I spent last week at the seaside. With my father and 8 year old sister - my sister has worn me out ! I am also completely broke despite the fact that I have been less than 100 miles (swimming in English seas and turning blue) and our staying in a couple of rooms in a house owned by a friend for £50 for the week. The first story is from the seaside.
Unbelievably petty theft.
So the seaside town where we were staying has a single small amusement arcade by the seafront. Some fruit machines, some fun games (we all tried a motorcycle game with my father helping steer my sister's by holding her bike up) and a little mini-bowling game my sister loves. There are also a whole lot of those games where you drop coins in and they're shoved into piles of coins which may or may not cause some of the pile to fall into a slot for you.
SC was interested in the last.
I first became aware of him while I was trying to play pinball. There was only one pinball machine and I was happily minding my own business when he kind of appeared in my elbow space.
Next to me was a big machine with 4 separate pile-of-coins games in it. Despite there being 4 and no one else playing he had to be at the one next to me. And within seconds he was thumping the machine really hard trying to dislodge coins. He annoyed me there for about 5 minutes -a whole lot of thumping, maybe 2 coins dropped in. Then he wandered off thumping all the other games, and going around the building thumping them.
About 5 minutes later we're playing bowling. This is directly acroos from the original game.
Back wanders SC. He's still thumping games on and off. Then he wanders off and comes back with a manager and seems to be arguing that it's eaten some coins (I can see but not hear). The machine is opened up and he gets a couple. As soon as the manager goes he's back to his round of thumping.
Then he comes back and puts his hand up to the back of the machine and PULLS the whole thing forward. Back to thumping.
The last straw for me was a few minutes later he does the same thing after looking round, running his eyes right across mine and deciding it's fine as I don't work there.
I am not your conspiritor.
I went and spoke to the guy at the change counter (who was nice and kept having to retrieve stuck bowling balls for us) who got the manager. The manager was a bit confused thinking I was saying the man was bothering me - but ended up throwing out the guy out. Along with what appeared to be his wife, wife's friend and their baby in it's buggy !
A couple of the machines are10p, but almost all are 2p. All that to steal less than a handful of 2p pieces.
A small group of teenagers overheard him getting banned. They deliberately tilted the machine in front of the manager - obviously joking. They knocked out a fair number of coins though, which SC hadn't really seemed to. They were obviously local and got thrown out for the night only.
I felt a bit uncomfortable - that old school thing about not telling tales. And because the whole thing was a bit stressful for my sister, but I also don't want her to see people stealing and getting away with it.
What I couldn't believe is that they don't have the machines alarmed.
Petty Theft
Today I popped into the supermarket on the way home from work. I really am broke, and I have a tiny bit of cash, less than £10 in my account and I'm not paid until Monday. So I wanted to make sure I didn't get more than the money on my card, and didn't get much less either. And as I was slightly embarrassed about paying for the small amount with my card I went to the self checkouts even though they seemed the busiest.
The man at the nearest till rang through his stuff, then he appeared to be getting ready to pay. Then the machine was having problems, he'd placed his large bag on the thing while, apparently, looking for his wallet, then he was leaving as if everything was sorted.
So I moved to use the machine and it showed as ready to pay for his items.
There was no member of staff available, and it took me a bit of time to work out what happened. Thinking about it I think it was very deliberate - he put the bag up to test whether anyone would notice the error messages and walked out as soon as it was clear no one was paying attention. Of course it could just be some machine error...
I used the next available machine and everone avoided that one for a while. When I was leaving the self checkout staff where still not there (I saw them but always doing something away from the actual checkouts) and I think eventually a customer cleared the machine to do their stuff.
The total _ £11.
I didn't know if I should have said something, but the machine had been cleared and I was a bit annoyed about the lack of staff. I didn't want to get stuck there for ages (after 2 extra hour at work), and I didn't want to wrongly accuse someone. I think I probably did the wrong thing though
Bonus - highlight of my day.
My heart sunk today to see all our customers coming in with children now the school holidays are here. They can have to wait a couple of hours to be seen, and often talk about stressful and personal stuff.
However I completely wanted to take home my customer's children. She was asking about disability benefit for her daugher - and while she was trying to explain the difficulties the girl was having the girl wanted to tell me how well she was doing
(SHe was talking about the occasional highlights, her mother was talking about her reading level, but the little girl was proud because she had read one book which was 2 grades higher, etc.) ANd later she told me all about her sleepwalking problems herself. Her slightly older brother was very quiet and only spoke once - but that was to ask me what a word I'd used meant (children normally are either completely quiet or are doing their own thing - which on bad days can be something disruptive - it's the first time I've had one ask me to explain things
The mother was all ready to tell him to be quiet but my job is all about giving people information, and believing that's important, so I did explain).
There were only 2 chairs in my room, other than mine, and the little girl stood even though I did say we could get another one. When I went out of the room and came back very often children will steal my chair but she was still stading there. Next time I wentout I told her she could sit there - and return to her grinning at me and saying she'd been sitting there. We agreed I have the best chair (the only swivel chair which is why children always want it).
They were just great children.
Bonus - what makes my blood boil.
I have a bit of a contradiction in that I can be unbelievably patient with people, or extremely harsh. At work I am normally patient with the customers (particularly with regards to ignorance, which I see as just something that needs a bit of information to correct, and never ever judge people for what they didn't know), and keep my nurning anger for some of the organisations that my poor customers have to deal with.
Most of the organisations we have a sometimes adverserial relationship with are actually pretty good and clearly staffed by quite nice human beings. The exceptions are the councils homelessness service, and (really sadly) the social workers dealing with families and children.
Today I was helping someone with welfare benefits - a separated father who has suddenly been asked by social services to take full care of the children who previously lived with their mother. Until things are sorted out he had none of the money that should be payed to someone caring for children, and due to bad advice he is temporarily not receiving the benefit he was previously getting while unemployed. A bad situation but not one that made me burningly angry until I was making up my records and I saw that social services have made a child protection plan that actually appears to plan for this situation. Their GOOD scenario appears to be that he care for the children on an income that is 1/6 the recognised subsistance level the government will normally guarantee for people, and is also paid entirely at the whim of the person who has just been found not to be responsible enough to care for the children.

