> I think the author's point about stealing has more to do with the way low-wage workers are assumed to be criminals by their employers, and have to deal with various invasive security measures their employer requires.
Assuming that all low-wage workers are criminals is obviously bad, from a "fellow human being" point of view. And yet, the author describes stealing $350 headphones in the last lines of the article because their employer trusted them to return equipment without any oversight. Honestly not sure what point they were trying to get across by leaving that in.
Because it's the kind of thing high-salary workers do often without even considering it stealing. The headphones are used. If someone has a bougie enough job, they probably expect not to be assigned used headphones, and they don't think through whether the company would be selling them on because they certainly wouldn't bother in their own life. Alternately, there is a mindset of "oh, well, it'd be more money to clean them than they're worth at this point, they're just going to throw them out" (mentally estimating from the effort at the rate that that person is paid, not at the rate earned by the person who'd get stuck with the cleaning). Personally, I've seen people do this in ways I find shocking. The author is pointing out that she has also been affected by her environment, that she also has changed to act in ways she would have found unbelievable prior. I don't think it's trying to say "look I've advanced to act like these people".
IME employee "shrinkage" has less to do with opportunity (remember, employees know the security posture of their workplace; if the public has access, engineering around them is not difficult), and more to do with motive. That is, shrinkage increases when employees are underpaid and disrespected. As is common everywhere, observation of arbitrary rules is down to the push-pull of saving face vs survival. So the issue is not the purported exceptional criminality of low-wage workers, but the low wage itself.
The aforementioned security posture is also often misaligned. I've worked at a warehouse where the only things that could be stolen are fill hoses and washing machines. Clearly, no one was walking out with anything of significance, but we still had to empty our pockets and step through a metal detector every time we hit the floor. Meanwhile, thousands of dollars of easily-pocketable personal electronics disappeared from another warehouse; no metal detector.
Assuming that all low-wage workers are criminals is obviously bad, from a "fellow human being" point of view. And yet, the author describes stealing $350 headphones in the last lines of the article because their employer trusted them to return equipment without any oversight. Honestly not sure what point they were trying to get across by leaving that in.