I used to steal from Walmart when I was in my 20s to commit return fraud

I used to work as a vendor inside of Walmart for an obsolete company back about 10 or so years ago. I took the job to get away from an extremely toxic boss. The job I took was selling a not-so-popular product inside of Walmart, and, due to the obsolescence of the product, it backfired on me.

Well, those bills started coming due. Specifically, it was my phone bill that was the most pressing. I had Cricket for my cell phone plan. I had already stripped it down to the absolute lowest I could go and still couldn’t pay it but needed it for work and to find new work. So I thought up this brilliant idea to steal small and very low value mundane things from the Walmart store I was working in. I knew electronics, cosmetics, health aides, toys and groceries would be watched by store security but not the insignificant things I was taking. I’m talking about like batteries for cordless phones that nobody really used anymore, or the two-packs of gel pens which were some of my favorites to take due to their size and relatively decent value, and other low value mundane things that I could quickly sneak up my sleeve under a shelf and out of the view of cameras. These were things that were all like $10 each or less. Every time I went on break, I’d hide the thing I got in my car and then would take another thing in the same way at the end of my shift. I would get about $15-$30 worth of mundane merchandise each day I worked.

I then returned all the merchandise back to customer service at a different Walmart without a receipt to get an in-store credit. I was able to use that in-store credit to then buy a Cricket prepaid card and my phone bill ended up paid. That was of utmost importance so that, yes, my current employer could call me, but also, more importantly, so that prospective employers could call me. So I was able to keep the scheme going and was able to use the gift cards to buy groceries and I paid one or two more cell phone bills out of it.

I was desperately trying to find a new job though because even though I was doing that out of pure necessity, I have integrity and so I certainly didn’t enjoy doing it by any means and wanted to stop the very SECOND that I could. And I did. The moment I didn’t NEED to do it anymore, I stopped and never did the act again. But I look back on that dark time and I regret it but I also kind of don’t at the same time. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do but I wasn’t doing it for pleasure. I did it to simply survive. There wasn’t much else I knew to do at the time. I didn’t think of getting a second job and gig apps weren’t really a thing even then. I was so thankful that I didn’t get caught but I know that I deserved to.

On a side note, the obsolete company I was a rep for still exists today selling the same obsolete product. They stay in business somehow.