# Have you ever had to deal with this? \[client materials stolen at office\] **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 15, 2015, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506 "2015-12-15T05:59:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/21 "2015-12-15T22:43:15Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Unless this men’s room is a single room with an unenclosed toilet you can easily put camera(s) watching the door and public areas, and other(s) at a low level watching the entire floor. So you’ll see the back of anybody using a urinal and the shoes of anybody in a stall. And the face of anybody coming in or out. I should specify that this man’s work has, as far as I know, been confined to the inside of a stall, on the back of the toilet, the floor, etc. Your points are well-taken, but I think a camera would have to be awfully intrusive to discover anything useful. I’m not management anyway, and as far as I can tell, the plan is to wait for him to lose interest. > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > You’re going to get fired anyway when you get caught. I should mention that I work for the government. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/22 "2015-12-16T03:06:36Z")
> [@Asimovian](#): > > I edited the title to (hopefully) add more description. **guestchaz** , for now I think this makes more sense in IMHO than MPSIMS. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/23 "2015-12-16T03:42:50Z")
> [@SpyOne](#): > > 1. Cameras. How does your warehouse not have cameras? At some point a bunch of boxes for that hotel remodel were brought in, and you should be able to see every time anyone went near those boxes, or at least the room they were in, until the hotel guys came to remove them. > A cheap system from Sam’s Club will give you 16 cameras to cover public areas. More money gets more cameras or better cameras or both. > In my (limited) experience with surveillance camera systems, I have found the following features to be super helpful: > a) every spot covered by at least 2 cameras. Cameras at both ends of a hall, so if someone turns away from one camera, the other camera can see what they are doing. > b) it only records when something moves in its field of view (plus a few seconds). This will save you from watching hours of nothing happening to find the one time somebody went near that door (or whatever). Some high-end systems will let you define an area of the screen and then scan for something moving in that area, which is much the same thing. > c) a search that will let you look at the first frame from every hour of the day, every minute of an hour, and every second of a minute. VERY helpful for trying to find exactly when something changed (like, “When was that bottle taken off that shelf?” or “How long has that car been parked there?”). > > This may be locking the barn door after the horse escapes, but there will be other horses. (That is, installing a camera system won’t help you figure out who took what has already been stolen, but it will help deter thieves in the future and catch the ones it doesn’t deter.) actually yes, there are cameras on all the warehouses and the gate to the yard, the offices etc. Well, for the warehouses, there are cameras on the docks, sigh, each of the warehouses has several overhead doors without cameras though. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/24 "2015-12-16T05:31:37Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > A friend caught a thieving employee using cameras. The employee was a model worker, always hustling and finding something to do during lulls. Turns out he was slipping stuff into the garbage, then taking bags out to the dumpster. He returned after hours and dumpster-dove. That’s like the oldest trick in the book. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/25 "2015-12-16T08:18:01Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > My office is not dealing with theft, but rather a different affront to the community. Someone has been repeatedly crapping in inappropriate spots in the men’s room on one of our floors. It sounds comical, but it’s an indignity to the cleaning people and something of a mild horror to anyone who encounters it, and it’s a really anti-social statement. > > The first time it happened, we preferred to think it must have been some visitor, like a bike messenger. Now, of course, we’ve realized that it has to be an inside job, and that’s a bit dispiriting. > > Cameras are out of the question, of course. My office has just dealt with almost the identical situation, except that it has been the ladies’ room, and I don’t _think_ the mess has been quite as severe as what you describe - more of a very messy, smeary, lack-of-adequate flushing, shit on the toilet seat sort of thing. (I’ve had the good fortune never to come upon the mess myself because I usually work from home in the afternoon and that is when the deed was being done.) The whole office was in a complete uproar. Everyone knew who it was, eventually, because the guard’s station is right next to the toilets, and people started asking the guards, “who was the last person in the bathroom?” Gossip travels fast. My poor boss was beside himself. The ladies in the office were all up in arms and saying it was too sickening to come to work. Repeated entreaties to all, reminding people to flush and keep the facilities neat and clean, did nothing to stop the situation. But finally one day it mysteriously stopped. I know that one option under consideration was to confront the guilty party and tell her that there was proof it was her (via logs kept by the guards) and that she would be fired if it happened again. My boss had been hesitant to try that strategy because it would make working with the person so awkward afterward. However, another employee had volunteered to be the one to do it. It’s all been kept quite hush-hush out of respect for privacy, but my guess is that this tactic was eventually used and it worked. When my boss and I were brainstorming about what to do, I noted that the problem seemed like the product of someone with real issues, and that any intervention that stopped the poop problem would probably ultimately result in a new problem popping up somewhere else. It’s been a week or two and so far my prediction has not come to pass. I hope I’m wrong, but I won’t be surprised if in the long run I’m right. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/26 "2015-12-16T12:58:21Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > …It’s been a week or two and so far my prediction has not come to pass. I hope I’m wrong, but I won’t be surprised if in the long run I’m right. Awesome post. Has anyone thought to check the ceiling in there yet? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/27 "2015-12-16T13:01:40Z")
Maybe she’s defileing her home commode. “No, dear. Wasn’t me.” ---
