Last night my friends and I jammed for a few hours and recorded it on a portable tape player. Shortly thereafter, I couldn’t find the tape player. I looked all over the place for it, to no avail. Tonight, I tried looking again, tearing up the whole house searching for the fucking thing. I looked in the basement, in kitchen, in my room, and then everywhere else even though I had never even taken the tape player anywhere else. And I could not fucking find it anywhere.
My mom then suggested that someone was stealing from me. I told her that was insane, that none of my friends would do anything like that.
Then I remembered…
A few months ago I bought an R. Crumb comic collection from Amazon (which I had wanted for a very long time) and a few weeks after it came, IT vanished from the house too. And my regular group of friends had been in proximity to it (in some cases actually reading it) dozens of times before it disappeared. I similarly tore the fucking house apart looking for that book, to absolutely no avail.
Now I have to suspect something. I hate stealing (it’s one illegal activity that I’ve never done nor had any respect for those who did) and I can’t believe that one of my “friends” would take my own stuff. But it’s the only option here, really. Unless that book and tape player magically turn up (unlikely) I have to assume that someone took it from me.
A couple of days ago, I finally picked up some of my stuff that I’d left at my former place. Apparently, one of the guys who moved out recently took all my comics and graphic novels (three big comic boxes full) and all of my dvds and videos.
I know it’s partly my fault for not getting them out of there sooner, but that’s no excuse for theft.
Had a roommate who stole $500 from me once, by forging my signature on my checks. Found out through the overdraft notice. At least you can recover money… you can’t recover those comics.
(I know I can be long winded, so this is the short version of this story.)
When I was in college I rented a house. A 3 bedroom house that I lived in alone for 8 months. Then a couple of friends needed a place to live and I let them move in. A couple of weeks later I came home from work (at about 2am) and discovered that $100 (a lot of money to a college kid in 1987) was missing from my bedroom. I always closed my bedroom door when I left the house, so I knew that someone had made the decision to sneak in and see that they could find. I was pissed.
I turned on all the lights in the house, threw all the doors open and demanded to know what happened to my money. One of the roomies finally admitted that his brother (who I also knew) had taken the money to buy crack!!! I told him to go get my fucking money right now or face the police. I told him if he didn’t have the money in 1 hour his stuff would be out on the lawn and the police would be waiting for him. I had the number of a 24-hour locksmith already out.
I got my money back in 40 minutes. The next morning while roomies were at work/school I changed the locks and put BOTH roommates stuff out on the front lawn. The guy with the brother I never spoke to again (never spoke to the brother again, either) and the other guy I spoke with only once, about 5 years later. His life was still shitty.
Thievery sucks. I sympathize with your plight, Argent.
That sucks. A similar thing happened to me and it burns you up that a friend could do that.
In my case, my friend would take money from my wallett whenever he came over. It was never all my money, and it was never more than $10. At first I figured I just didn’t accurately remember how much I’d had. It took me a long time to realize what was going on.
When I confronted him, he pretty much admitted he had taken it. He didn’t apologize. Instead, he justified it by saying that he was unemployed, I wasn’t, and I could afford it. Had he mentioned how much money trouble he was in, I would have given him the money.
We were friends through college and went through a lot together. Even with all our background, I could never forgive that. Several years later, mutual friends suggested we put our differences aside. I couldn’t. I doubt I still could. Had he apologized and admitted it was wrong, I would have. But even 10 years later he said “eh, she didn’t really need it that much.”
We took a “friend” in, who wanted to move back to Tennessee from Florida.
We housed him, & fed him, & helped him get a car loan.
He skipped out in the middle of the night, & stole my Dad’s power tools, including an overpowered WW2 vintage power drill that had been designed to use in an aircraft plant.
Various family members have briefly glimpsed him, & we trashed him out at the top of our lungs, in public.
We treated him like family, & he betrayed us. We’d have helped him buy power tools, if he needed them. :mad: :mad: :mad:
That is some hard ass response. The guy who’s brother took the money deserved it. I’m curious. Why the hard line with the other guy. And why the commentary on his “still shitty” life?
In my group of friends in high school we had a kleptomaniac. It didn’t take much digging to figure out who had suspicions on who it was. Easy enough, figure who’s NOT complaining about being ripped off. We centered in on him pretty quickly, and went over to his house as a group and confronted him and his parents. His parents couldn’t believe their little angel could do such a thing, and when we retrieved our stuff from his room, they still refused to believe it.
I’m happy to report that last I heard he was living on the streets. The prick.
If I were in your shoes, I might buy/borrow a video camera and invite the group of “friends” over. Leave some cash/etc in plain sight and run out on an errand. Try to get the thief on tape, then turn it over to the police, or submit to vigilantiism.
Hide a mini-cam or get a concealed camera then? I’d ask my friends if they knew where my tape recorder was, maybe adding that I’d recorded our jam session and wanted to listen to it. Ask, maybe one will say “I don’t know, last I saw so-and-so was playing with it.” and you’ll be on the trail. I’d also not directly confront so-and-so, but ask them the same question, in case the other person is trying to use misdirection. Watch their reactions, and body language/tone of voice to get an idea if they know something they aren’t saying etc.
Well, the tape recorder has just been found, so I guess nobody stole that. On the other hand, the R. Crumb book has not been found, and it’s had a hell of a lot longer to turn up than the tape player. So my suspicions of stealing are now reduced by 50%…but they’re still there.
Maybe one of your friends thought they had permission to borrow it to read? Do you remember if any of them asked you if they could read it? Maybe they meant “take it home to peruse”?
This is the best response to problem roommates that I have read on these boards yet. I like your “one strike and you’re out” rule. I’m not sure why the other roomie got tossed, too, but I assume you had your reasons. And thievery does suck - what gives people the idea that someone else’s stuff is fair game? Are we getting into “entitlement” territory again?
