Warning: thieves and pickpockets operate at this station
The other night I was waiting for a train (Circle line from Notting Hill Gate to South Kensington), when I happened upon a moral dilemna. AH!
Initially I thought that an old man was buying some candy from a Cadbury Egg machine (each Tube station in London has several of these chocolate egg-dispensing machines on every platform). After further inspection, I noticed that he was prodding the coin and change slots with a kitchen knife. Eventually all the change was released, which he collected in his pockets before walking to the next machine.
I didn't do anything to prevent this from happening, or happening a second and then third time, and now I'm trying to determine whether I should have. These were the variables that went through my mind at the time:
(1) He was old.
(2) Cities are unforgiving and expensive.
(3) He looked ashamed of what he was doing, so, despite the knife,
(4) he was harmless.
(5) But still, he was stealing.
(6) Then again, he was stealing from a huge conglomerate (pun intended)
(7) that makes chocolate,
(8) which makes people fat and sugar-dependant.
(9) And even aside from the fact that Cadbury profits from the collectively poor diet of the developed world and exploits the fact that people these days have no self-restraint when it comes to sweets, Cadbury is a massive corporation which means they are
(10) evil.
Not really all that compelling when I read this again. I probably should've just given him a few quid or taken him to dinner. I'm surprised I'm actually writing a whole post about this. I think it stuck with me because I remembered a case study that said that Cadbury was a peer to Wrigley, which surprised me. I thought they just made eggs but apparently they're pretty enormous. Also most Americans think that Hershey would be the premier globally-recognized brand when it comes to chocolate, but in fact they are not well known outside of the U.S. Anywhere else in the world, if you're eating chocolate, you're eating Cadbury.
I also don't like chocolate.
3 comments:
I was that old man. I'm also your father.
That's pretty impressive that an old man knows exactly how to trip the coin release mechanism with a knife. I wonder how long it took him to figure that one out? I think I would have felt bad for him if I would have seen him get arrested.
P.S. I like the blog Eric. It's good to see you're doing well on the other side of the pond.
you didnt do anything to stop it because your a coward that talks alot of high and mighty BS but you dont have the balls to do the right thing. Stealing is stealing if the old man was hungry why didnt you offer to feed him?
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