About two years ago, Sears let me buy a 50" plasma TV for about $860 thanks to a perfect storm combination of price-matching other stores and giving back 110% of the difference, a seasonal cashier that mis-read the ad I brought in, and a harried manager that did a drive-by authorization on the price match. I should have gotten $220 back, but wound up getting about $1400 back.
Two weeks later, the grocery store sold me a full 7-bones standing rib roast for about $30. Full price for this hunk of meat was more than their system can generate bar codes for, so it wore a generic “MEAT” code and the weight and price was hand-written. Prime ribs were on sale that week, and the cashier mis-read the tag. Instead of charging me something like $105, she keyed the “You Save With Club Card” discount.
In neither case did I complain. Over the years, both Sears and that grocery store have gotten tens of thousands of dollars out of me.
When I was in college many years ago, when money was tight I had a nice evening where one bartender gave me change for a $20 when I paid with a $5. Different bar the bartender gave me change for a $10 when I paid with a $5. Well now that I was $20 richer than when I came out we decided to go get breakfast. The bill was under $20. The waitress brought me my $35 ? in change.We did leave a nice tip but kept most of it. So I went out with $5 and came home drunk and fed with about $25. Only thing that could have made it better is if I’d gotten laid.
Once upon a time, I owned a little bar. I shut the business down after a car accident that left my vehicle implanted into the wall of the bar. I stayed at the business for a few weeks cleaning up and what not. When all was said and done I ended up with several neon beer signs, a nice leather jacket (that I still wear during winter), and about 20 pool sticks that were owned by various customers. (My regulars would leave their sticks in the office.)
I still have the pool sticks. Over the years, I’ve run into former customers in town and returned a few of them, but I have no idea which customer owned which particular stick so I can’t try to contact them.
I got a new roof! Some weeks after Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida I came home from work to find a bunch of guys tearing up my roof. :eek: The “boss” came hustling up and explained that they were supposed to be re-doing the roof on a house one street over but had started on my roof before they realized their mistake. They apologized profusely and did the whole thing for free and even extended the warranty an extra 5 years longer than the usual.
A couple of Thanksgivings ago we were hosting. The bill came to well over $200 and I used my debit card, but the charge never showed up. It went through, I got my receipt, but the transaction never reached the bank somehow. So - free Thanksgiving! But, to balance things out, I got a stomach bug and couldn’t entertain my in-laws and Japanese work-study student, so that was embarrassing.
I got free cable while I was an intern. That was cool. I guess the company figured that no one would move in without calling for service and so left it on.
I got the last few issues of a previous tenants Playboy subscription when I moved down to FLA.
Many years ago I ordered a how-to-draw book from Fox (it was for one of their licensed animation shows). Instead I got a CD of songs from the Simpsons. I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to return the CD and get the book, and besides, it had the Stonecutter’s Song on it, so I just kept it.
Another time I was working the register at a convenience store. All kinds of weirdos and homeless guys would come in, and I’d chat with some of them. One guy offered to sell me a knife apparently issued to him during Vietnam (at least I’m pretty sure it was Vietnam, it may have been some other conflict). He was going into rehab soon, so he couldn’t take it with him but he could use $20. He was hoping to possibly buy it back once he got out of rehab. It definitely looked real, and I was sympathetic to the guy, so I bought it. Naturally enough, I never saw him again. I still have the knife somewhere. It’s an incredibly neat little piece of history (the thing looks very, very used, and I have no doubt it was), but I feel guilty as hell for not returning it, so I don’t look at it much.
A week ago, I found in my grocery bag a can of chelada, which concoction I never even knew existed, much less would have bought myself. I could have taken it back, but I just had to see what a combination of beer, clam juice and tomato juice tasted like.
I bought some of that because it sounded so damn nasty I just had to try it. Turns out I really like it. It has chili powder and lemon juice in it as well.
I went shopping at Walmart one day and wasn’t keeping a close eye on how much I was spending…it was payday, I didn’t have to figure everything to the penny for three more days. I swiped my card in the reader, selected credit, and watched as the clerk, who was chatting away with anotyher clerk, swiped the little table fan I’d selected…she didn’t have it lined up right and swiped it again, still chatting away about her shift for the next day. The total popped up, the reader asked for my signature, I signed, went home and plugged in the fan. It worked fine, so I tossed the box a few days later on trash day. About a week after that, I was cleaning out my purse at work one day, and found the receipt. I wanted to double-check the price I’d paid for a bed pillow, so I’d be sure to buy the same one the next time I went and noticed that the table fan wasn’t on the receipt. A $19.99 fan, which she had clearly swiped over the barcode scanner, twice…and it didn’t get registered. Since I didn’t have the box with the barcode anymore…and being a week after payday, didn’t have the $20, either…I decided not to take it back and offer to pay.
Many, many years ago we rented an apartment and the previous owner had left a nice cast iron skillet in the stove. I still have it.
A few years later I wanted to make curtains for my dining room. I was picking out all the materials at IIRC JC Penney. They were having some sort of promotion and every single sales person asked me did I want to apply for a credit card. Well, we had little or no money then, and I had in hand what I intended to spend, but the total of the cloth, thread, etc., was approaching my limit, so I asked if I could charge all the stuff I was buying if I opened an account. They said sure, and the deed was done. A few weeks later, I got a letter saying they did not want to give me a credit card after all. I kept waiting for the bill but it never came. The curtains have long since gone to the great rag shop in the sky.
Just last week while I was on vacation, I got absolutely horrid service in a restaurant, as in over an hour to be served a salad and a beverage, and then a dessert. I was ready to pay, but could not locate the person who had been serving me. I finally went to the cashier and told them I wanted to pay for my meal. After yet another delay, somebody rang up a total and I paid it, after noting that they had failed to put the dessert on the tab. I left a $1.00 tip. I did not give back the dessert.
