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Accidental shoplifting

Marjorie195

I am currently reading V Gaus Living Well on the Spectrum.

I have been focusing on thinking. The first time I read through this chapter, I had an odd dream about stealing a pendant from a local shop. I did not connect it, at that point to what I had read. Last night, I re-read the section and tried to think of examples in my own life. One of the ways that VG illustrates the thinking process and asd problems, is to look at buying lunch from a deli. She breaks the process down into all the stages needed to find the queue and buy a sandwich, and suggests ways this could go wrong for the as person. This seamed over simplified to me, but it had a strange effect.

I had the other half of my dream about stealing the pendant. I was frantically trying to think of a way of returning it the shop, without being caught, thinking, they will know it is missing and find me on the cctv.

When I woke, I started getting all sorts of memories of times I have got things wrong when shopping.

1. The earliest, I remember was at 21, going to a local, old style shop. Tins and packets were on shelves at my side of the counter, everything else was behind the counter. I wondered in and started putting tins and packets off the shelf into my bag, instead of taking them to the counter. I was the only customer, and after a short time, the owner asked me what I thought I was doing. In much embarrassment, I emptied my bag onto the counter. I never went back there.

2. Twice, years apart, in supermarkets, I have put packs of loo roll under my arm, and not in my basket. At the checkout, I forgot about the loo roll, paid for the contents of the basket, and left. I did not dare go back. I once did this with a biscuit barrell, hung on my arm, and was a hundred yards down the road, before I realised, and did go back. I know there were many other instances, where I remembered before I finnished.

3. More recently, I did my shopping, paid, then went back for a pack of printer paper. I was heading for customer services to pay, which involved passing the exit. I had a few words with someone I knew, on the way, then went out of the door and was half way across the carpark when I remembered I was on my way to customer services to pay.

I went and told the customer services staff what I had done and we had a laugh about it and put it down to being a "senior moment". Now I am not so sure. Putting all these instances together and they were just the ones that came quickly to mind when I woke, and realising that I have been making these mistakes all my life, I am now beginning to wonder if these are examples of thinking problems. VG asks questions about being unable to stay focused, being distracted easily, and difficulty in going back to what I was doing, after an interuption.

Whenever these incidents happen, I have worried about what might have resulted if I had been caught. Would anyone believe that I just forgot to pay. Shops take a very hard line with shoplifting these days.

I find it hard to recognise thinking errors in myself, because I have always been the way I am. This is my normal.

Has anyone else done things like this?

Parents

  • Is this related to autistic spectrum though? My perception is this happens a lot, and I believe people do walk out with things under their arm unintentionally. The trouble with supermarkets is there is generally no middle option between a basket and half a dozen variants of trolley. So if you are using a basket you easily end up carrying something bulky outside the basket - toilet rolls, large washing powder cartons etc.

    So recombinantsocks' idea of using a bigger trolley carries.

    One thing that does affect people on the spectrum in supermarkets is complex visual and aural information, sensory overload. That is bound to be distracting.

    But "being unable to stay focussed, being distracted easily, and difficulty in going back to what I was doing after an interruption" (original posting) does not sound like autistic spectrum.

    There are an enormous number of books on autistic spectrum, written by people on the spectrum, or by professionals working with autism. Both have limitations - the autobiographically based ones are too much around one person's experience (and autism experiences are way too diverse for that to work). Books written by professionals based on experience of helping people on the spectrum are just as variable and unfortunately a lot are by people whose actual contact with people on the spectrum has been quite small, or whose understanding is quite limited, and whose advice is heavily dependent on speculation and hunches rather than real knowledge.

    One of the earliest resource books for university staff on autism was based entirely in one university's experience of just one student on the spectrum. Some books by health professionals are based on patients they are seeing for depression and other secondary complications, and this must bias their understanding of autism.

    I'm particularly wary of American therapists whose main customer base is not autism, but occasionally involves people with autism.How do they hope to distinguish autism related factors from the general complaints of their paying customers?

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  • Is this related to autistic spectrum though? My perception is this happens a lot, and I believe people do walk out with things under their arm unintentionally. The trouble with supermarkets is there is generally no middle option between a basket and half a dozen variants of trolley. So if you are using a basket you easily end up carrying something bulky outside the basket - toilet rolls, large washing powder cartons etc.

    So recombinantsocks' idea of using a bigger trolley carries.

    One thing that does affect people on the spectrum in supermarkets is complex visual and aural information, sensory overload. That is bound to be distracting.

    But "being unable to stay focussed, being distracted easily, and difficulty in going back to what I was doing after an interruption" (original posting) does not sound like autistic spectrum.

    There are an enormous number of books on autistic spectrum, written by people on the spectrum, or by professionals working with autism. Both have limitations - the autobiographically based ones are too much around one person's experience (and autism experiences are way too diverse for that to work). Books written by professionals based on experience of helping people on the spectrum are just as variable and unfortunately a lot are by people whose actual contact with people on the spectrum has been quite small, or whose understanding is quite limited, and whose advice is heavily dependent on speculation and hunches rather than real knowledge.

    One of the earliest resource books for university staff on autism was based entirely in one university's experience of just one student on the spectrum. Some books by health professionals are based on patients they are seeing for depression and other secondary complications, and this must bias their understanding of autism.

    I'm particularly wary of American therapists whose main customer base is not autism, but occasionally involves people with autism.How do they hope to distinguish autism related factors from the general complaints of their paying customers?

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