Behold the latest titan of industry to emerge from the sprawling, sun-bleached expanse of Springfield, Texas. Giovanni Primo Blount, a nineteen-year-old whose ambition apparently exceeded his grasp of basic surveillance architecture, has been apprehended for the audacity of attempting to out-extract his employers. In a world where multinational corporations spend billions on psychological profiling to ensure you buy a ‘limited time’ burger that looks like a car upholstery accident, young Blount decided to simplify the transaction. Why bother with the complex alchemy of high-fructose corn syrup and marketing when you can just use a skimming device to double-charge the captive audience in the drive-thru lane?

Blount’s alleged scheme is a pathetic, yet poignant, microcosm of the contemporary American economy. It is a world where the ‘hustle’ has been elevated to a civic virtue, yet the actual mechanics of the hustle remain as crude as a medieval toll bridge. The kid wasn’t exactly running a sophisticated hedge fund or orchestrating a crypto-collapse that wipes out the life savings of a thousand pensioned teachers. No, he was allegedly double-tapping credit cards at a McDonald’s. It is the kind of low-stakes villainy that perfectly matches the environment in which it was conceived—a place of fluorescent lighting, stale oil, and the quiet desperation of people who believe a ‘Happy Meal’ is an achievable emotional state.

The mechanics of the crime are almost charming in their obsolescence. Using a device to clone or double-charge cards in a drive-thru is the financial equivalent of trying to rob a stagecoach while riding a Segway. We live in a panopticon. Every inch of that grease-slicked temple is under the watchful eye of cameras designed to ensure that no single nugget goes unaccounted for, yet Blount allegedly thought he could operate a localized shadow economy right under the golden arches. It is a testament to the staggering lack of imagination that defines our era. If you are going to commit a crime that risks your freedom, why do it for the price of a few extra McDoubles? It’s the sheer pettiness of the grift that offends the senses more than the illegality itself.

But let us not reserve our scorn solely for the nineteen-year-old apprentice swindler. Let us look at the victims—the good people of Springfield, Texas, who found themselves paying twice for the privilege of colonizing their own arteries. One must ask: how long did it take for them to notice? We live in a society so detached from the reality of its own commerce that we tap our plastic and phones against sensors with the mindless reflex of a lab rat pressing a lever for a pellet. We don’t look at the numbers. We don’t check the receipts. We just want the bag of salt and the cardboard box so we can return to our climate-controlled isolation. Blount’s alleged crime relied entirely on the somnambulant state of the American consumer, a population so over-leveraged and distracted that a double-charge for a Quarter Pounder is just another statistical anomaly in a life defined by debt.

Then there is the corporation itself. McDonald’s will undoubtedly issue the standard PR slurry about 'individual franchises' and 'unwavering commitment to customer security.' It’s the same script they use whenever a franchise owner is caught violating labor laws or when the ice cream machine—the only honest employee in the building—refuses to work. They pretend this is an isolated incident, a rogue actor in an otherwise pristine system. In reality, the entire fast-food industry is a skimming operation. They skim nutrition from the food, they skim dignity from the workers, and they skim time from the lives of everyone involved. Blount was just allegedly trying to cut out the middleman and apply the corporate philosophy to his own pocketbook. He saw a system built on extraction and decided to extract. It’s the American Dream, just stripped of its expensive suits and political lobbyists.

Now, Giovanni Primo Blount faces the legal machinery of the state of Texas. He will be processed, poked, and eventually discarded by a justice system that has no patience for small-time thieves who don’t have the decency to launder their thefts through a Super PAC or a tech startup. While the architects of global financial collapses receive bonuses and government bailouts, the kid from the drive-thru gets a mugshot and a permanent record. It is not that I have sympathy for him—the stupidity of his methods deserves its own form of punishment—but rather that I find the entire spectacle exhausting. We are a species of grifters, from the bottom to the top, and the only thing that changes is the quality of the polyester we wear while we do it. Springfield can sleep soundly tonight knowing that its credit card data is safe from the fry-cook, even as the rest of the world continues to pick their pockets in ways they aren’t nearly smart enough to notice.