And the POST OFFICE most likely had a forwarding address for them.
Unless, of course, they delivered ALL the previous occupants mail to you because they left no forward.
I still have all of my shirts from my first job (A&W). It isn’t as if they would have wanted them back, though, since they were just cotton t-shirts that had gotten all shrunken and blotched with fry grease and/or bleachy cleaning product. I also have a pretty nice swiss army knife from another ill-fated summer job–this one was at a brand new upscale grocery store that started hemorrhaging money and fired all of the high school and college kids. When I went to pick up my last check, I gathered up my shirts and my nametag to return them, but I forgot about the rather nice knife (for produce) that was issued to me when I started. Oh well. It had “AMY” on it in Sharpie (advice of my manager), so they wouldn’t want it back, would they?
I have also scored one of those twelve-dollar “souvenir drink cups” at Six Flags for the price of
a 99-cent refill, courtesy of a catatonic cashier kid and a very distracted me. The exchange went thus:
Him: “Just a soda?”
Me: <nods> Naturally, I’m not accustomed to thinking of a cup as an extra item on menu. Honest.
Him: “That’s $1.04”.
And one time I got two Almond Joys out of a vending machine for the price of one, but that barely counts, especially considering that my youngest brother routinely knocks on vending machines as he passes them by and causes change and drinks to fall out.
A related story. My father has always been very honest and responsible. Also hates wasting money or resources without reason (need to wash the car? fine. Leaving the faucet running without a good reason? Not fine).
We are on one of those family road trips. Camping here and there. Hotels sometimes. They were pretty good trips, which is saying something when its three younger kids.
At the hotels, he made a point of making sure we DID NOT take hotel towels, either on purpose or accident. He (rightly IMO) considered it theft. But, back in the day, apparently many folks considered those towels as freebies, much like many people today think of money given to them by the federal gubment to be “free”.
We, kids being kids, were not terribly organized or careful when it came time to packing up. Sure enough, when we finally get home to sort out all this mess, there are a handful of Howard Johnsons(?) towels in the mix. He wasnt happy about it.
During the trip we allways stayed at the same hotel chain. We stayed at several. Back then long distance calls werent exactly cheap. Neither was shipping. The towels werent that valuable. And I think he woulda about died of embarrassement calling around to find out which hotel we had actually stole them from.
So, they werent going back. So, therefore they were going to be used (waste not want not ya know). But they were obviously HOTEL towels, with a big emblem on them. So, they were never used as hand drying towels in the bathrooms, and if guest stayed over, the towels of shame were well hidden.
Thus ends the fish familie’s tale of interstate theft.
I went to Seattle on business. When I checked out of the hotel, I got a receipt, showing my credit card was charged $965-ish dollars for my stay.
But the charge never showed up on my credit card. I called the hotel after a month went by, and they said their records showed that it had gone through and been paid. I called the credit card company, and they said they showed an authorization but not a corresponding charge.
Over the next six months, I called the hotel several times, and finally the manager said, “Look, I’ve got your name and number. If it turns out we didn’t get paid, I’ll call you. There’s no need to call us again on this.”
Owl Parrots? Kakapo? If so, good on you! When I was a kid, (anyone else a member of the KCC? Anyone?) there were about fifty of them. Now I think there’s close to a hundred.
ETA: Oh look, you answered that question already. Always read the whole thread, manx, ya dork!
One year my roommate left behind a pretty nice LL Bean backpack when he skipped town at the end of the year. I kept it. (I’m looking at it now, in fact.) I saw him around campus next semester and made no effort to return it to him, at which point this passed from “salvage” to “theft.”
I also stole a big plastic cup from the cafeteria and a Beatles CD from a suitemate (whom I despised).
I found a volunteer campus EMT t-shirt that someone had apparently left in the bottom of a washing machine. It fit, and I didn’t mind strangers thinking I was some self-sacrificing life-saver, so it went into my regular rotation.
In high school one year a senior I knew won a “book prize” (???) of a nice-looking dictionary/thesaurus set on the first day of school. He asked me to store it in my locker for some reason. All through the school year I reminded him to pick it up, but he never did, so on the last day of school I just took it home. Still have it.
Actually, I still have and use all of these things.
I also once stole a cheap ashtray from an Atlantic City motel and gave it to my mother; it was the kind she liked (hard plastic with multiple, tight fitting cigarette holders around the edge), and she’d been using a piece of tupperware with tinfoil on the bottom in recent months. There were two ashtrays in the room, so I figured my mom would get more use out of it than the motel would.
Speculative: Buying something at the gas station across from campus, I paid with a $20 but got change for a $10. I argued with the cashier for about a minute, then shrugged my shoulders and said, “Fuck it, there’s no way I can convince you.” At this point he sullenly gave me another $10, still convinced he was right. During the ensuing decade, I’ve often wondered if he really was.
When I was a kid in the 1960s I did a report on flightless birds and became fascinated by them. I dreamed of seeing one, but figured it was near to impossible. Then came reports that they were functionally extinct, since the only ones found on recent surveys were a few males living above timberline in Fiordland. (These were the birds we were trying to survey again on my trip.) The females tend the nest alone, and so are more vulnerable to stoats, weasels, and cats.
Then in the late 1970s came news that a few females had been found on Stewart Island south of the main islands. These became the basis for the breeding program after they were removed from Stewart, where they were being decimated by feral cats.
So it was a dream come true to see and actually handle kakapos. I’ve only seen them a few times, though, in the forest.
Once I bought a weasel, and when I got home I found that they’d packed a stoat in the bag as well - even though the two-for-one Mustelidae sale had expired a week earlier.
I kept them both and the local rabbit population has never been the same.
