There was an attempt to shoplift

yesterday in a supermarket near here. I saw it happen and so did at least two more people.

The supermarket was one which provides "free fruit for kids". This is a bowl where people can take a piece of fruit like an apple or a banana and give it to a small child. It's a good idea for a number of reasons. I have even seen a very harassed grandparent insist on paying for the privilege of using it.

This was not enough for this woman. She also chose two rolls from the "self-serve" cabinets and handed them to the two small children with her. Was she intending to pay for them at the checkout.

I was with someone else. We had been to a funeral of a woman who would have worried herself sick if she thought she had taken something without paying for it. M.... looked at me. Someone else looked at us as well. We all wondered if she was intending to pay.

M...and I were delayed by someone wishing to speak to us. We found the woman several customers ahead of us in an "eight items or less" lane. No, she did not pay for the rolls which the children were still eating. 

At this point it would have been easy enough to be honest and say something like,"Oh! I am so sorry. I forgot. The rolls were keeping them so quiet."

Instead she swore when the other person who had noticed her take the rolls said something quietly,

"Shut the f... up. You have no idea. Bloody places like this make massive profits and we're expected to pay more for less and less," was the next response.

Store security appeared in the form of the manager. He is a large man. M... hastily paid for what she had come to buy and we left.

"I need something to drink and I'm buying for both of us," M... told me and steered me into a small cafe across from the supermarket. 

We sat there drinking iced drinks. We saw two police officers appear and go into the supermarket. We heard shouting and then children crying loudly. It was not pleasant. 

A few minutes later we saw the two police officers and the woman. One police officer was pushing the trolley with the two crying children in it and the other was with the woman. She was still shouting obscenities.  

The whole incident left me feeling shaken. I felt, still feel, so concerned for those two children. There was good food available there for nothing. If the children were hungry and the woman was not able to afford to buy food for them there were alternatives. At very least they could have had two pieces of fruit. What was this woman, presumably their mother, thinking? M... and I will never know but I hope the woman gets the help she obviously needs. The children are going to need that at very least.