Cunning Stunts

[Becks]

But ask me one day how I made the police report as an unnamed victim--sans clothes.

Jester, consider yourself asked.

[Jester]

Jester, consider yourself asked.

*sigh*

Well, I had recently started to get involved with a girl. After several drinks that night, she and I decided we wanted to go skinny dipping. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Where we decided to go skinny dipping was a local guesthouse whose outside gate didn't really lock. At all. Figuring we would just have some fun and not bother anyone, we didn't see a problem with using their pool, even though we were not guests at this particular guesthouse. I know I'm not the only one here that has gone "hottubbing" with friends or used pools or hot tubs of a hotel/guest house/apartment complex that I wasn't staying at/living at, right? Right.

Anyway, we're having some fun, just minding our own business, not bothering anyone, when out of the corner of my eye I see a dude walking through the pool area. No big deal....until he starts running. And that's when I realize: he has our clothes. And in our clothes are our keys. Our wallets. Our money. Our cell phones. Everything.

By the time I get up and get after him, dude is gone. All girl and I are left with are our towels. But we have no keys to vehicles to get anywhere. We have no money. We have no phones to call anyone. And it is late at night (3 am or so), and we are technically trespassing. But we have just been robbed. So, in this situation, what do you do to summon the police?

If you said "pull the fire alarm" you are thinking the same way my date was. Her comments later were "well how the hell else was I supposed to get the police there?!?!?" Crude, perhaps, but very, VERY effective. The firemen were quite amused by the situation, it being a slow night for them. (It being a small town, I have run into that same fire chief since, much to his amusement.) The cops were somewhat less amused, but still fairly entertained by the logic of my date.

Police took the report, allowed us to use their cell phone (I called my roommate to bring me a spare key to my truck), and everyone went home. The manager of said guest house asked us to leave, but did so politely, and we were not charged with trespassing, as the front gate was NOT locked. (The cops just walked right in without having to enter the code to the lock, so they knew we were telling the truth about that.) The manager's whole thing was that he did not want to publicize to the other guests that had been (unhappily) woken up by the fire alarm knowing that a thief had been able to so easily gain access to the courtyard of the guest house.

The actual text of the article that appeared a few days later in the local paper's police report follows, with only certain names changed.

Crime Report, [Local Paper], Wednesday, June 22, 2005:
Au-natural pool crashers get fired up, pull alarm

[Paper] Staff

Officers responding to a fire alarm at [Guest House] on Friday morning at 3:39 a.m. encountered two naked swimmers who were fired up over their stolen belongings.
According to reports, Officers [Smith] and [Jones] walked into the pool area and met with the victims. They said they began swimming, in the nude, around 3 a.m. and left their clothing and personal belongings on a beach chair by the pool, according to the police
A man described as a 6-foot white male wearing a white shirt and khaki shorts and having dark hair and pale skin, started to watch them around 3:30 a.m., the pair told police.
They said he was smiling as if what he saw was funny and then he sprinted off in the bushes towards [Street Guesthouse is on], they told police. At the time, the victims did not realize that their belongings were gone. Shortly thereafter, they exited the pool and had a better idea about what the man had found so funny — he ran off with approximately $1,063 worth of their possessions. A cell phone was among the items stolen so they pulled the fire alarm to call for help, they told police.
The police searched the area but could not find the suspect or any of their belongings. Neither of the victims was a guest at the hotel.

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My mother had perhaps the best comment of anyone: "How are you going to become famous if they don't even mention your name?"

[Becks]

:snickering:

BTW, you DID say to ask you sometime, and I just couldn't pass that up.





Was your stuff EVER found?

[Gravekeeper]

Jester: You too were "fired" for excessive testicular exposure, were you?

<cough>

[Jester]

Was your stuff EVER found?

Actually, the next day our stuff was found ditched behing a local clothing store. We got everything back EXCEPT the cash (for each of us that was over $200!) and her watch. Credit cards having been cancelled, though, and us being out cash, the whole thing was still a nightmare. Entertaining in the telling, yes, but still not fun to have lived through.

The bright side is that a few days beforehand a friend of mine's houseboat had burned down to the waterline, and as they and their friends were digging through the rubble, someone brought in a copy of that paper, and everyone had their first good laugh since the fire. I was happy that I could bring some sunshine into an otherwise bleak place, even if it was something I didn't like going through.

Jester: You too were "fired" for excessive testicular exposure, were you?

No, as I didn't work there. (Yes, I know you are making a joke. Yes, I am answering the question literally.)

[Becks]

Glad to know you got most of your stuff back, sad to know that you were out of money, glad to know that you brightened up people's lives.

[Gravekeeper]

These days if my wallet was swiped I'd be ecstatic if I got everything back but the cash. If they get your ID then its just the beginning. Although, ironically, I actually don't carry my cash in my wallet even if I have both on me....

