A couple of months ago, I left a QFC with a bottle of wine that I had failed to pay for.

245 replies on “A Note to Our Readers”

  2. I’m sorry you had to post this, Erica.

    I got busted for shoplifting once, too — a can of Drum cigarette tobacco, from Pay’n’Save in the U District. 40 hours community service at the YMCA. It’s no big deal. You’ll get over it.

    The apes demanding blood here won’t, but they have issues that can’t really be addressed here.

  5. Oh, Erica, you sometimes come off as pompous, self righteous, and you got busted for shop lifting. For this I respect you, but Erica, a dangling preposition?

  8. I’m also sorry you had to post this. The last two days of troll bullshit made Slog nearly unbearable. Fuck those assholes (or was it a solitary asshole?)

  9. Happens to the best of us.

    I remember one time a friend and I were shopping and were so engrossed in conversation she spaced that she had also picked up a small item.

    About half a block after leaving the store, she clued in and we went back and returned it.

    We’re all human.

    And I doubt @1 is really finished.

  10. OK, this is a bit half-assed.

    Did you “fail to pay for it” as in you got distracted and walked out? I did that once with a gallon of milk, totally not on purpose. Got in my car and drove home. Free Milk!

    Or did you “fail to pay for it” as in you tried to steal it and failed in a humiliating fashion? Which never has happened to me, because back when I used to shoplift, I was good at it.

    If you’re offering some sort of public statement, you really ought to STATE something, not just vaguely imply something or other.

    And now it’s time to listen to some Jane’s Addiction.

  11. Dangling prepositions are completely fine and in many cases (like this one) vastly preferable to the still alternative: “for which I had failed to pay” is putrid.

  14. It’s OK as long as you took public transportation to the store, and did not ride a fixie, nor drove a Zipcar.

  16. I walked out of Rite Aid once with a Christmas tape under my chin. Once I realized I had it there, I ran back in and apologized profusely to the first employee I could find, (a tall skinny kid with red hair, and bad acne… though I probably figured it was freckles at the time) and begged him not to arrest me.

  17. Seriously, EVERYBODY has some sort of skeleton in their closet, including the smugly sanctimonious mouth-breathers who’ve plagued us recently. And I’d bet dollars to donut-holes a lot of their’s are far, far worse than this. But, of course, they’re all anonymous-coward fucktards who don’t have the ball sacks to open themselves up to the same sort of picayune public pillorying you’ve had to endure from them.

    It’s done. Over. Move on, and learn from the mistake.

  21. We now return you to our regularly scheduled circle jerk in which all of the regular commentors get to abuse this space as their own little chear squad for their beloved Stranger.

  23. So is this an apology?
    Cause I didn’t see the word ‘sorry’.
    And if it’s just a statement of fact what’s the point?

  24. You know, the “uproar” over this the last couple days was less about the actual “crime” and more about the faux-transparency the Stranger operates under. You’re not media newbies, so you should know how to deal with such a matter directly (to get ahead of the story), rather than issue a statement like this way after the fact.

  26. Fnarf, I’m not really a grammar Nazi. (Just look at my contributions for proof of that.) I just wanted to be the first to nitpick, find something wrong with this post.

  27. My use of dangling prepositions (in speech, not writing) used to bug the shit out of my roommate in college. She was from the south, and her rationale was that it was much less common there. I’m from the Midwest, where no one batted an eyelash at things like “do you want to come with?”

    Dangling Prepositions. More interesting than this whole Erica thing.

  32. agreed with #10. This is ridiculous ECB. Your word play here makes it sound like it just slipped your mind that you pocketed a bottle of wine.

    Please.

    You stole. Own it.

  33. wait, someone wants an apology? an apology?? really???

    you shouldn’t have even posted this, erica. assholes will always be assholes. you should never try to placate assholes.

  36. When I was a teenager, we used to have competitions to see who could steal the most expensive bottle of wine from the Safeway on 15th and John or the Safeway on Broadway. We would consume our high class booty in either Volunteer Park or at the Denny family plot in the cemetery. As a result, my friends and I gained an appreciation for fine wines that continues to this day, about thirty years later.

  38. I thought you guys hired writers here?

    I mean, there is some serious self-effacing comedy gold here and it’s been squandered because some egos were hurt.

    If a real writer had found themselves in this predicament, I would have enjoyed reading the essay that explained it all and put it in a perspective. It would have been touching, funny, and humanizing.

    Instead, the Slog has produced this two-line denouement.
    Shameful. Worse than Charles Mudede’s movie reviews.

    Perhaps now we can get back to the inside-jokes about bacon.

  39. @10 and @24 For the win

    Erica this is half assed and you damn well know it.

    You as a journalist know damn well how to write an appropriate response. You have no remorse in this action of theft.

    The lame ass regulars here who have “supported” you and your actions have a huge double standard in conduct.

    Erica you left this post ambiguous as to your remorse and culpability. Go back and edit/add to it, and provide us all the logic you used when making the decision to steal the bottle. Don’t fluff over the real facts.

    Like was said above, SLOG should have done much better damage control over your fuck up. You should be ashamed for not taking responsibility for your actions, and then covering them up until public furor made you crawl out of your hole.

    Once a thief, always a thief. There is a statistical probability that you will do it again. The mental deficiency that you suffer from predisposes you to doing it again and again.

    Getting a slap on the wrist and some petty public service punishment and then coming here and not disclosing the details surrounding the crime don’t bode well for your liklihood of repeat offending.

  41. On the plus side, people, let’s all give a warm round of applause to the staff that methodically “moderated” the forums in an attempt to keep things from getting to this point.

    That must have been a thankless job and, evidently, required working around the clock.

    Those moderators (could they have been unpaid interns?) deserve a bottle of something nice for their troubles and dedication to the cause.

  44. 39 If you demand such transperency in all thing slog then start using a name. It can be any name but, as long as you use a different BS joke name every time, you loss the right to complain about accountability.

    as you say “You should be ashamed for not taking responsibility for your actions”

  45. Dear Inquiring minds, please permit me to answer in defense of “dare i say indefensible?”

    As a former grocery worker of 25 plus years… a couple of things come to mind when it comes to leaving the store without a receipt.

    One of the big ones is insurance.

    Excuses, lame ass or otherwise fall under a couple of catagorical nuances from internal security memorandoms and private public corporate policy.

    One of which is…

    Never try a slip and fall accident when the night crew is aware that the power scrubber has been boosted before the sherriff shows up with a warrant.

    Another may be… in the tactless exemplification of tunnel
    vision, nuclear medicine technocrats and spoof genre alienators in cg animation metaphors leave room for imbalanced and highly personal transferrance of schedule manipulation.

    Finally… if you want to research metaphysics…

    attend the debate in Ballard on Satan coming to your “Nightline” programming soon.

    Or not.

    Just stay at home and watch the out takes instead.

    You see dear inquiring mind,

    aside fom monumental locality advertising issues with death marches and chanting and idol worshipping screaming bands of youth and plots of very small real estate holes with your possible future location to be alienated by war, oppression and way to many hormones to effectrively handle the spit before you look to the corner bus stop protection plans… oh wait a minute…

    do you have spit and hormones when your planted six feet under…?

  46. Ohhh and btw to the other SLOG writers…

    Note that in the “A Note To Our Readers” posts, almost everyone is talking about a theft they did WHEN THEY WERE KIDS

    Or are we to believe that they youthful indiscretions of Staffers is the equivalent indiscretion of a SLOG senior staffer in their 30’s?

    The half assed lame replies from the other staffers are pathetic btw

  47. Dear fudgers….

    Stealing is allowed in Baseball.Check out the rule book.

    And another thing….

    the free quart of Ice Cream you get from little complaints, whines and bitching to the front end manager at the grocery store isn’t called a gratuity, it’s called a bribe.

    Now, go home and do your homework.

  50. I attended a Tupperware party in Kent nine years ago.
    Ten years ago I read a Dean C. Koontz novel to see if he lived up to his bestseller status.
    When I was seven I took seven dollars from my aunt’s purse.

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