You gonna pay for that steak, honey?

‘Tis the season for making chocolate-dipped biscotti and White Trash Christmas Nuggets, listening to “Christmas Portrait” by The Carpenters…and shoplifting? According to a report in Ad Week, more and more people are letting their (sticky) fingers do the shopping this year – an unbelievable 1 in 11 people walks out of a store with at least one item they haven’t paid for. The report claims 75 percent of shoplifters are adults, and that using that five-finger discount has been on the rise for the past five years due to the rocky economy.

I was also surprised to learn that the #1 most shoplifted item is …drum roll, please… filet mignon! Now I love me a good steak, but I can’t imagine sticking a couple of filets under my arm and not having my guilty-looking face or full body sweat give me away to the cashier.

Other things on the list of most purloined items? 

• Jameson whiskey (delicious with filet mignon)
•  iPhones (you think those geniuses at the Apple store would figure out how to fix that problem)
•  Gillette Mach 4 razors (these thieves must be engineering majors. I recently spent five minutes trying to wrest a pack of razor blades from a security system at my local Rite-Aid that would put Fort Knox to shame. Yes, a little swearing ensued.)
•  Axe body spray (does any guy over 12 really wear this stuff?)

I must say this list surprised me and made me a little sad. Seventy percent of shoplifters say they didn't plan to shoplift, says Barbara Staib from the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention, “but add a sense of desperation because of the economy and holiday pressures, and you have the recipe for theft soup."

So if you saw someone at your local supermarket stick a package of filet mignon under their jacket, would you report it to the store manager? Would it make a difference if the thief were a hungry-looking old lady? A nicely-dressed businessman? A kid?