HEiST! - CrimethInc

drawer to stay the same as the amount on the
sales summary at the end of the day, he or she
would just have to take the amount in question
out of the drawer and stick it in a pocket.
A simple concept, but surprisingly difficult
to execute repeatedly without getting caught.
How did I manage to pilfer twenty-five grand
this way The answer lies in the principle of
sustainability, something we radicals like to
talk about a lot – being patient, knowing when
enough is enough, being aware of your limits
and not exceeding them. Other cashiers stole
money this way too – obviously, I wasn’t the
first person to think of it – but they were too
greedy, or too obvious, or too impatient, emptied
half their drawers in a shift and got busted.
I was able to skim well over a hundred dollars a
day off the top and sustain it for close to a year,
all while maintaining the outward appearance
of a diligent worker and arousing little or no
suspicion.
During this period, the store was robbed.
The robbers were smart: they hit the store at
closing time on the biggest shopping day of the
Christmas season, when the safe was as chockfull
of cash as it would ever be. I wasn’t there
that night, and the owners didn’t disclose how
much was taken, but from my knowledge of the
store’s operations it couldn’t have been more
than five or six thousand dollars. It still brings a
smile to my face to know that I got away with
far more loot than those robbers ever did. True,
it took longer – but I didn’t have to make use of
fear or intimidation or run the risk of somebody
getting killed.
I truly felt bad for the assistant manager who
had a gun stuck in her face; she didn’t deserve
it. To my knowledge she never received any acknowledgement
from the owners that she had
STEAL FROM WORK TO TILL THE SOIL
The sun was about to rise, so I had to be quick.
It was the very last shift at the seasonal sugar
beet harvest I work at every fall. When the foreman
was finally out of sight I slipped out of my
car while two coworkers looked out for me. I
grabbed the nicest shovel and pitchfork on our
site and stuffed them in my trunk. They would
be much more useful for the garden back home,
or perhaps helping lay the groundwork for the
guerilla garden people had been talking about
starting at the site of the Really Really Free Market
in our town.
Seasonal Worker
STEAL FROM WORK WITH THE WHOLE FAMILY
“Don’t leave any evidence behind,” my dad told
me as we cleaned up our mess. It was fun to be
in an office building during the night when no
one was there. That photocopier wasn’t used to
printing anarchist propaganda, but the next day
was May Day and it was time to celebrate! We
made enough copies of a zine about the Haymarket
Martyrs and the origins of May Day to
fill a big box.
My dad wasn’t familiar with radical politics,
so it was exciting to converse about the zines
as we folded and stapled them all in the conference
room together. The next day I met some
friends at a park next to one of the busiest intersections
in our small town. “Happy Holidays!”
we exclaimed as we handed out the zines to the
drivers and passengers stopped at the stoplight.
Pilferer’s Progeny