My mother-in-law is the head nurse for elderly care, making her tired and stressed out, more than usual recently.
Today she went shopping by herself to buy the family dinner at Aeon Mall. After paying for her shopping and going to pack the groceries, she noticed that there was a snack for the babies underneath her bag and immediately went back to pay.
The manager then came out and accused her of stealing and called the police which they came and took her to the station. As I do not speak Japanese, my wife went to pick up her mum and I stayed to take care of our 2 kids.
My wife called me from the car on the way back, explaining what happened and how the manager called the police because my MIL did not confess to stealing and was left with only a warning. This really pissed me off, but what set me off even more is that my wife had to get fingerprinted just for picking up her mother?
Is this normal? And i know there’s probably little to nothing that I can do, but what am I able to do about this?
My MIL is still crying and apologising to us and our two toddlers. She’s also said that she is now paranoid to go shopping alone, so if there’s even the slightest thing i can do about this to comfort her even a little, I will do it.
Sorry for the long post! I’m quite worked up about this
10 comments
Interestingly enough, someone posted almost exactly the same story a couple of months back except that the scene of the crime was a konbini and the accused thief was a child.
Edit: Now that I think about it, the scene of the crime in the other story may have been a stationary store.
Edit: BTW, every comment I post in this sub gets a downvote as soon as it’s posted. Who is doing that?
Hate to be the asshole but……
How would she have reacted if it happened to you? Sounds like she’s apologizing so much because she’d tear you a new one/judge you if it happened.
I probably wouldn’t comfort her and just keep it in the bank for if she ever tries getting fresh.
Yes this happens.
So my friends came to Japan for snowboarding a few years back, we went to a hardware store on the way to Nagano to buy a screen scraper for the windscreen to get ice off after the snow falls.
Anyway, the hardware store had an outdoor register and an inside register, however, they walked outside as they wanted to look at something else and were planning to pay at the outside register.
However a store clerk saw them leave the store before paying (apprently this item had to be paid for inside), had a panic attack and called the police thinking they were stealing, meanwhile we kept doing a bit of shopping, looking around outside having fun, the police came and arrested them.
It took a lot of explaining to do and they received a stern warning, were forced to pay for the item etc.
I honestly think what happened to your mother-in-law is *completely* ridiculous, but this is how it is here.
Cops and store managers can’t deduce the fact that someone who already slipped past the registers undetected with an unpaid product and could have just walked away with it for free BUT came back to pay probably isn’t trying to steal?
Right……
This is exactly why in Japan you can’t do the right thing. Something similar happened to me I was shopping with my toddler (this was several years ago) and at some point she got ahold of a small toy and I didn’t notice. Once we were out of the store I saw it. I explained to her why it was wrong to take it and I made her leave it in the bathroom at the mall cause especially as a gaijin I was worried what they would do so I made her leave it and I just quietly took her home.
>As I do not speak Japanese
>but what am I able to do about this?
For starters you could learn the language of the country you live in and are raising two kids in.
Even aside from the current situation, there will always be situations were you need to communicate in japanese.
how come so many ppl go back and apologize ? I just go back and pay or leave it somewhere. Never had problems. Once I even got to the parking with only cola in my hand. No bag. Went back and paid.
Things outside the ordinary don’t compute for these NPCs, so on discovery of a mistake that was never caught… it’s best to just carry on than admit the mistake. Doing so will almost always end in more trouble.
It is not the first time to read about trying to come back to pay/return something unexpectedly taken and the store manager calling police.
Most Japanese people work by manuals. And it seems that they have a manual “if you find that someone took something without paying… call the police”. Which is what happened. Their manual did not include the clause about the person coming back to pay and being forgetful.
Now, speaking of police, they will use lies and psychological violence to extort a confession, no matter if you did it or you did not. Unless they have a good evidence of something being stolen, they cannot arrest you unless you confess.
Therefore, here are the two advices:
1. If you find that your kid took something from the store and you did not notice, that you forgot to pay for something, etc, etc. NEVER go back to the store to apologise. If you feel uneasy, throw it away. Or just walk in and pay without saying anything.
2. If you did go back to the store and police is pressing on you, do not confess in what you did not do. They will NOT arrest you if you did not do a crime and did not confess.
I hope this helps.
When I went grocery shopping I once noticed that the number of items displayed at the self-pay-register looked less than what I’ve purchased even though I got the beep and the announcement for every single item scanned.
Having lots of people behind me, I paid and went to pack it up but when I checked the receipt I noticed one item was missing, so I went back and paid for it without bothering telling anyone.
If you went to the self-register there’s a chance it may have not worked properly.