I have been stealing from my workplace for months and I regret it deeply
I am posting this because I cannot keep pretending it is not happening.
I work at a small independent grocery store. Family owned, been in the neighborhood for decades, the kind of place where the owner knows every regular customer by name. I have worked there for about two years and up until eight months ago I had never taken anything that was not mine.
It started small. A chocolate bar I did not scan. I told myself it was a one time thing and that I would make up for it somehow. I did not.
Over the next few months it grew. I started slipping things into my bag during closing shifts when I was alone. Nothing enormous, just food mostly, snacks, ingredients, things I told myself I needed and could not really afford that week. Then it became a habit. I stopped justifying it to myself and just did it. At some point I stopped thinking about it as stealing and started thinking about it as a quiet arrangement I had made with no one.
Last week the owner mentioned casually during my shift that inventory losses had been higher than usual lately and that he was trying to figure out where it was coming from. He was not accusing anyone. He was just thinking out loud, the way he does. He looked tired and genuinely worried.
I went home that night and could not sleep.
This man has never been anything but decent to me. He covered my shifts when I was sick without docking my pay. He gave me a bonus last Christmas that he did not have to give. He runs a tight operation and every loss comes directly out of something he worked for.
I have been stealing from someone who trusted me and treated me well and there is no version of that I can justify. I am genuinely ashamed of myself in a way that has been hard to sit with.
I have not confessed to him yet and I do not know if I will. I am scared of losing my job and I am scared of how he will look at me. But I also know that staying quiet while he tries to track down losses I caused is its own kind of ongoing dishonesty.
I do not know what I am going to do. But I know what I did and I know it was wrong and I am sorry for it.