drewmckinney.net

I’m very busy right now, not much time for blogging. I will explain later. Until then, I posted a couple of photos on my flickr page.

This article about Wal-Mart relaxing its shop-lifting policy is old news but for some reason I was thinking about it again tonight.

Living in San Francisco, I see my share of the homeless and the hungry and I’m always thinking of ways to help the poor folks out. I, as many others do, give when I can but it’s never enough. I think the answer lies with Wal-Mart.

According to their site, they serve 175 million customers a week in, I can’t remember, 65 countries I think it was. If they let every one of those customers walk out with $24 worth of food that would be 4.2 billion dollars of food, every week. They are currently saying on their site that they gave $245 million last year for charity, which is a fantastic amount, but I like the sound of 4.2 billion dollars a week. I’m sure my math is off somewhere, I’m no economist after all. I think I used the figure of $24 dollars just to make sure that nobody was getting screwed. But I may have gone with the full $25. I only do math once so it’s hard for me to be sure.

It’s a situation where everyone would win. Nobody gets a record or arrested, Wal-Mart gets to write the expense off as either a loss or charity, and people that cannot afford food will suddenly have food. Sure, there are the logistics of delivering the food, etc. but I’m trying to solve one thing at a time here.

They could even be gentlemanly about the whole thing:

Cashier: So, eh, find everything you need?
Customer: Yep.
Cashier: Did ya steal your allotment?
Customer: No
Cashier: Get out of here you bum and don’t come back until you’ve stolen the proper amount.
Customer: But I only want this pack of gum.
Cashier: I said Good Day Sir.

It would be a good way to teach children the correct methods of stealing - you know, which items to look out for and which items are crap, that sort of thing. No longer would families hang out in the Wal-Mart food court despising each other and thrusting ice picks into necks and bellies, they would be helping to solve World Hunger as well!

I think it is the duty of every American that shops at Wal-Mart to steal $24 worth of food every time they shop and then give that food away to those that need it.

Cassandra Lewis said it best, “Steal a little extra.” And it’s as simple as that, do your normal shopping and then steal a little extra.

So go forth, patriotic Americans, and steal twenty-four bucks. You won’t just be doing it for your country, you’ll be doing it for your soul.