A friend of mine has been living in Berlin for the guts of a year on tips she gets from a bar job. She’s a terrible bartender and earns fuck all, so supplements her income by shoplifting, which she’s actually very good at. Her favorite hunting ground is ALDI because there’s a wide aisle on the left side and you can just walk straight through and out the door without having to push your way past other people with shopping carts and baby strollers. Strollers are to shoplifting what stingers are to car chases.

My friend was going to tutor me in the ways of blind spots and two-way mirrors, and help me find my balls. “Just act like it’s yours and take it,” she said. I took two tins of tuna, one in each pocket of my jacket. Fish had been good to me before, I repeated to myself, and made for the wide aisle on the left and freedom.

The next day my friend went back to ALDI and got caught with a small tub of purple soap dispenser in her bag. They brought her into a back room of the store and made her wait while they called the police. She has almost zero German; the security guard had even less English. When the police turned up they drove her to her home to confirm the address and then left telling her that ALDI would decide whether to proceed with civil action within a week. Throughout the whole incident she cried so much she nearly asphyxiated and ALDI, possibly softened by her tender display, never sent her a summons. ALDI likes the ladies, it seems, and you can fuck up there safe in the knowledge that if you start to weep and you have a set of tits, you’ll get a lift home and they won’t prosecute.

Someone once told me that it’s actually more fun to steal things you don’t really need, and that the crucial rule you must abide by when shoplifting is to always keep it fun. By the time you’re depending on it as the number one means of supplying you with nourishment, you need to get on the phone to someone caring and ask for an intervention. A good test of whether shoplifting is still fun is when you get home and mostly find booze, chocolate bars, and coconut bubble bath up your sleeves.

Supermarket chain Plus has more booze and coconut bubble bath than any other supermarket in Berlin. They also have a nasty turnstile entrance and they lock off all the other register lanes that aren’t in use, so getting out without complication isn’t easy. I opted to try and steal some vodka from one of their stores. As I entered, I eyeballed the security guard, then made my way past the yoghurt, cheese, and dried meats to the wine spirits section. I picked out the bottle I wanted and grabbed it. And then put it back, made my way to the tinned food aisle, took a can of tuna and walked out the door. I will always be a pussy. But watch your tinned fish when I’m about.

CONOR CREIGHTON