Glad your tape player showed back up.
Maybe the comic will too. If you’re anything like me, check between the bed and wall.
The dirtiest someone ever did me was when I was living mostly out of my car. I had just gotten a job and was saving up to afford to go 1/3 in on an apartment with 2 friends. I was just about there and had $300 saved. My boyfriend at the time (we’ll call him Jerk) would let me sleep over at his place when he could* and stash my cash in a jar at the top of his closet for safe-keeping. I never worried about him messing with it because his family is very well off and he just wasn’t the type.
Well, he had another “well off” friend (he’ll be known as Ass) come stay the weekend with him. It was big to-do because they were best friends in high school, Ass is the brother of one of Jerk’s good friend/ex-girlfriend and they hadn’t seen each other in forever.
Anyways, Ass comes over, all three of us sleep at Jerk’s place & he shows his friend my stash for some reason. I think he was telling Ass how proud of me for trying to get back on my feet by myself.
So, Sunday comes and it’s Ass’ last day in town. Jerk had to work and was gone before I woke up. Well, so was Ass even though he wasn’t due to leave until later that day after we all went out for one last dinner. I thought, “Well, that’s odd” especially since he left without his folder of CDs and one of his speaker covers.
Later on, Jerk comes home from work, I tell him that Ass left before I woke up and he also thinks it’s odd. We decide to keep our dinner plans anyways and I get down my stash to get a few dollars to cover my share. I sit down in the floor and happily count out one hundred, two hundred…one hundred, two hundred!? Where the FUCK is my other hundred?
That’s right. Spoiled brat Ass had dipped a hundred out of my jar and hauled his ass back to Jacksonville. :mad: I was livid. I told Jerk that the only fair thing was for me to go pawn the CDs Ass left behind when he fled and try to recover some of my money. Jerk didn’t want to be too hasty about it :rolleyes: and wanted to question Ass about it. Jerk was supposed to be going to Jacksonville in a week or so to see his family and was going to confront him then.
I’m thinking WTF? I sure as fuck didn’t have it, he was at work and claimed he didn’t take it, comes out talking to others who know Ass (including his freakin’ sister!) that Ass is a thief and Jerk knew it (he had stolen some trading cards from Jerk before, but Jerk just didn’t want to believe it even though there they were in Ass’ collection when he didn’t have any before!) but he still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt for some fucking reason.
Jerk went to Jax, asked Ass, “Did you take harmless’ money?”
Ass made a big dramatized production of saying no and that was it. Jerk came back to Tallahassee, said that Ass had denied it but he didn’t really believe him but gave him back the CDs anyways.
Talking about it later down the road, turns out Jerk thought I was making the story up for some fucking reason to try to get money out of his friend who he knew was a thief.
Felt good dumping that motherfucker. :mad:
Lawd, that was long.
Fuckers.
He lived in an apartment that was part of a house belonging to an older lady that didn’t allow “visitors” - there was much sneaking in and out of windows.
When I was living with my mom, I was trying to save money to move out into my own apartment in Orlando. We didn’t invite many people over, our place was a complete mess and we didn’t have many friends. Living with ourselves, we became used to laying valuables around since we didn’t really have anyone to worry about. Well we had a mentally handicapped neighbor who we befriended. She lived by herself and so throughout the majority of our stay at the apartment complex we kept her company and loaned her cups of milk, sugar, some bread…little things like that people often run out of. We even bought her Christmas and birthday gifts. One day about one month before I moved out my mom let her in my room because she wanted to have a look at two pet snakes I had. The bitch stole $170 in cash off my dresser, and about $40 in change wrapped in coin rolls off of my bookshelf. At the time I was helping to pay rent, working part time at a deli, and had to buy my own groceries. It had taken me a long time to save even that much up
I was furious. I didn’t just want her to go to jail, I wanted to see dogs with the mang tear her into ribbons. I wanted blood. I didn’t give a rats ass if she had a mental disorder, she had enough sense to know better than to fuck over and steal our much needed money. She was smart enough to have a job of her own. I didn’t have any proof. Me and my mom went over to get a confession out of her. Oh no, she didn’t have my money. All she had was a story about how she saw pest control steal it, and four new fishing poles leaning against her couch. She made countless attempts to get back on our goodside, but we were determined to shut her out. Anything she said to my mom was responded to with one worded answers, and I don’t recall speaking to her at all. She wasn’t invited inside, and we ingored her outside. We told our apartment’s manager what she did. May she warn others so other people will give her the cold shoulder as well, and she can go back to living her miserable, lonely life.
In college I roomed with four other people in a large two-story house. At the time I had built up what I though was a pretty respectable collection of science fiction books. Nothing really rare, just several hundred books by my favorite authors. I kept them all in a large bookcase, sorted by author.
One day I noticed that one of the books was missing a cover. When I pulled it out, sure enough, it was a science fiction book, but not one of mine. Looking through the rest of the books, I’d say about a fourth of them had been replaced by cheap-ass, dime-a-dozen, ratty, worn-out books. But all the replacements were science fiction.
I know who took them: the science fiction fan-boy who had just started rooming with us. When I asked him about them, and he denied knowing anything about the missing books, I wasn’t really left with anything. I didn’t have any proof.
Looking back on it, though, it was pretty weird. I mean, replacing science fiction with science fiction. Did he think I just wouldn’t notice? Or think, “Hey, MY book is gone, but since it’s another science fiction book, that’s OK”? Or was he salving his conscience by pretending it was an even (if unasked for) swap?
I’ll never know. The last I heard, he was self-publishing a Green Acres fanzine and living with his folks.
