thieving is mean

Let me tell you a sad tale… The tale of when someone stole money from my market stall the other weekend.

I thought my cash was in a pretty safe spot; in a cash tin, hidden inside a big timber box at the back of my stall, right next to me. Unfortunately anyone watching me would have seen me going back and forth from it, and would have worked out exactly where it was.

This person, waited until a very very busy time, Mr You had gone off to get us some lunch so I was on my own. The stall got very very busy at one point, and obviously when I was distracted showing someone something, the thief squeezed up the side of my stall, reached around inside the box, into my cash tin, and stole a big handful of notes.

I noticed it was missing right away. My heart sank. My face got hot. My body went limp. My head spun with dizziness.

With a big crowd of people in front of me I announced, "Someone has just stolen money from me. Did anyone see anything?"

The people in front of me all froze and went deadly silent, then murmurs of "That's awful", "What can we do?", "Who was it?", "How long ago?", some dashed off to tell the market organisers.

I felt so embarrassed, so upset. Once I realised there was really nothing I could do (barring locking-down the whole building and demanding to see inside every single persons pockets), I apologised to the concerned faces in front of me, and decided to just put on a smile and carry on. But first I grabbed my money tin and stood on it, where it remained for the rest of the day.

Everyone was so nice to me about it, so concerned, and I could see they felt as helpless as I did.

It was only later on that I realised that it was most likely someone still standing in the crowd in front of me, giving me their sympathy, who would have done it. It was that quick.

I can't be sure exactly how much they scored, but I know it was somewhere between $200-$400. At least they didn't take the entire lot, I am thankful that, and at least they left me with some change so I could carry on the rest of the day.

Still…

It really really sucks…

This person obviously assumed that because I was at the market I could afford to lose that money. Little do they know this is far from the case. Starting from scratch it costs me a LOT of my own money to get to an event like that (we're talking thousands, not hundreds); with the stall fees, insurance, travel, accommodation, and all the materials I have to buy to have enough to stock a stall. The money I make at the market goes towards paying off that debt (and it IS debt), but I rely on what opportunities come next to pay off the rest and perhaps make a bit of profit.

It's a jolly hard game. It's a gamble.

By the end of the day I had told some other stall holders and they were SO nice to me. No-body could believe that someone could be so low as to steal from a hand-made market. I certainly learnt my lesson.

By the end, my stall neighbour and I were joking about the gigantic, humungous, mammoth amount of bad karma that person has coming to them… Not only stealing from an artist (who was hungry for lunch at the time)… but a PREGNANT ARTIST!!!!

MAN! When karma catches up, that's gonna hurt them so much more than it hurt me.

And while I could never willingly wish harm on anyone, I must admit this does satisfy me just a sneaky little tiny tad. ;)