Thievery ruins my squadron Holiday party.

The BBQ Pit
1

Goddamn goat felchin’ doggbreathed mother fuckin’ low-life grabbasstic sonsofabitch jackassery has to happen to me at my own squadron holiday party. :mad:

The details:

Every year, my squadron gets together, rents a big hotel’s room, and has a nice, semi-formal dinner where 350+ come together and have a grand old time. Spouses. Friends. Siblings (if they’re in the area). Family. Commanders. Troops. Beer. Music. It’s a terriffic time.

I pick up my date, and arrive just fashionably late after ‘Social Hour’ starts - 5:30PM.

“Hey ‘Shirt’! How are you? Bill! Nice to see you! “Mom”, how the hell are you?” Laughter, handshakes, and family-like hugs are all around. Me and my date walk in, and immediately we’re part of the family. Great times. I take my date’s fleece jacket, and my nice leather one that I had just bought two weeks ago, and go into the coat room to hang 'em up. All of the front racks are taken, so I go to the back of the room and hang 'em on the second peg back on the last rack. Fairly out of sight, but easily found if I come back for anything. I tell my date where she can find her coat if she needs anything. Case closed.

We go. We eat. She wins a $5 door prize. We dance. We drink (I’m sober, to drive). We have a grand old time.

It’s getting late, and the party starts to die down. “I’ll go run and grab our coats real quick. I’ll be back in a flash . . .”

I make way into a coat room with hardly any coats left. Of the 350+ there, there’s only a dozen or so coats left - great! I can find mine easily . . .

. . . I found hers easily. Where the hell is mine? Where the goddamn hell is mine?!? :confused: :eek: :mad:

Quoth: “AW SON OF A BITCH! NOT AGAIN!”

“LT, what’s the matter?”

“Someone grabbed my goddamn leather jacket!”

“Who? Do you know?”

“No. But this is the second time in as many months!” (Someone walked off with my Gore-Tex parka last month, and I had to replace it out of my own pocket.

I am absolutely livid. A great night, to be marred by this. And the worst part is that I can’t put a finger on anyone or any particular group. It’s in a hotel. Any moron could have walked in and grabbed it. It’s 15-degrees Farenheit outside, and I have to walk to the far end of the parking lot to get to my truck. I am NOT a happy camper.

I plan to put an e-mail out to the squadron tomorrow morning looking for it.

The warning:

If you were drunk/mistaken, bring it back, and no questions will be asked. Simple mistake, and life goes on. However, if you are the low-lifed yellow bellied spineless whelp of a man who did this intentionally and/or with malice, if should I find you, pray there are witnesses to hold me back. :mad:

I called the hotel the next day to see if anyone turned it in - nothing. I left my name and number with a clerk who sounded like she could care less. :mad:

Damnit, I’m pissed. A great evening, and you had to ruin it. My $150 coat is gone, and now I’m angry. And in the season of giving, you have to give me a hard time. Goddamn thieves. . .

Tripler
And do NOT crack any jokes about me actually having a date. That’ll only piss me off more. :mad:

2

Tripler, I am so sorry! That is disgusting.

3

Ugh. That sucks.

Maybe they should have a coat check person next time who gives a ticket for each coat. They wouldn’t even have to pay them, as I’m sure with 350+ people, they would make out quite nicely from tips alone.

Just a thought.

4

Tripler, just to make you feel a little better (or at least not alone) here’s my own tale of woe. I went to a New Years Eve party at a friends house a few years ago. There were probably 50 - 60 people there, and I know maybe 10 of them. I’m getting ready to leave, grab my coat (which was still where I’d left it), and go to get my shoes - can’t find them. Look high, look low, no luck. I have pretty big feet, so my hosts don’t have any shoes that will even come close to fitting. So I get to walk out to the car in the snow, in my sock feet. Turns out some other guy had gotten drunk, grabbed a pair of shoes (mine), and gone out to his car to sleep it off. I got them back the next morning.

Not the same as having your jacket stolen, I know. That did happen to me too, but it was when my truck was stolen, and just a “work” coat, so the jacket itself didn’t bother me too much - having my truck stolen did. Let me tell you, I was eyeballing everyone I passed on the street for a month after, looking for that coat though! I hope yours turns up.

5

Lola, this was brought up today after I sent out the e-mail. I’m going to double check and see if a coat-checker type was supposed to be provided.

If it was supposed to be provided, and wasn’t, I plan to bill the hotel. :mad:

It just sickens me. It does. Not only can I not put a finger on who may be responsible (there were hundreds of other people in the hotel, which hosts a popular bar), but I doubt I’m ever going to even get wind of this. On the upswing, a lot of people have crossed the street when they saw me coming - rightfully so. I’m just looking for that dumbass schmuck to show up wearing it. :mad:

And to think, I was this close to leaving my truck keys in the coat. :mad:

Tripler
Although not the same as having a truck stolen per evilhomer, the irony of the episode sickens me more. . .

6

Thats unfortunate Tripler, hopefully the person who took it will wear it one day at an event that you’re at. My policy is to bring a coat that I’m willing to loose. Sad but either we check it and take the risk because they have signs that they are not responsible for lost or stolen items or leave coats in the car. Whats even more pathetic is when your guests steal from your home. We had a party (family friends, their kids) and left the coats in one of the bedrooms. Well someone as they were leaving decided to help themselves to a vintage r2d2 remote control toy sitting on a shelf. Stealing sucks.

7

Big party hotels are magnets for thieves at holiday time. All you need to get in is a nice dress/suit, a holiday smile, and a big ol’ festive gift bag or two. Troll thru the ballrooms while everyone’s drinking and checking each other out, and collect all the gifts/handbags/leather jackets you can carry.

Yah, it happened to me a couple of years ago. The thief took an engraved hip flask I had bought for my boss in honor of the company’s 25th anniversary. Grrr.

8

I think I’ve told this story before, but here goes. At my first college, I left a book of Peter Arno cartoons in the coatroom. A few hours later: gone, vanished. There was a leather jacket in there, and any number of handbags: nobody touched them.

I’ll never know exactly what happened, but I can guess. That school was full of spoiled rich kids, or just spoiled kids, who thought everything was for them. So it wouldn’t have been a compulsive thief, or someone looking for valuable items, just some snotball who saw the book, thought it looked interesting, and walked off with it because they could.

I mean, why do people do anything? Because they can.

9

My sympathies, also, to everyone else who’s had stuff stolen.

10

Having spent ten years in the Army, I’m familiar with having your expensive stuff ripped off. It sucks and I sincerely hope you get your coat back.

But at least you had a date :slight_smile: