Giles Coren admitted walking out of Sainsbury’s without paying – 14 privilege checking replies that said it best

It’s fair to say that most people who leave a supermarket without paying for their food tend to keep it a secret.

Restaurant critic Giles Coren, however, has decided to broadcast his unique approach to grocery shopping to the entire internet.

He justified his actions by basically blaming Sainsbury’s for not running their tills better. What did they expect him to do – wait?

Here’s the Tweet, with a link to Coren’s (paywalled) column.

I walked out of Sainsbury’s without paying because the self-serve tills were all down and the queue was too long. Then I went back and paid for my stuff later. Hardly shoplifting is it? If they cared when (or whether) we paid, they’d run their shops betterhttps://t.co/nazi9ZCQeE

— Giles Coren (@gilescoren) September 22, 2026

As you’d expect, eyebrows were raised.

1.

That is literally shoplifting. You can’t just steal from a shop because you can’t be bothered to wait.

Your arrogance and entitlement are off the scale.

— Misanthrope (@misanthropeyrk) September 22, 2026

2.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the theft act, it’s Giles Coren. Therefore, I’d have gladly locked him up and left him a cell for 23hrs whilst I took a statement from the shop. https://t.co/y9dD8bAsEL

— Gareth Williams. (@history99917180) September 22, 2026

3.

Apparently it’s only shoplifting if Giles Coren thinks the queue was a reasonable length. Everyone else has to pay before leaving; Giles merely has to find the experience convenient to him.

— Dawni Q 🎨 (@Dawni_Q) September 22, 2026

4.

I don’t give a shit about any of this, but am mildly done in by the concept of you, a boring motherfucker who shits out the odd stupid column every so often, having any sort of time pressure https://t.co/LKWnUH4gtr

— bard of pond (@redrichie) September 22, 2026

5.

Columnists who write pieces like this will write a different one 6 months later about seeing a kid nick a pie in greggs and how he should be legal allowed to garrote them without any sense of irony https://t.co/gKehjrgt2W

— Ross McCafferty (@RossMcCaff) September 22, 2026

6.

The problem here isn’t that Giles might have technically shoplifted. It’s that he broke the sacred British tradition of queuing. https://t.co/0hDYk9AApD

— Tomos Doran 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇮🇱🕊️ 🇵🇸 (@portraitinflesh) September 22, 2026

7.

I’m a bit busy to sign up to the paywall right now. Can you ping me a copy of the article now and I will pay later?

— James St. John Smythe (@JStJohnSmyth) September 22, 2026