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On today’s episode of “I wasn’t going to, but now that you mention it, that’s a great idea!”
I’d never considered this. Thanks for the idea, sign!
Ex-retail worker here that spent a lot of time in aisles, counting inventory, etc.
Steal whatever you want; I don’t care. Not my job to look after that shit and I wasn’t paid enough for it anyway.
Former retail worker here.
I was never paid enough to care about shit other than directly keeping my job. So, you know, look busy when the boss was around.
I had to stop people from stealing big shit, like TVs and such.
A hungry looking kid grabbing some food to eat in an aisle and leave the trash? Just throw the trash away please, I’m not your fucking maid.
Former bigbox manager here. The garden section is throwaway, no one gives a shit about plants. Come to me when garden tools and lawnmowers are missing.
Bad inventory practices are the leading causes of shrink. Any actual theft is securities problem.
This is likely to prevent people from cutting the plants and later saying they picked up a fallen bit.
Yup, I doubt they actually care about people picking stuff off the floor.
The boots-on-the-ground staff absolutely does not give af. It’s definitely middle management that’s being bitched at by higher-ups that are scared of losing a fraction of a penny.
Source: middle management that gets bitched at by higher-ups that never set foot on the property.
I don’t even think management cares about actually picking up stuff from the floor, they want to stop people cutting off parts of plants and claiming they’re taken from the floor.
Funny, I’m actually more inclined to do it now.
Just do it at places like Home Depot or Lowe’s. Don’t do it at your neighborhood garden center.
Why? It’s not like you’re costing the shop money by taking trash off the floor. If anything you’re more likely to spend money at the shop you do it at for supplies and such.
Yes, you are. The people who do this would otherwise be buying plants. Not all of the plants that they pilfer because that would be expensive, but this is lost sales. I know these people. They’re doing it to save money because they want the plant.
What I mean is once you’ve made the decision to do this instead of buying, it doesn’t matter which shop you don’t buy from.
Yes! Gate life behind money.
You are doing well, my child! Bwahaha!
Pinching off a leaf seems icky, but fallen leaves are fair game.
You sound like you steal from the forest. Abhorrent thief.
AbhorrentArbor-ent thief.This comment is an aberration.
abberrationarbor-ationI suspect you called me out to do this by your choice of words. I appreciate it.
You are correct, friend, and you are welcome.
Don’t think mulch about it
I’m not the most familiar with entkind, but are there non arbor ent? Are the entwives something else? Cacti?
I usually take the floor leaves and tuck them into a plant or two I actually buy. That way I’m still paying for something and I might get some freebies if I can get the extra leaves to grow but it’s not guaranteed. I probably wouldn’t do this at a local store tho, just the big box stores.
bUt tHE MuLCh
(this is a non-argument unless people are taking literally every other leaf)
I’m pinching off a leaf right now.
fallen leaves are fair game
I don’t think it works like that. It’s like taking something that’s dropped but usable from the shop floor. They might just sweep it to garbage but they probably aren’t allowing you to take it anyway.
Depending on the shop, they might also be picking up and propagating fallen leaves as well.
That’s true
half of my succulents at home are from leaves that have fallen off in stores. sue me.
Download in progress
I’ve reported you to the FBI
I know you did
I wasn’t thinking about it before, but I’m thinking about it now.
Already done it.
Is it a crime to enjoy a succulent leaf?
This is democracy manifest.
This gentleman touched my fruits!
I see you know your topiary well.
Are you waiting to receive my wilted branch?
Without a subscription? Yes.
YOU’RE STEALING OUR TRASH! REEEEEEEEE!
If you clip a healthy plant without asking the owner first, you’re a dick. But if I see you do it at a store, no I didn’t. Cause the store made $2,550,000 while I was typing this.
Are we talking about the 450 square meter store that looks like an industrial warehouse, or the 12 square meter handcrafted-everything boutique?
Cause if it’s the former, I didn’t see you shoplift a whole ass plant and if it’s the latter and I see you clip the tiniest part of a plant, I’m calling you out loudly.
It’s a dick move to pinch leaves if for no other reason that someone else may want to buy that plant, and you’re damaging it. Enough people do it, it’s a dead plant.
Leaves fallen to the floor? Boutique or not, fair game. If you’re willing to propagate from a leaf, you’re probably not going to be buying whole plants anyway, and it doesn’t hurt the store.
Imagine going to the hardware store and someone calls it a fucking “boutique”. It’s just Ace Hardware, calm down. Robert, the guy with the nose ring over there, didn’t really craft that screwdriver by hand, either. Fuckin’ liar. Yeah I’m talking about you, the fuck you gonna do about it? Next time I see you explaining how you ‘create lightbulbs with love’, I’m lighting your car on fire. Don’t think I won’t!
Anyway, what were we - oh yeah. Ace Hardware. Now impeccably posh, I guess.
Imagine going to the hardware store and someone calls it a fucking “boutique”.
No one ever did that, they’re talking about a garden center you know where you get plants a hardware store is where you get bits of wood, some spare drain pipe and fork handles.
Yeah. Also I explained it in another comment, but in my country there’s usually two types of places where you can get flowers. Large flower or hardware stores for one, but then the rest are tiny oases of beauty where the owner is also the person selling you the flowers, and have their own handcrafted items for decoration and/or sale, like vases, baskets, etc.