**Author:** ![SpyOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SpyOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpyOne)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/28 "2015-12-17T14:12:33Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Cameras are out of the question, of course. Not entirely. A camera outside that clearly shows people as they enter and exit will be very helpful. When someone discovers the … little gift in the men’s room, you can check the video to see who has been in there today. (It was probably the last person to exit, but you can’t really prove it. But you can narrow the window it could have happened in. The beauty is that you don’t really care if you catch the culprit: you just want him to stop. Just installing the camera will probably accomplish that. ---
**Author:** ![SpyOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SpyOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpyOne)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2015, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/29 "2015-12-17T14:21:56Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > actually yes, there are cameras on all the warehouses and the gate to the yard, the offices etc. Well, for the warehouses, there are cameras on the docks, sigh, each of the warehouses has several overhead doors without cameras though. I just watched a video from a Security conference where the guy talked about checking the security at a hotel. He’d noticed that the cameras in the parking garage had a blind spot near a service door into the hotel. There was a camera directly above the door, but he couldn’t tell exactly where it was aimed, and he thought it might be possible to enter the door without appearing on camera. The head of security took him to the video room (where nobody was watching anything), and turned on the monitors. Turns out the camera above that door didn’t work. His comment was “I think I’m not the first person to notice that.” (To be clear, he was saying somebody broke that camera so they could get in unseen.) If there is a way to get in and out of the building without appearing on camera, a thief will find it. On the other hand, I have had the honor of working with some of the stupidest thieves on earth. 🙂 So they aren’t all crafty. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/30 "2015-12-18T03:42:03Z")
> [@SpyOne](#): > > If there is a way to get in and out of the building without appearing on camera, a thief will find it. Part of the problem right there, its easier to count on one hand the monitored entries than it is to list the unmonitored ones. Everybody would hate it, but I would love to see cameras inside the warehouses. It would only take 2, maybe 3 on two of the warehouses to cover every single entry/exit point on all of them from the inside. That combined with the low light/night vision type of camera on the gate and no one can get in or out with out being physically and/or vehicularly identified. But I haven’t been in the warehouse since Monday as I’ve had a couple of projects running this week requiring my direct supervision. So I haven’t had a chance to talk to the manager about it to find out what if any new developments may have happened in the past couple of days. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/31 "2015-12-19T02:20:23Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Even if the bathroom is a single undivided room with an exposed toilet you can still put a camera in the hallway that records everyone as they enter or leave. By process of elimination (heh! 🙂 ) soon enough you’ll sniff out your culprit. I see what _else_ you did there! ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/32 "2015-12-19T03:12:51Z")
'Bout time somebody did. 🙂 I’m not always big on deliberate wordplay, but when I do, I prefer it to at least be noticed. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/33 "2015-12-19T13:53:25Z")
Other companies have had similar problems with employee theft. They install alarm systems where each employee has a unique alarm system code… Plus there is an “opening/closing report” option on business alarm systems which can be activated. Then you can get a report of who turned off/on the alarm and when. Use that along with a security camera system, then end of problem. Do this and inform your customer that you are taking these actions to prevent further theft. The thing with just a security camera system is you would need to look through hours and hours [days] of videos if you did not know when something was taken. A moving truck could have security cameras installed to monitor the inside of the truck as well as a view outside. Someone could walk up and snatch a box while the workers were working inside. And numbering boxes taped up inside the building… 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. And then verifying that those boxes were in fact received at the warehouse… could help to determine if the boxes were stolen from the truck or stolen after they were placed in the warehouse. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/34 "2015-12-19T13:59:57Z")
> [@Doctor\_Jackson](#): > > You really only have 3 options: > > 1. Communicate broadly that the losses are known, management scrutiny is high and hope it stops - could work, but not likely. > > 2. Surveillance - DIY or hire a PI. This will help catch the thief this time, but does little to prevent future occurrences. > > 3. Security Cameras - This option will help catch the current thief and deter/catch future occurrences. If you go this route, I would recommend that the cameras and monitors be professionally installed. Monitoring really only needs to happen when a loss occurs. > > Good luck, this type situation is never fun. There is also a fourth option, which is to fire everyone who works in the warehouse. This is what happened at the warehouse where my stepson worked a few years back. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/35 "2015-12-19T21:54:35Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > There is also a fourth option, which is to fire everyone who works in the warehouse. This is what happened at the warehouse where my stepson worked a few years back. Ouch! I hope it doesn’t come to that. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2015, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/36 "2015-12-20T00:26:28Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > Ouch! I hope it doesn’t come to that. Not be blunt about it, but sometimes this is the direction management goes if no perp is popping up and if you are in the chain of suspicion you may possibly go too. Were I you I would spend money on a video surveillance system. Honestly per SpyOne’s note I’m kind of surprised a warehouse storing expensive stuff for national accounts doesn’t have one already. Even the cheapest mini storage complexes have cameras these days. How do you _not_ have a camera system? ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2015, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/37 "2015-12-20T00:37:13Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Not be blunt about it, but sometimes this is the direction management goes if no perp is popping up and if you are in the chain of suspicion you may possibly go too. > > Were I you I would spend money on a video surveillance system. Honestly per SpyOne’s note I’m kind of surprised a warehouse storing expensive stuff for national accounts doesn’t have one already. Even the cheapest mini storage complexes have cameras these days. How do you _not_ have a camera system? If I could answer that I would. All I can say is “ain’t my place to make those decisions, above my pay grade” I _have_ suggested it and lobbied for it with management as far as I feel comfortable though. No point in being too much of an annoying shit and risking the good will of the people I work for. ---
**Author:** ![bubba001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f17d59/32.png) [@bubba001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubba001)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506/38 "2015-12-20T02:32:59Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > There is also a fourth option, which is to fire everyone who works in the warehouse. This is what happened at the warehouse where my stepson worked a few years back. We used to call that the “industrial death penalty”. Or taking away your birthday. ( if you get fired, you stop getting senority toward retirement. Your case would be “kill everybody in the room”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-to-deal-with-this-client-materials-stolen-at-office/740506.md?page=1)