up the DC code section on petty theft, which I have not seen anyone actually cite or paste into the thread, although I skipped some pages. Add case citations if you like, too, if you want to call my grocery store practices illegal. Oh, and I totally would open a bottle of water and drink it on the same theory - they can use the bottle to charge me.