Avoid ‘shopping’ with light-fingered friend

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/07/2021 (1912 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. What kind of idiot am I, looking the other way? My friend wants me to start shopping with her again on weekends, but I know she’s secretly shoplifting things. I’ve never confronted her.

I’m not a thief, but she is. Why did she do it around me? That’s what’s bothering me. I’m at a loss as to why she’d need to shoplift anything, with the money she makes!

My friend and I are in our 30s and she’s a very funny person. Before COVID hit, we’d been meeting outside work once a week to have lunch and go shopping and we had such a laugh. She always had me in stitches.

At first I noticed nothing, then I saw something weird but thought I must be mistaken! My friend would collect some clothes and go into the dressing room. But then, once in a while, she wouldn’t come out with the outfit she was most excited about.

I thought she’d changed her mind, and left it in the change room. To my surprise, a day later she came to work in the outfit she had “loved and left” in a change room.

I’m a more serious person since COVID. I can’t afford to lose my job or my reputation. I can’t hang with her anymore, and she will deny the shoplifting to me, anyway. How do I bring this up now we’re back at work together? Please help.

— Sick Over Her Shoplifting, Westwood

Dear Sick Over Shoplifting: Even if this co-worker promised not to steal anything in order to hang out with you, how do you know she wouldn’t do it? She isn’t an honest person.

She’d only be humouring you — until she day she couldn’t resist temptation, and the additional thrill of doing it behind your back. What an adrenalin rush! What a victory!

Picture yourself getting caught, and the humiliation you’d share when the store suspected you were helping her — a terrible thought.

So how do you talk to her about this? Since you work together, don’t accuse her with ugly words. Just say: “I think you already know why I can’t afford to go shopping with you. It’s dangerous to me and my job.”

If you still want to be quasi-friendly you could offer to go out walking with her at noon hour — two-legged exercise instead of her usual “five-finger” workout.

Choose a path that’s well away from stores, and enjoy her sense of humour and enjoy being work friends. If she says “no thanks” to this — and she probably will — at least you offered a partial friendship.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I’m 16 and got drunk with my brother — COVID is so boring — and fell down on the kitchen floor, where I threw up. I stumbled off to bed, and forgot about it.

My mother found the mess in the morning and came up and screamed at me and made me clean it up, when I was still half-asleep.

Now she has forbidden me to use her car for two weeks. I told her that was stupid, because now she’ll have to go get her groceries herself! She told me to shut my sassy mouth, and clean out the pool. Then my dad came home and told me off for getting drunk and being rude to my mother.

Hey, I don’t have to live here! I can go live with my grandmother anytime I want (open invitation over there) except she doesn’t have a car. My mom said, “Go ahead, wise guy.”

Nobody’s talking nice to me except my bro. What do you think I should do?

— Fed Up, Southdale

Dear Fed Up: You should go stay with Grandma, if she’ll still take you. Just don’t expect an invitation to live back home until you humbly ask for one. Expect to stay most of the summer in your present wise-guy state.

The parents aren’t going to miss you for a good while. Your brother will. The pool and your mother’s car won’t. Maybe Grandma can teach you something over the summer, since you aren’t respecting your parents. She has the inside track on how you were raised, and what needs fixing.

By the way, don’t expect free food and a place to stay. Ask Gran for a list of work that needs doing around her place as soon as you arrive — and do it to earn your keep.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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