Computer thievery, Mass Shop Lifting, and Stolen Tunes…
Just thought I’d share three occurrences to add to this weeks QOTW.

(1) Many moon ago, in the early 1990s (around 1992), a couple of mates of mine were pretty much off the rails and were up for any form of mentalist high jinx, no matter how illegal or moral.

They were best mates of mine, and one of them in particular my folks were quite fond of.. He actually used to call over and hang out with them if I was out the house, because he would be invariably be locked out by his Mum for one reason or another. Anyway, one day he invited me over, and he was quite excited about something he wouldn’t tell me about. And, it was a change from the latest pr0n tapes or "discovered" jazz mags.

We went to his room, and low and behold there was an RM Nimbus that he had lifted from the secondary school that we used to go to. The very same one that DID live in the library block until relatively recently. I couldn’t believe that he and his accomplice stole said computer.

He retells the story, and it was quite amusing. As when they walked off the school grounds into the forestry that surrounded it (with the PC covered by a blanket) they actually stumbled into the school governor walking his dog, and they had a natter for five minutes. Said school governor was completely unaware of what they were carrying.

He also used to lift VHS cassettes for me from the school, which was around the time that The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Bottom were on TV for the first time. My folks were too tight fisted to buy me a packet of VHS cassettes, so he took it upon himself to steal several tapes to order, so that I could record said comedy programmes. I even set the timer on my VCR so that it was set to AV1 so that it blanked the VHS tapes overnight until they were all cleared. Took about a week, doing one a night.

And what did said secondary school implement as a new security feature to stop anything else getting robbed? Some CCTV?, a pack of homicidal Doberman's looked after by the school caretaker? None of these...

They screwed the windows down in places of the school where there was anything valuable to be stolen (notably, the I.T. rooms, and the back of the library that was home to a network of Link 480Z's). In this day, this would be a severe Health & Safety issue where the school would have the book thrown at them!

(2) I knew of someone indirectly that used to pilfer CD’s from Music Zone many, many moons ago. Said person actually went as far as carefully sellotaping the CD’s and booklets carefully to their legs before going home. They used to buy the cases separately, and sometimes had a pop at smuggling rare imports and picture discs out too.

They never bought tunes for ages, and were never found. But, someone else tried the same thing and eventually got booted out for it.

(3) I know of someone that used to work for a budget retailer, that has since gone down the pan (clue: they used a Status Quo tune with altered words as a TV advert).

This place was notorious for losing stock hand over fist, even down to management level. Said person tells me that the thievery in their shop actually started off as a dare, that became bigger and bigger, and security and searches were very much lacking.

Anything was fare game that could be worn, or easily concealed in a bag. They even did the trick of wearing lots of clothing and wearing an item concealed so that they avoided detection. Word has it that in this particular store alone there was a loss of £70,000 a year. But, their attitude was “Screw them, we get exploited with crappy wages so let’s screw them back”, an attitude similar to that of other posters that have quoted stories here.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Wed 16 Jan 2008, 13:29, Reply)