They could have helped him sort out the benefits. They could have just given him money.
Really every dealing with them makes me fear for the safety of children in our area.
Victoria J
Unbelievably petty theft.
So the seaside town where we were staying has a single small amusement arcade by the seafront. Some fruit machines, some fun games (we all tried a motorcycle game with my father helping steer my sister's by holding her bike up) and a little mini-bowling game my sister loves. There are also a whole lot of those games where you drop coins in and they're shoved into piles of coins which may or may not cause some of the pile to fall into a slot for you.
SC was interested in the last.
I first became aware of him while I was trying to play pinball. There was only one pinball machine and I was happily minding my own business when he kind of appeared in my elbow space.
Next to me was a big machine with 4 separate pile-of-coins games in it. Despite there being 4 and no one else playing he had to be at the one next to me. And within seconds he was thumping the machine really hard trying to dislodge coins. He annoyed me there for about 5 minutes -a whole lot of thumping, maybe 2 coins dropped in. Then he wandered off thumping all the other games, and going around the building thumping them.
About 5 minutes later we're playing bowling. This is directly acroos from the original game.
Back wanders SC. He's still thumping games on and off. Then he wanders off and comes back with a manager and seems to be arguing that it's eaten some coins (I can see but not hear). The machine is opened up and he gets a couple. As soon as the manager goes he's back to his round of thumping.
Then he comes back and puts his hand up to the back of the machine and PULLS the whole thing forward. Back to thumping.
The last straw for me was a few minutes later he does the same thing after looking round, running his eyes right across mine and deciding it's fine as I don't work there.
I am not your conspiritor.
I went and spoke to the guy at the change counter (who was nice and kept having to retrieve stuck bowling balls for us) who got the manager. The manager was a bit confused thinking I was saying the man was bothering me - but ended up throwing out the guy out. Along with what appeared to be his wife, wife's friend and their baby in it's buggy !
A couple of the machines are10p, but almost all are 2p. All that to steal less than a handful of 2p pieces.

