Justice For The Rest Of Us

Walmart custodial worker charged with felony theft after being caught eating junk food on camera. She admits to pinching junk food off the shelves over the course of eight years. Why? She couldn’t afford the food — despite her enormous earnings of more than $11.00 per hour, well above the typical sales associate’s pay. Don’t worry: Walmart’s CEO will still earn his $35 million this year. He makes more in an hour than most of his employees make in a year. Oh, and Winters will probably do more time behind bars than anyone responsible for the Bengali sweat shop fire that killed 116 last year.

(AOL Jobs Newsletter) Winters allegedly was caught by the store’s surveillance cameras eating Oreos that she hadn’t paid for during her evening shifts at a Walmart in Portage, Ind. In response, Walmart Stores Inc. notified police and Winters was charged with felony theft, which could result in jail time for the woman described by Chicago TV station WBBM as the “Oreo Grandma.”

According to the report obtained by TheSmokingGun.com, Winters confessed to authorities that she had stolen cookies at the store in Portage, a city of 36,000 on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. And she’s reportedly conceded that she’s been eating — and not paying for — Oreos, gum and potato chips for more than eight years while working night shifts for Walmart.

According to TheSmokingGun, she told a Walmart investigator that she “simply did not have the monies to legitimately purchase the food items.”

As was reported by CBS-affiliate WBBM, Winters has been earning $11.40 an hour at Walmart — putting her above many of her colleagues at the giant retail chain, which employs about 1.4 million Americans. An incoming sales associate typically earns $8.87 an hour.

After posting bail earlier this week, Penny Winters was released from jail as her case continues.