As a child, I was amazed by my parents’ store, especially the cash register. I loved pressing its gray-green buttons and hearing the clicks and beeps of business being transacted. Whenever I held change in my pre-pubescent hands, I felt as if I could do anything in the world. I couldn’t wait ’til I was old enough to check out customers myself.

Now I work behind the cash register every weekend, and even more during the summer. However, my feelings about the store have drastically changed. I no longer look forward to pressing the register buttons and handing back receipts. The truth is that standing behind a register is extremely tedious. Because I work so often, I have a lot less free time than my friends.

But although I have my complaints about working in my parents’ store, I don’t usually voice them, because I can see how much they need my help. Even though I sometimes resent it, I know that the store has supported my family for all these years. I’ve always known that the money I organize in the cash register is the money that pays for my textbooks, my fencing lessons, and all the small, necessary things that make my childhood what it is. 

That’s why I get so upset when I see people stealing – and I see it all the time. Every time someone pockets something, my family loses money. Our store doesn’t have an alarm system, so we have to monitor customers ourselves. The thefts I’ve witnessed ranged from a little girl stealing a couple of rings to a grown man running off with a backpack filled with merchandise. Most of the time, it’s just someone stuffing one or two items into their pockets. We usually catch shoplifters through our security cameras or by noticing their suspicious behavior. When my mom or dad confronts a thief, they usually just tell him or her to pay for the stolen items and not to come back to our store.

Over the years I’ve thought a lot about why people shoplift. Because I’ve worked at the store my whole life, I have an innate aversion to stealing. If I ever did happen to steal, I’d feel guilty and ashamed to look at my own reflection. For that reason, knowing that someone is perfectly fine with stealing is unnerving to me. If they’re okay with stealing, then how do I know where they draw the line with other moral issues? How do I know what else they’re capable of?

As I ring up one customer after another, I automatically look them over to see if they look guilty or uncomfortable. This isn’t just paranoia; it’s common for people who are stealing something big to purchase something small as means of deflecting attention and gaining a shopkeeper’s trust. But even as I look at these strangers with suspicion, I can’t help but wonder who they really are.

Paradoxically, when I was a child, I wasn’t allowed to work the cash register because I was too naive to be suspicious of friendly strangers. Now that I’m older and more cynical, I make a great cashier – better than either of my brothers – but my enthusiasm for helping customers disappeared when I learned to distrust them.

Sometimes I hate how the store has made me so suspicious of people. After all, despite the fact that I resent shoplifters, I know they’re still human beings. There are even types of shoplifting that I don’t think are necessarily wrong. Back when that little girl stole those rings, I forgave her because I knew that she was so young that she probably didn’t think her actions through. I could tell that she was still learning about moral values.

I might also exculpate a mentally handicapped or mentally ill person. Sometimes a shoplifter isn’t fully self-aware or hasn’t been taught not to steal, and can’t be held fully responsible for their actions. I still ask those people to give the items back, but I don’t blame them for their mistakes.

Another thing I think about is need. Let’s say a homeless man snatched a sandwich from our store. (We don’t actually sell sandwiches, but if we did, I’m sure that would happen.) That man has a greater material need for the food than we have for profit. So even though it would cost us the price of a sandwich, I would forgive him for stealing because I understand his desperation for food. It’s hard to condemn someone for taking something when his need is so much greater than ours.

Part of the difficulty of dealing with customers is that you can’t tell these things just by looking at a person, no matter how long you work the register. I can’t be sure how badly a scruffy-looking man needs a sandwich unless I ask – and even then, he might be too embarrassed to admit the truth. So how can I make judgments about who to confront and how to treat them?

Another problem is that even the concept of need is subjective. I’m sentimental, and to me, emotional needs can be as pressing as physical ones. For example, if a penniless boy stole a rose to give a girl he loved, I would be sympathetic because he had a great emotional need for something that wasn’t very expensive to us. But I know my mother would roll her eyes at that one. So how can we create a code of ethics around something that is as controversial as weighing someone’s needs against our own?

Working the cash register has forced me to question things I took for granted as a child: the line between right and wrong, and how to evaluate the people around me. I’ve learned some things I didn’t want to know. But I’ve also learned to define my own values, to use my experiences to assess the world. As much as I complain, without the store, I would be a completely different person.

Working the register isn’t fun – not the way I imagined when I was younger – but it’s given me something as invaluable as the magic I felt when I touched the gray-green keys as a child: a perspective of my own. I probably won’t become a cashier when I grow up, but I’m grateful to have had the experience.

My fantasies about adult life, working in the store, and other people have been shattered, but in the end, they were just fantasies. Now, when I feel like I can do anything, it’s not because of the totemic power of a cash register, but because of something much more solid: my experiences and what they’ve taught me. That’s the kind of thing you can’t buy or steal; you have to work for it.