A small group of teenagers overheard him getting banned. They deliberately tilted the machine in front of the manager - obviously joking. They knocked out a fair number of coins though, which SC hadn't really seemed to. They were obviously local and got thrown out for the night only.
I felt a bit uncomfortable - that old school thing about not telling tales. And because the whole thing was a bit stressful for my sister, but I also don't want her to see people stealing and getting away with it.
What I couldn't believe is that they don't have the machines alarmed.
Petty Theft
Today I popped into the supermarket on the way home from work. I really am broke, and I have a tiny bit of cash, less than £10 in my account and I'm not paid until Monday. So I wanted to make sure I didn't get more than the money on my card, and didn't get much less either. And as I was slightly embarrassed about paying for the small amount with my card I went to the self checkouts even though they seemed the busiest.
The man at the nearest till rang through his stuff, then he appeared to be getting ready to pay. Then the machine was having problems, he'd placed his large bag on the thing while, apparently, looking for his wallet, then he was leaving as if everything was sorted.
So I moved to use the machine and it showed as ready to pay for his items.
There was no member of staff available, and it took me a bit of time to work out what happened. Thinking about it I think it was very deliberate - he put the bag up to test whether anyone would notice the error messages and walked out as soon as it was clear no one was paying attention. Of course it could just be some machine error...
I used the next available machine and everone avoided that one for a while. When I was leaving the self checkout staff where still not there (I saw them but always doing something away from the actual checkouts) and I think eventually a customer cleared the machine to do their stuff.
The total _ £11.
I didn't know if I should have said something, but the machine had been cleared and I was a bit annoyed about the lack of staff. I didn't want to get stuck there for ages (after 2 extra hour at work), and I didn't want to wrongly accuse someone. I think I probably did the wrong thing though

Bonus - highlight of my day.
My heart sunk today to see all our customers coming in with children now the school holidays are here. They can have to wait a couple of hours to be seen, and often talk about stressful and personal stuff.
However I completely wanted to take home my customer's children. She was asking about disability benefit for her daugher - and while she was trying to explain the difficulties the girl was having the girl wanted to tell me how well she was doing


There were only 2 chairs in my room, other than mine, and the little girl stood even though I did say we could get another one. When I went out of the room and came back very often children will steal my chair but she was still stading there. Next time I wentout I told her she could sit there - and return to her grinning at me and saying she'd been sitting there. We agreed I have the best chair (the only swivel chair which is why children always want it).
They were just great children.
Bonus - what makes my blood boil.
I have a bit of a contradiction in that I can be unbelievably patient with people, or extremely harsh. At work I am normally patient with the customers (particularly with regards to ignorance, which I see as just something that needs a bit of information to correct, and never ever judge people for what they didn't know), and keep my nurning anger for some of the organisations that my poor customers have to deal with.
Most of the organisations we have a sometimes adverserial relationship with are actually pretty good and clearly staffed by quite nice human beings. The exceptions are the councils homelessness service, and (really sadly) the social workers dealing with families and children.
Today I was helping someone with welfare benefits - a separated father who has suddenly been asked by social services to take full care of the children who previously lived with their mother. Until things are sorted out he had none of the money that should be payed to someone caring for children, and due to bad advice he is temporarily not receiving the benefit he was previously getting while unemployed. A bad situation but not one that made me burningly angry until I was making up my records and I saw that social services have made a child protection plan that actually appears to plan for this situation. Their GOOD scenario appears to be that he care for the children on an income that is 1/6 the recognised subsistance level the government will normally guarantee for people, and is also paid entirely at the whim of the person who has just been found not to be responsible enough to care for the children.


They could have helped him sort out the benefits. They could have just given him money.
Really every dealing with them makes me fear for the safety of children in our area.
Victoria J