I'm a criminal--lock me up and throw away the key. There's no turning back now--once you break the law, your fate is sealed. Put me up there with Charles Manson, Al Capone, and Martha Stewart. I'm a bad seed. A rebel without a cause. A burden on society.

Like many criminals, it started with a visit to the grocery store to buy some milk. This was supposed to be a quick trip (The Girlfriend was outside waiting in the getaway car) and not my foray into a life of crime. I grabbed two gallons of low-fat and headed to the checkout.

It seems like more and more grocery stores are adopting self-checkout lanes. While I'm not a fan of them (I hate putting cashiers out of work), I frequently uses them if there are lines elsewhere (I hate waiting in line more than I hate putting cashiers out of work).

So there I was, at the self-checkout. I scanned one gallon of mile, then the other. I ran my credit card through the machine and approved the total. While the computer was processing my sale, it dawned on me that the total seemed low.

I probably didn't read it correctly, I told myself. After all, the self-checkout lanes implement numerous antitheft precautions--the primary being a scale for your purchased items. As far as I can tell, the computer knows how much your purchases are supposed to weigh. If the scales tip higher than they should, the computer flags you because you probably have something in there that wasn't scanned. I know this because I've been flagged numerous times for tossing the grocery store ad or my cell phone on the shelf. The computer flags me and usually I gotta get a cashier to inspect my purchase. But since the computer didn't go nuts, I assumed I was incorrect and mistaken about the total.

When my purchase was approved, I grabbed my milk and headed out to the car. The Girlfriend was waiting for me out front, so it wasn't until I hopped into the vehicle when I checked my receipt. Sure enough, there was an error. Somehow the computer must've missed one of my scans of milk. Or maybe it thought there was a duplicate because two gallons were purchased. Whatever the case, the scales clearly failed because I was only charged for a single gallon of milk.

"Drive! Drive! Drive," I screamed at The Girlfriend. If this was gonna be a heist, I certainly didn't wanna stick around the scene of the crime.

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