That’s like the farthest thing from a hardware store, even if hardware stores do indeed also sell flowers. But I guess there are places in the world where beautiful small family businesses don’t exist so all you get is Walmart and Ace Hardware and then you think all businesses are giant faceless corporations.
Yeah, we have those in the US too. Not sure why that other commenter seems to think Ace Hardware is the smallest business that sells plants, there are plenty of small nurseries in every state.
Maybe they just live in a really bleak and lifeless small town or something and don’t really explore to find the cool places.
Or a large city… I think you’re actually more likely to find these stores in rural areas.
At many places near me, they are a department in the hardware store (big and small).
Trust me. Don’t take cuttings from the boutique flower shop.
Thank you for sharing this bit of culture.
I’m sure this is hysterical. I wish I could understand what they were saying lol
It’s a classic. One of the Two Ronnies’ best. The original hand-written script went for £40,000 at auction.
What Ace hardware? We don’t have those in my country.
There’s exactly two types of flower stores I see around here. The gigantic chains where everything is sterile and the tiny boutiques where either the owner is the only employee, or maybe they have like 1-2 extra employees so they can stay open more than 5x8 and actually take vacations. And yeah, some hardware stores also have flowers, but I’d categorize those together with the former.
Ace is a small form store in the states, typically the size of a modest house or smaller, that sells home improvement stuff. As opposed to mega big-box places that you can get lost in.
I mean if you’re pinching a leaf then that’s not in the dubious territory, that’s just straight up stealing. And it’s not like someone is stealing fucking plant leaves to stave off starvation lol
My father enjoys grafting plants, he has an apple tree with 15 types of apples on it. Come to find out he’s been snipping tiny branches off apple trees at Home Depot…
I like that. Good for him.
That’s awesome.
Honestly, grafting plants is like fucking alchemy in my mind. That shit is crazy.
Tissue culture protocols are basically modern druidic alchemy.
I honestly wonder if I went to an orchard if they would be able to give me a price to let me just graft their different trees. I don’t want to wait 7+ years for many fruit trees. Grafted trees from what I’ve seen can often produce fruit in 2-3 years
I recently moved and plan to buy a bunch of cheap apple plants from a big store and get them rooted this year. Then next spring take all the choice varieties from my father/childhood and graft them into the plants for my kids :)
That’s dope, and great parenting. I’ve always been enamored with apple trees and plants in general. But I love apples. Those newish cosmic crisp apples? I’ll eat those until I get sick 🤣
If anybody wants a good cosmic horror book about apples trees and their strange fruits I can wholly recommend Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig. It was a strange, interesting ride.
They might sell you something, but those branches took a lot of time and care to grow and mean profit for the farmer. You may be able to find an abandoned farm or a group of people who are preserving apple varieties to go branches from.
It’s not theft, it’s basically dumpster diving for living things. Living things that can grow in dirt with some water. They just see lost profit not an actual product loss.
I’ll say if this is a family run place - it’s still a dick move. If it’s Lowes, Home Depot, or Menards, eh who cares.
If it’s a family run place, just ask the owners tbh. My partner and I once asked about a fallen tradescantia piece and she actually cut us off a bigger piece and wrapped it up for us. Only thing she asked in return was for us to tell her how well it does.
It’s a big plant now :)
Depends. If you weren’t going to buy it anyway, it doesn’t cost them anything. And if you’re grabbing a fallen leaf hoping for something, it seems like you aren’t all that interested anyway.
Just to add some context, succulents are ridiculously easy to propagate from a fallen leaf. You literally just put them somewhere until they sprout roots and stick that in a pot. Takes a week, two max. That said, succulents also take years to mature. Your little sprouted leaf is going to stay small for about 2 years and by 4 or 5 it’ll look decent. So it may be “theft”, but by the time you’ve gotten a plant that’s on par with the one you got a leaf from, years will have passed and you’ll have likely spent money on pots, soil, and fertilizer from the same store you “stole” from. It’s like pinching a small bottle of paint from a craft store then turning around and spending $100 on canvasses and brushes
scribbling notes
so what you’re saying is I need to steal leaves and also paint brushes and art supplies, got it
If you weren’t going to buy it anyway
That can get into rationalization territory.
I only know about Menards because of random factoids, references, and memes. Frankly speaking I have just found out they have plants and are maybe a hardware store.
They’re like a hardware store that has plants, couches, mattresses, food, all sorts of stuff. It’s wild.
So a a big box general store? Of fucking couse the midwest would create such a thing.
Yeah, it’s like a Walmart mixed with a Home Depot mixed with a Sears.
Nah, you’re getting a leaf, not a full plant. A leaf is fucking worthless. If the leaves had value, they would sell them.
Pretty sure some people believe that dumpster diving is theft too
They just see lost profit not an actual product loss.
so it’s just like pirating movies
Not really. When you pirate a movie you get the whole thing. Just as if you paid for it.
A succulent leaf, however, needs years to become the size of an actual plant they would sell.
It’s even less damaging than pirating.
need years
so it’s the same torrenting a movie in 4K that has only a single seeder and their connection is really poor
Damn, you have reminded me that Project 4k80 is finally done, but I have yet to acquire it…
deleted by creator
It’s not theft, it’s basically dumpster diving for living things.
That’s often not allowed either
Yes it is. We’re encouraged to find any puppies, kittens, or babies in the trash.
If I want to steal from you I will. You can try guilting me all you want but I just don’t care.