I'd like to say its some sort of elaborate plot whereby if my wallet is stolen I'm not out cash and if I'm mugged I can throw out the cash so I'm not out wallet. But in reality I'm just too lazy to dig out my entire wallet when pulling a bill from my back pocket is more convenient.

No, as I didn't work there. (Yes, I know you are making a joke. Yes, I am answering the question literally.)

Alas, my rim shot hath been derailed.

[Shengirl]

then there was the time when one manager, wearing a winnie the pooh suit, jumped out at the cartwheeling manager and scared the bejesus out of him.

Sitting in a quiet laboratory here, you just made me burst out laughing. Now the grad students are giving me funny looks.

Two slightly outrageous things I can think of happening at the grocery store:

1) An undercover cop had followed a suspected shoplifter into the store...and tackled him when he tried to shoplift again. Then, what seemed like the entire grocery crew jumped on the dogpile. The MOD at the time just stood at the end of the aisle with his thumb up his @**, no clue what to do. When viewing the security tape later, we decided to dub him saying, "That's not standard practice!"

2) The MOD and other workers trapped a shoplifter in the vestibule until the cops could get there. Which took at least 20 minutes. It was like having stocks in the front of the store.

"You can't use that door."
"Why not?"
"She's a shoplifter."
::guilt-inducing glare::

Her heroin-taking boyfriend was too high to even flee the scene.

[aqutalion]

Alas, I don't have any stories that can top what's already been stated, but here are some:

I was working as a cashier at a McD's. My shift had just ended, and I'd gotten my coat from the locker at one end of the counter and was heading for the exit at the other end. On the way out, I glanced back into the kitchen and happened to make eye-contact with one of the cooks. As soon as this happened, he burst out "Flaaaava flaaaaaaaaaaav" in an offkey wannabe-R&B-singer voice. I burst out laughing, as did the assistant manager standing nearby.
Okay, it's not as funny as jumping out in a Winne-the-Pooh suit, but it still makes me laugh when I think about it.

[allniter]

Lol. Off topic, but I believe the title is a Metallica album.

Actually it's a DVD/VHS concert recording from their Load tour. Pretty slick I might add.

[Lyger]

This wasn't one crazy stunt, but this co-worker of mine is certifiably crazy.

Coworker L is a complete emotional wreck. You could clearly tell that this girl spent a lot of time on the psychiatrist couch. L would often show up to work decked out in a shirt and shorts in the middle of December and then claim she was too cold... while I, a 300-pound fat guy, was bundled up in a long-sleeve shirt, wool jacket, long underwear, jeans, and wool socks.

She would often call people to "meetings," sometimes even including the boss, about how she was dissatisfied with our performance. This in spite of the fact that she did the least amount of work with anyone I'd ever seen, especially when another coworker, T, was on the schedule (the two of them were apparently close friends, but T would often get annoyed with the chatter interfering with work).

L would also find the strangest excuses to not come into work. Some were legit, including a few times she had a doctor's note. But if she could think of some excuse - ANY excuse - to take time off, she would call it in. She even faked a cold a few times to get out of it, riding her bike at least one full mile to tell our boss that she was too sick to move around for 4 hours... keep in mind that this was the woman who was always "dissatisfied" with the performance from the rest of the crew. Meanwhile, I've missed one day of work in the past 10 months, and I've come into work with a cold a few times.

And, best of all, L has some kind of personal feud going with the crew leader, P, after L was going on a politically-based or religiously-based rant (I don't remember which), and P simply chose to ignore her instead of getting in a long-winded shouting match with her about it. So all of a sudden, she accused him of being insensitive to her personal feelings, accused him of being part of the media "that is perpetuating the end of this country," and mostly, a sexist for not getting egged on by her. L even went to Boss Lady to complain, and after hearing testimonies from P and the two other crew members on shift at the time, Boss Lady did pretty much what P did at the time: ignore it. That is, Boss Lady shuffled the complaint into a little folder somewhere and locked it away, never to be seen again. L still shoots P a death glare and refuses to talk to him whenever she sees him, even on the shift.

In spite of all the trouble she gives us, L has been on the crew for a year and a half. Swap the "C" and the "ST" in the two words of this topic, and you've got my opinion of her.

[Pezzle]

I know this is an older topic but..

At Circuit City we have the Styrofoam Packing Olympics. This is where my technology supervisor gets a running head start and dives through a big piece of tv/promo/display packing styrofoam and does a roll at the end. Its on YouTube somewhere if I'm not mistaken. We jump over bulk stacks (during store hours!) and drop empty hard drive boxes with rattly metal bits in them in front of customers. We're regular goofs.

