Being poor sucks.  People with the ability to dabble in poverty have the luxury of going back to something else when the time suits them. They can be scumbags for their early 20s and then once they have drank in all the glamour of the low man they  can jump back into a more comfortable life. Real actual poverty is shitty.  When I went to college I was poor. My parents were poor. They did what they could to help me but there was only so much they could do. I worked shitty jobs in Grand Rapids for a while and slept on couches from friends. I was actually relatively thin at the end of my first year of college. You know the deal, eating chicken rice and kool aid. At the beginning of my second year I was tired of being poor. A friend tipped me off to a job within a major hotel in Grand Rapids. A real nice big one by the river. On the first day of my job I was being shown around by my new boss and was watching another boss lead away a very sad looking employee. My friend who worked there told me that he was caught stealing money. She said everybody did it.  Shortly after she showed me how to do it myself.

I was incredibly nervous. It all seemed so easy but how could it be.  This was a major company and a four star hotel.  How could they not have the means to know the minute that a ill gotten bill hit my pocket from out of their till. As nervous as I was there were images that were dancing through my head.  I thought about chicken rice, about how I was going to get gas money to go see my girlfriend, about how I was going to buy supplies I needed at school. I thought about the time that I would put in on the job and the reward that I would reap and thought that I was worth more. I took ten dollars. My heart raced all night. I was certain that the eyes of my superiors were upon me. I went to the bathroom and folded the bill as small as I could and hid it in my shoe. At the end of my shift my register was tallied up and I was right on.  They said good job and I was out the door.  I did it. I filled the gas tank in my red Geo Metro (you could fill it for 10 dollars then). I was excited about what I had done. I struck a blow to a greedy corporation. I would do it again.

As time moved forward I pushed my limits. I developed new strategies to increase my haul. My bosses liked me because I would work so hard and move so fast.  They didn’t know that I did this so that my station would always make more money than the others even after I removed the money that I stole. For the first time in my life I had disposable income. My bills were paid and I could really do things in my spare time.  It was amazing.  To a young and budding punk I was given ample excuses for what I was doing.  In Grand Rapids there was no better example of the establishment than the company I was working for. I fashioned myself as a Robin Hood type character that was taking what life owed him and delivering it to others. I did things for my friends. I bought meals and occasional garments.  What I did was right. Did they owe me a living? “Of course they fucking do” my mix tape would reply. I bought tons of music and went to every show.

That summer I went back to my hometown. I got a job at a convenience store working the third shift.  What do you know, the very same techniques I employed in GR worked here too.  There were no security cameras and an inept inventory done every month that assured me of easy times.  Sometimes my friends would come in at night and sit in the cooler and drink 40s until late in the evening.  No one was there.  Who gives a shit?

I continued this pattern for the next few years.  Finally after years of getting everything I wanted. I stopped. How I never got caught I will never know. But it was so easy.  Just a minimal amount of basic math skills and a calm disposition made it simple.  But I stopped anyhow.  I knew that everyone gets caught eventually.  And with the amount that I had taken over the years I was looking at substantial trouble if it happened. So I decided that from here on out I was going to live on my paycheck alone.  The real money I made was better now and I lived with my girlfriend so sharing responsibilities made it easier to adjust. But when I looked back my feelings about myself had changed.

When I started I thought that my actions could be justified. I was working for greedy capitalists in a system that sets the worker up for failure. How wrong could it be to better myself? To take an unnoticeable bit off the top and make my life a little more like theirs. Wasn’t I deserving?  But what did I do with their money? I didn’t change anything.  I didn’t do one positive thing.  At some points I was stealing upwards of 700 extra dollars a week.  There were so many worthwhile causes that could have used that. But I wasted it on trivial junk.  Most of the things I bought I don’t even have anymore. None of it was used as a down payment on a house or to pay my own student loans. It was just for me to waste. I thought of the company itself. I thought of who I really hurt. I sold 5 dollar beers in plastic cups to regular people. People at basketball games and concerts.  The money I took off the top didn’t hurt my bosses because they passed my theft along to their patrons. That beer cost them less than 50 cents. The extra 4.50 was to make up for me. I wasn’t smashing any system I was aiding it. I was growing it. I was leeching off the people I was serving. And the things I did with the money are just what the people who run the place would do.  Waste it on little things to amuse themselves instead of investing it in people.

For all my talk of radical politics and punk slogans for those years I was the system dressed as a punk. I was the personification of greed and excess. I was walking capitalism at its worst.

I still wish I could steal from these places. I just wish that I was a better person with the gains.