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  • Not Your Tomatoes!

    Wow, I almost never have problem people here, now 2 in one week.

    <Background>
    We have a tomato garden in our parking lot. One of my coworkers lovingly ammended, and prepared the soil in a corner of our parking lot, and planted 8 heirloom tomato plants at the beginning of summer. He put plastic over the soil to hold in the moisture, hes fed them with compost tea, moitored the soil moisture content and spent a lot of time looking after them. They have grown to over 6 feet high, and have kept all of us at work in lovely fresh tomatoes all summer.
    </Background>

    The boat from the island is coming in and some vaguely hippy-ish lady is waiting for it. She catches me outside and says very happily: "I just picked some of the ripe tomatoes, would you like some?"

    I'm floored, who does this? On the other hand we have a lot of tomatoes. So I ask her how many she has picked?

    "Oh I'm a gardener and just couldn't help myself, just about 10" Shes all happy and smiling.

    My first thought was - we have a ton of tomatoes, let her have some. So I ask her to give me half of them. Then I realize the grower of the tomatoes is going to be PISSED, and I have no right to let her have any. So I go looking for her again and I tell her that I'm sorry, but she needs to give them all back, the person who planted them will want them.

    While I'm outside doing something else, she brings in a shopping bag FULL of tomatoes. Like 10-15 POUNDS of tomatoes. She had picked EVERY tomato that was anywhere near ripe and some that weren't!! I come inside and see it and just loose it! WHO DOES THIS? There are some over-ripe ones that are dribbling everywhere (and we have this horrid ant problem right now), and its just a big old freaking PILE of tomatoes that really did not need to be picked just them - maybe half of them were were properly ripe - and we could have dealt with them this weekend.

    My heart sinks and I go to tell the colleague who planted the tomato plants that his entire crop has been summarily collected. As expected he is PISSED. He wanted to pick SOME this weekend for a party, but he doesn't want to deal with all of them today.

    As I'm making another loop outside I catch the tomato picker. She is pulling away with a car full of people in a mini-van and smiling at me. I come up to the window and just lay into her: "Next time you think of doing something like that, PLEASE ASK. Those were NOT yours to pick, and this is PRIVATE property!" Her face falls into a Cat-Butt face, and she drives off, with, I'm sure, another bag of tomatoes in her car.

    I mean really, what kind of entitlement do you have to have to pick ALL of someones tomatoes and then offer SOME of them back?

  • #2
    Yeah, if someone walked onto my property and took my veggies I would be pissed.

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    • #3
      hippies
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DI5Z_6gWVY

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      • #4
        "I just couldn't help myself"?? Yes you could! You could definitely help yourself not steal someone else's property! She's not a hippie. She's a thief!! I wish you'd called the cops on her.
        "Is it hot in here to you? It's very warm, isn't it?"--Nero, probably

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        • #5
          Does she think tomatoes grow in the wild? Maybe they do spme places, but not in a parking lot. She can't be much of a gardener if she thinks it's OK to steal someone else's produce.
          https://www.facebook.com/authorpatriciacorrell/

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          • #6
            I would be pissed. Who the hell did she think she was that it meant she could strip the plant bare? I mean we all know, but what the hell.
            The angels have the phone box.

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            • #7
              I would be so mad as well. In fact my mother had a similar encounter a few years ago. I was going to post that story here but it looked too long and I didn't want to seem like I was hijacking your thread to I posted it here if anyone wants to read it.

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              • #8
                "Hey, I just picked a couple of fresh flatscreen tv's out of the lobby, would you like one?"
                Aliterate : A person who is capable of reading but unwilling to do so.

                "A man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot" - Mark Twain

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                • #9
                  Oh HELL no. I would be going after her with a rake or something. I'd have screamed my throat raw at her. Especially if I'd done the kind of work your co-worker did.
                  When you start at zero, everything's progress.

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                  • #10
                    Maybe next year your coworker can borrow somebody's VERY LARGE DOG and give it a place of honour in his garden ...

                    Or a motion-activated sprinkler system.

                    Seriously, it's a shame nobody knows where this EW lives. "Hi, I decided your car looked SOOO nice I thought I'd borrow it for the day!"

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                    • #11
                      Quoth Pixilated View Post
                      Maybe next year your coworker can borrow somebody's VERY LARGE DOG and give it a place of honour in his garden ...

                      Or a motion-activated sprinkler system.

                      Seriously, it's a shame nobody knows where this EW lives. "Hi, I decided your car looked SOOO nice I thought I'd borrow it for the day!"
                      If you were near me I'd loan you my very large mastiff. He delights in making people soil their pants.
                      At the conclusion of an Irish wedding, the priest said "Everybody please hug the person who has made your life worth living. The bartender was nearly crushed to death.

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                      • #12
                        We had someone ask if they could pick some of our apricots. We weren't using them all, so we said sure.

                        He picked ALL the ripe or nearly ripe ones.

                        Sure enough, hailstorm came through before the rest were ripe, and we went without any of our apricots (or plums) that year.
                        Seshat's self-help guide:
                        1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
                        2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
                        3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
                        4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

                        "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

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                        • #13
                          A woman stopped and asked if she could pick all the wind blown apples from under our three apple trees for her horse, we said yes and that's exactly what she did - she just took all the fallen apples.

                          A different woman on the other hand, my daughter was home alone when she saw a woman picking the apples off our red apple tree. She went out and asked her what she was doing and the woman answered that she knew the owners and they said she could pick the apples. My daughter didn't know what to do, she was 14 or so, she called me and by the time she explained everything the woman had left. Told my daughter if the woman came back tell her she's a thief, she doesn't have permission and if the woman didn't stop threaten to call the cops but if daughter was worried about getting in trouble then call me and I'll talk to wench.

                          Our house had been a rental at one time but it hadn't been a rental for over sixteen years by then and WE planted the apple trees, so "I know the owner" lady is full of it. She hasn't been back that we know of - and I was waiting, I really wanted the lay into the woman.
                          Figers are vicious I tell ya. They crawl up your leg and steal your belly button lint.

                          I'm a case study.

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                          • #14
                            I remember when I was a teenager, I drove into my parents' driveway and saw a girl picking the olives from our front yard trees. When she saw me, she looked shocked and dropped the olives with a sheepish grin, then took off. Now, we did not use those olives, and I'm sure if the girl had asked, Mom or Dad would've said yes, she could take them. The reaction she had told me that she did not do so, which my parents confirmed when I asked them.

                            Later, when I was married and we had a house, we'd had people twice congregating on our front yard like it was a public park! Someone stole our roses one time, and left a crack pipe on the front yard another time. More than once someone used our garden hose and left it running.

                            It absolutely baffles me how many people seem to think that their neighbor's property is free for all to use. Last I checked, we still have private property here in the US, and private property = you do not go on there and take stuff without the owner's expressed permission. And theft and trespassing are still crimes.
                            I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
                            My LiveJournal
                            A page we can all agree with!

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                            • #15
                              The green ones, make fried green tomatoes:

                              slice the tomatoes 1/4" thick
                              salt and pepper
                              dredge in flour
                              dip in an egg bath made of beaten egg with a splash of milk
                              coat in panko
                              fry in a frying pan with about 1/4" of oil, until golden brown on each side

                              devour cause damn they good!

                              the ones that are reddish but not ripe you can pickle.
                              Don't wanna; not gonna.

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