Infact today, my coworker and I had a staged Mortal Kombat fight, with the repetitive stances and nonfluid movements a la MK1-3... right in front of a customer waiting to get some merchandise from the front counter. Needless to say, he swore to come back just to see us.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

let's see...didn't actually SEE this, but got to deal with all the drama and aftermath of it...but when I worked at the casino somebody bombed our generator. The casino is on the Idaho-Nevada border, and is the only reason there's a small town there. The generator is huge, and it's a few miles away, out in the prairie desert, surrounded by fragrant sage. I mean it's out in the boonies. Someone went out there and planted a bomb on it and blew it up one night. We had no electricity for 3 days. Let me tell you, checking people in by candle light, in a DARK CASINO, with no gambling machines working, is just a heap of fun. They never did figure out who did it, either.

[blas]

A shirtless old man and a baby wearing only a diaper trying to get into the truck stop restaurant that I used to work at on an April afternoon in 2005.

Oh. My. God.

Jester, one of my neighbors told me that before our pool had a gate around it and a padlock, if non-tenants would sneak into the pool after hours, the little old man that checks the chemicals and does all the maintenance on the pool, well, he'd call the police and as soon as they'd show up, he'd turn on the pool lights, which basically illuminates INSIDE the pool and around it.

Yes, I may have some nosy neighbors at times, but in my opinion, it'll teach people to not sneak into our pool.

And of course, working 3rd shift, I miss EVERYTHING during the week at night. While the gate and the padlock do help out somewhat, they don't prevent college aged tenants from jumping over that gate for a midnight swim. I was also told by that same neighbor that back in June on a Tuesday night, some college aged kids that live in one of the buildings next to the pool had friends over and they decided to take a late night swim. Of course, little old man was awake, police were called, and as soon as the cops showed up, TA DA.......pool lights were on!

Unfortunately, thanks to all those stupid tresspassing idiots, the pool gets covered every night now.

[reformedwaitress]

So Jester told me I just HAD to post this one up. It wasn't so much a cunning stunt someone pulled in my store as a stunt that WE pulled in someone ELSES store. I bet you anything if the cashier had known this site was around he would have posted something to it about the "crazy psycho kids" that came in nearly nightly.

So let me preface this with a couple of things: 1) I'm a dork. 2) I'm a theater dork. 3) I'm a theater dork with theater dork friends. 4) I'm a theater dork with theater dork friends that all do improv (very well I might add). 5) We were all a little sleep deprived. College can do that to you.

It started innocently enough. My roommate and best friend (J) and I were in a show and we had to have British accents. At that point, I had done Ren Faires but she had not so we were "practicing". We would randomly fall into them, in class, in the theater, wherever. So one night, it was 2 am and we were hungry. Our friend (T) was with us as well and he was hungry. Now, when you don't have a car, there is very little foodwise close to campus. Wendys (closed), City Cafe (closed), Varsity (closed) and the BP (open 24 hours). So we went to the BP. J and I had fallen into our accents and T was just laughing at us.

Now there was this joke in our theater that T and I were going to get married. I can't remember for the life of me how it started, but it did, so on the way to the BP we started having a discussion about whether he could have strippers at his bachelor party. That turned into a "fight" by the time we got to the store. The late night cashier watched, very amused, as J and I took side against T in the discussion and then the cashier took T's side. Then we all left.

Well, apparently we were memorable. Cause a night or two later, the three of us went up there again, this time with our other friend (M) and the cashier remembered us. So J and I automatically fell into accents and we all fell into character (T and I as the engaged couple, J as the maid of honor and my best friend, M as the best man and T's best friend). Because these late night trips were not uncommon, and this guy apparently worked every night, it got to be a little soap opera. Just about everyone in the theater had a "part". There was "my brother", "T's sister", a couple of "bridesmaids", an "ex boyfriend" (my actual boyfriend at the time), and I can't even remember who else.

My favorite night was the night that the cashier "broke up the engagement". I had been in a the night before with another guy friend of mine and, when the cashier asked where T was, I said "Oh...he's sleeping..." and left it at that. So we went in the next night and the cashier said to T "So she left you sleeping last night?" and I went wide eyed and panicked and T looked at me and went "You left last night?" and it started this huge fight about how I'd gone out with D and blah blah blah and I finally said "If you won't trust me then I never want to see you again!", threw the "engagement ring" (prop from the show) at T and ran out the door, J on my heels. We barely got around the corner before we both broke down laughing and apparently the cashier freaked out.

He gradually was there less and less and we had finals and such, so it was really only the first semester of freshman year, but it was fun. I wish we could have gotten some of those BP runs on tape, cause they were pretty funny. But hey, we didn't hurt anything and we (I hope) amused an otherwise very bored employee, so I hope we weren't too sucky. I would love to do something like that again, but down here? Too small a town.