Why did you steal that!?

[lobo94]

Or maybe Michael Jackson's ghost?

[Maria]

Quoth MoonCat

People will take anything. Literally.

Yeah, this. Last week my dad (also my landlord) burst into the house in a whirlwind of rage. Seems somebody has been stealing the cactus he'd planted along the side of the house, and finally took off with the last one. I would rather put a tree over there anyway, but geez, who steals cactus? And can I arrange for them to steal the big ugly one out front that I'm allergic to?

[computeraide]

Quoth MoonCat

People will take anything. Literally.

Definitely this. At the school, the kids will run away with anything that isn't nailed down, glued in place, or otherwise secured. We have signage hanging from a chain (so it can go across a stairwell) that says Authorized Personnel Only. When I first rigged it up, the chain was on some double-sided snap hooks, so one end of the hook was fastened to the chain, and the other end was fastened to the railing of the stairwell... The first or second day, someone stole one of the snap hooks. So we had to invest in ones with a d-ring on one end and padlock them to the chain. We ended up padlocking the sign to the chain, too, so they wouldn't end up stealing that the next time around.

Argh!

[Lace Neil Singer]

Last time I went to the bank, someone had stolen the pen. You know those pens that are chained to little pen rests which are nailed to the desk? Well, someone had gone to the effort of unscrewing the pen rest just to steal the pen. XD Talk about someone with too much time on their hands; you can buy ten pens for 99p in the pound shop down the road.

[cashierbex]

Had a kid steal a pen at my store. If you were that desperate, I woulda given you one of my personal pens. People these days.

[greek_jester]

My bank has got around that by putting boxes by each cashier & a few on the ledges around the bit where you wait filled with pens. On the front of each box is a note saying that you can keep the pens when you're done with them if you want. Weirdly, people rarely do. They all get dumped in the hole you pass bits through under the glass at the cashier's station.

[MoonCat]

For some reason this reminds me of the time the cops caught this couple stealing a rose bush out of the city park. They have a big rose garden that is very well known in the area. They caught these two old farts...they were in their late 60s, IIRC...with shovels and the rose bush.

[crazylegs]

When working for The Chemists we had to put security tags in the loo rolls in the customer toilets. Why anyone would want to steal that stuff is beyond me, it was like tracing paper...

[Lace Neil Singer]

Confession here; back when I was at school and very interested in art, I used to go to a certain public loo and steal the tracing paper loo roll they had there, cuz it was exactly like tracing paper, could be used as such and also free. XD I also wasn't the only one doing it. I'm pretty sure that was the reason why the council eventually started putting soft loo roll in their public loos...

[greek_jester]

Quoth Lace Neil Singer

...back when I was at school and very interested in art, I used to go to a certain public loo and steal the tracing paper loo roll they had there, cuz it was exactly like tracing paper, could be used as such and also free...

Actually, we used to have the same stuff in infant & junior school, & whenever we ran out of tracing paper the teacher used to send one of us down to the loo to grab a few dozen sheets. I bumped into one of my old teachers years later, & she said that the school's tracing paper budget tripled when they started using real loo roll!