Shoplifters need to feel shame

This is my brother’s story and, like many telling stories, it’s small. Tim lives in Iowa, as our mother’s family did, a lightly populated state smack in the centre of the US, and breadbasket to the world. Its rolling hills, panoramic skies and cornfields stippling to the horizon exude what I can only call wholesomeness. This is a place that produces not simply words, ideas or transient technologies, but tangible commodities that keep the human race alive at scale. Historically, Iowans have been friendly, open and guileless; farmers have tended to look out for one another. However much coastal urbanites may disdain the rubes who raise the cattle feed for their sirloins, this classic flyover country should harbour the true moral heart of America, were such a thing to remain anywhere. But maybe it doesn’t remain anywhere.

Like me, Tim is congenitally frugal (thanks, Mom). For big shops, it’s Walmart, whose sprawling discount outlets make up for their grim ambience with low prices. Despite the locale, Iowan Walmarts have a problem with shoplifting, even if retail theft hasn’t grown as brazen and rampant as it has become in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Thus a ‘greeter’ positioned at the exit is meant to check the customers’ receipts to confirm they’ve paid for their goods. Yet the gate-keeping is often lacklustre.

Having just completed a shop to prepare for my visit last month, before heading for the carpark my brother ran a ritual glance down his receipt to make sure he hadn’t been overcharged for anything, only to discover that in fact he’d underpaid. The checkout clerk had rung up only one of the two boxes of red table wine in his cart. As the greeter had already waved him through to the exit, Tim had a split second to decide whether to call attention to the error or proceed to his car.