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I posted this one on the last boards before the last hack under the "shoplifting stories" thread, but I always like to tell it from time to time. With it being so slow today, I thought I'd tell it again. So, please indulge me if you will.
About a year ago, I got a call from my co-worker J. She was kind of distraught because someone had just stolen one of our demo units while she was helping other customers. It seemed that one of our alarms went off and she checked it and everything seemed kosher. Then when the dude that was hanging around the palms left he also left with one of our palms. She didn't notice because it was a Friday night and we tend to get busy. We also only have one person working a day, so she couldn't get a clear handle on things. She was upset and I told her not to worry about it and I'll replace the unit when i come in on monday. Till then maybe he'll be dumb enough to come back to the store. I didn't know how right I was.
So monday comes along and I replace the unit. Now, there is a special feature that the unit he stole had. It doesn't erase its memory if it runs out of power (older units had RAM while this was FlashRAM). Well, I put the new unit out and it was sitting there charging and the day was going by normally. Then, this dude shows up and he's acting kinda weird. I first shrug it off cause I was thinking "hey, this is SF...people are weird here" and kept onto my buisness. So, I see him fiddling with a pda and he's trying to plug it into one of our bases for an older device. I walk over to him and ask if he needs any help and there I see it. He's got a T5 (same device that was stolen) in his hands. He tells me that he's out of power and lost his charger and he couldn't find a new one to buy. This set off a red light because no one had chargers for this yet because Palm didn't produce them until the Treo 650 came out a month later (they share the same charger). So I ask to see the device and tell him I'll get it to charge.
I put it on our charger and go through the normal routine, telling him how sometimes it freezes and you need to soft reset it and blah, tech support, blah, blah. Then when it turns on I convince him that I need to look at it and make sure nothing is wrong with it. Right when it finishes loading I see something familiar. It's a program I put on the stolen Palm. Then I look at the pictures. Sure enough, there's J and myself in some of the pictures that are on the device as well as videos and music that we put there to showcase what the device can handle. I couldn't believe my eyes, this guy was dumb enough to come back to my store to charge the device that he stole from me. I know I'm not the same person who was working here, but seriously...who would do that? I then confront him on how he got the device.
He starts giving me the usuall run around. He bought it from some dude outside for $100. He found it. He has never been in this mall before and he didn't steal it. I tell him that it was reported stolen and that I will not prosecute him if he just leaves my store. I won't call security or the cops and he can get away scott free. He didn't want anything of the sort. He kept saying I can't take away his device cause he paid for it. I told him that buying stolen goods is ILLEGAL in this city and that I could prosecute him for not returning stolen property (I just wanted him to leave my store). We go on like this for a couple of minutes and I finally go to grab the phone and lock the device in our drawers. The moment I turn my back to access security's number I hear: BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! All I can think to myself is "
, he didn't do what I think he did..."
I turn around and there he is, ripping the cord out of the new model I put out this morning. This guy is seriously insane. I rush over to him and ask him for my unit back. He cries to me "it's mine!". No, it's not you foolish man, it's my store's give it back. He starts to say that it's his right to take it because I took his stolen palm away from him. I just about have it and I try to take it back from him. We scuffle a bit and I start herding him into a corner of the mall hoping that security will see what's going on or that one of the other stores will call someone and help out. No luck at that moment because he bolts away from me and runs to the exit on the opposite side. My stupid instinct takes over and I bolt after him. I'm running through the mall shouting "He stole my palm, someone stop him. Stop him he stole from my store" and no one helps at all. Even the two security guards I pass by fail to even try to stop him from doing anything.
I make one last ditch effort to grab him right before the exit. I jump and almost grab his jacket hood, but alas I almost hurt myself by falling down the small flight of stairs near the exit. My ego bruised, I return to my store and one of my friends from the perfume place has been watching over my store. Then a person from security comes and asks if I'm alright. I kind of give them my
face and start to call my boss to let him know what's happened at the store. Then, while I'm on the phone I look towards the exit and what do I see? Why, its the thief in handcuffs along with two cops and the vallet guy who caught him. Oh, I could have kissed that vallet guy if I wouldn't get sued for sexual harrassment 
.
So, I sit down with the cops and tell him everything that happened and he's crying about being caught. They give me the T5 and it's got a huge scrape mark from when the guy threw the palm underneath a car so he wouldn't get caught with it. Luckily it still worked, but I still had to figure out what to do with this guy. The guy basically kept sobbing the same stuff to the cops. "I bought it for $100/It's mine, he (me) stole it from me/I didn't do anything wrong." The cops gave him the same spiel I gave him, just in more coppy terms. Then the cops asked if I wanted to prosecute him. I turned to the cop and told him "hell yeah I want to prosecute him!". The thief looked at me and then started crying yet again. "No, please don't/You can't do this to me/I'll give it back" are just some of the things he said so I wouldn't prosecute him. I just looked him right in the face and told him "I wouldn't have done anything had you just given the palm back. Now your ass is going to jail and I have absolutely no sympathy for you." So he got dragged out of my store and then I wrote out my statement to the cops and was told to expect a court hearing.
A couple of months passed and I had to finally go into court to put this guy away. Well after sitting through multiple hearings, I got to talk to the prosecuter and he told us what was going down. Seems like this guy had tried to kill himself while he was under police custody and managed to only break his arm. To top it all off, he was wanted for: 1) Stealing a bike from a closed garage, 2) breaking into someone's apartment and living there for 2 weeks while they were on vacation, 3) stealing BART tickets from passengers before they left the turnstands and 4) for stealing a hotel room key that was found on him when the police caught him in my store. If that wasn't enough, he originally was here from a middle eastern country (never was told which one) on a work-visa and it expired 4 years ago. So, our store's theft was the tip of the ice-burg for him. Basically he was sentenced to 2 years of advanced psychiactric therapy and then after that was finished he was to be deported back to his home country for committing three felonies.
