i stole so much food from the store where i worked that it cost me a job opportunity

I worked at a grocery store for 9 years, i went from a cart pusher to a stocker to an overnight stocker. during this time i would eat and steal so much food from the produce department. one day they switched management and the new manger really wanted to promote me to the deli. i was on cloud 9 and very excited. they then pulled my incident reports and saw that i had so many random write ups for random bulls**t. i tried explaining to them that the last manager hated me and would always write me up so i couldnt get a raise. he didnt believe me and because of that i lost the opportunity to work in the deli