Читать книгу LifeLines - Malcolm Doney - Страница 17

8

Own up

Self-service checkouts are turning us into a nation of shoplifters who steal almost £1.7 billion-worth of shopping a year: that was one newspaper’s interpretation of a report into scan-it-yourself tills, which were ‘just too tempting for one-in-five people, who admit they slip items they have not paid for into their bags’.¹

Some people never seem to do anything wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault. Footballers seem especially good at this kind of body swerve. ‘Never touched him, ref,’ they maintain, all injured innocence. ‘He dived!’

But it’s all as old as the Garden of Eden. Take Adam and Eve and the Serpent. God catches Adam and accuses him of eating the forbidden fruit, he blames Eve, and then she blames the Serpent. Unfortunately, the Serpent, being limbless, had no fingers to point at someone else.

It’s the universal story of temptation. We are just minding our own business, all innocent-like, when some devious inveigler catches us off guard and tricks us into doing the wrong thing. It wasn’t me, it was them!

But is the self-service checkout possessed by a demon who makes us pocket the yoghurt? Is that what it means when it says ‘unexpected item in the bagging area?’ If we’re offered a smartphone that’s too cheap; if we’re offered the chance to cheat on our partner; if cooking the books looks tempting – and we crumble, whose responsibility is it?

Mostly we create our own temptation. We wrestle with demons of our own making. We play the blame game only to find we’re in a lose-lose situation.

If we’re always looking for someone else to blame, we’ll never consider owning up. Holding ourselves to account. And if we never face the music ourselves, we’ll never take control of our lives.