employer yep.
I’ve never had a employee unfortunately.
I steal train journeys all the time, not because I want to you understand. The train station I leave from and the one where my girlfriend lives dont have barriers or a ticket desk and the distance is too great for me to get a ticket from the ticket machine so I rely on a guard coming round and letting me by one. Obviousley this being Southwest trains they are all to busy sweeping the ‘wrong’ type of leaves from the line to actually be on a train taking tickets. I figure that at £11.80 a journey at least once a week for the past 18 months is a pretty hefty amount all in all but still only £11.80 in one go. The most expensive thing I have ever stolen has got to be a motor powered grass roller when I was fourteen. Its basically a mini steam roller for flattening cricket pitches and the like, we took it on a hair raising 2mph ‘joyride’ around the field for about half an hour before being shouted at by the caretaker…not exactley ‘The Fast and the Furious’ I know but at least we gave it back.
Probably a laptop from my previous employer who wrongfully dissmissed me. (Fuck 'em, I say)
As a kid, a tennis raquet. Don’t ask how I got that out of the store.
But, my favorite was, also as a kid, my friends and I had just finished a little league game and we rode our bikes to a K-mart/Wal-mart TYPE store.
Mind you, we were in our baseball uniforms. We go to sporting goods and start to pick out baseball mits. These can be quite expenive. So…
Who’s going to question us, we’re in baseball uniforms and have a mit under our arms?
But wait, what would REALLY close this deal is REALITY. Question, what does every kid do to his mit when he gets one? Why, put his name on it of course. So, we thought, all we have to do is write our name on the back webbing of the mit and nobody on the planet would question it. Even if they did, how could THEY prove that it wasn’t MINE?
Here’s the part that I love…
I didn’t have a pen. Just came from a little league game remember? So, off to the stationary department where I pinched a pen. Went back over to the sporting goods to the mit in question. Made it mine. And out the door I went. Nice. Wilson A2000
I had an advanced case of that when I was a teenager- I had an extensive collection of restroom signs from Expo '86 for quite a while. (What a bastard!)
A couple years ago, I had a recidivist episode, and now have this sign in my den.
I guess the most expensive thing that I have in any sense “stolen” would be a photocopier from the office equipment company that I used to work for. Had a salesman sign it out (from me) as a “demo” that his client never saw, so I could use it at home for an animation project. I was finished with it after a couple of weeks, but it never seemed quite convenient for the salesguy to pick it up – so I ended up putting the paperwork through showing it as returned to stock. After that, I was nervous about getting someone to bring it back it in, so I just held on to it for the better part of a year.
When inventory time came around, though I wasn’t comfortable. Not because I was worried about getting in hot water-- every year a signifigant numbers of machines were just written off as “lost or stolen.” As far as anyone was concerned, it was a routine trial that came back, and then vanished from the back of the warehouse. It was more a combination of knowing that as soon as it was finally written off, I’d have crossed the line from “making unauthorized use of” the thing and just plain having stolen it. Also, keeping control of the inventory was our department’s responsibility, and discrepencies reflected poorly.
So the day before the inventory I explained the situation to my boss and he got one of the truck drivers to go out with me to pick it up. I was expecting repercussions of some sort, (possibly even dismissal,) but in a strange way it ended up earning me honesty points which spared me some anxiety later when there were chronic petty theft problems in an area that I and a very few other people had any business in.
A Canon 35mm camera, left unattended on a bar for over an hour.
Aren’t these great? Orange Skinner has my favorite one. it says “If you have questions regarding the operation of this machine, please go to the service area”
Anyone remember Music Boulevard? Back in the day, their website offered a US$10 coupon to “new” customers. Delete a cookie or two, and one would become “new” again. A little more work, and one could combine those coupons.
I always suspected it was a ploy to garner a huge customer base, making the company look much bigger than they were. It’s not like ANYONE (well, maybe the pornmongers) was making money online yet…
Soon after, my beloved source of free cds became a part of cdnow.com. sigh
And noe, CDNOW has become part of Amazon. I liked looking around at CDNOW because they always had more sound samples, but Amazon had a better selection.
My roommate talked me into stealing a baseball bat while in college. Got away with it. Haven’t stole anything since.
My neighbours Jesus fish.
When I was really little–maybe 7–I stole a hollow chocolate Santa from the grocery store. It was about 2 dollars, maybe. That’s all I’ve ever stolen.