Since then I have only had a handful of people try to steal from me since then. Whenver someone asks if anyone has stolen from me I always reply: "Well, the last person who stole from me and tried to get away with it is getting deported. Do you really want to try your luck with me?"
Anyone else have some good stories?
About a year ago, I got a call from my co-worker J. She was kind of distraught because someone had just stolen one of our demo units while she was helping other customers. It seemed that one of our alarms went off and she checked it and everything seemed kosher. Then when the dude that was hanging around the palms left he also left with one of our palms. She didn't notice because it was a Friday night and we tend to get busy. We also only have one person working a day, so she couldn't get a clear handle on things. She was upset and I told her not to worry about it and I'll replace the unit when i come in on monday. Till then maybe he'll be dumb enough to come back to the store. I didn't know how right I was.
So monday comes along and I replace the unit. Now, there is a special feature that the unit he stole had. It doesn't erase its memory if it runs out of power (older units had RAM while this was FlashRAM). Well, I put the new unit out and it was sitting there charging and the day was going by normally. Then, this dude shows up and he's acting kinda weird. I first shrug it off cause I was thinking "hey, this is SF...people are weird here" and kept onto my buisness. So, I see him fiddling with a pda and he's trying to plug it into one of our bases for an older device. I walk over to him and ask if he needs any help and there I see it. He's got a T5 (same device that was stolen) in his hands. He tells me that he's out of power and lost his charger and he couldn't find a new one to buy. This set off a red light because no one had chargers for this yet because Palm didn't produce them until the Treo 650 came out a month later (they share the same charger). So I ask to see the device and tell him I'll get it to charge.
I put it on our charger and go through the normal routine, telling him how sometimes it freezes and you need to soft reset it and blah, tech support, blah, blah. Then when it turns on I convince him that I need to look at it and make sure nothing is wrong with it. Right when it finishes loading I see something familiar. It's a program I put on the stolen Palm. Then I look at the pictures. Sure enough, there's J and myself in some of the pictures that are on the device as well as videos and music that we put there to showcase what the device can handle. I couldn't believe my eyes, this guy was dumb enough to come back to my store to charge the device that he stole from me. I know I'm not the same person who was working here, but seriously...who would do that? I then confront him on how he got the device.
He starts giving me the usuall run around. He bought it from some dude outside for $100. He found it. He has never been in this mall before and he didn't steal it. I tell him that it was reported stolen and that I will not prosecute him if he just leaves my store. I won't call security or the cops and he can get away scott free. He didn't want anything of the sort. He kept saying I can't take away his device cause he paid for it. I told him that buying stolen goods is ILLEGAL in this city and that I could prosecute him for not returning stolen property (I just wanted him to leave my store). We go on like this for a couple of minutes and I finally go to grab the phone and lock the device in our drawers. The moment I turn my back to access security's number I hear: BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! All I can think to myself is "
, he didn't do what I think he did..."I turn around and there he is, ripping the cord out of the new model I put out this morning. This guy is seriously insane. I rush over to him and ask him for my unit back. He cries to me "it's mine!". No, it's not you foolish man, it's my store's give it back. He starts to say that it's his right to take it because I took his stolen palm away from him. I just about have it and I try to take it back from him. We scuffle a bit and I start herding him into a corner of the mall hoping that security will see what's going on or that one of the other stores will call someone and help out. No luck at that moment because he bolts away from me and runs to the exit on the opposite side. My stupid instinct takes over and I bolt after him. I'm running through the mall shouting "He stole my palm, someone stop him. Stop him he stole from my store" and no one helps at all. Even the two security guards I pass by fail to even try to stop him from doing anything.
I make one last ditch effort to grab him right before the exit. I jump and almost grab his jacket hood, but alas I almost hurt myself by falling down the small flight of stairs near the exit. My ego bruised, I return to my store and one of my friends from the perfume place has been watching over my store. Then a person from security comes and asks if I'm alright. I kind of give them my
face and start to call my boss to let him know what's happened at the store. Then, while I'm on the phone I look towards the exit and what do I see? Why, its the thief in handcuffs along with two cops and the vallet guy who caught him. Oh, I could have kissed that vallet guy if I wouldn't get sued for sexual harrassment . So, I sit down with the cops and tell him everything that happened and he's crying about being caught. They give me the T5 and it's got a huge scrape mark from when the guy threw the palm underneath a car so he wouldn't get caught with it. Luckily it still worked, but I still had to figure out what to do with this guy. The guy basically kept sobbing the same stuff to the cops. "I bought it for $100/It's mine, he (me) stole it from me/I didn't do anything wrong." The cops gave him the same spiel I gave him, just in more coppy terms. Then the cops asked if I wanted to prosecute him. I turned to the cop and told him "hell yeah I want to prosecute him!". The thief looked at me and then started crying yet again. "No, please don't/You can't do this to me/I'll give it back" are just some of the things he said so I wouldn't prosecute him. I just looked him right in the face and told him "I wouldn't have done anything had you just given the palm back. Now your ass is going to jail and I have absolutely no sympathy for you." So he got dragged out of my store and then I wrote out my statement to the cops and was told to expect a court hearing.
A couple of months passed and I had to finally go into court to put this guy away. Well after sitting through multiple hearings, I got to talk to the prosecuter and he told us what was going down. Seems like this guy had tried to kill himself while he was under police custody and managed to only break his arm. To top it all off, he was wanted for: 1) Stealing a bike from a closed garage, 2) breaking into someone's apartment and living there for 2 weeks while they were on vacation, 3) stealing BART tickets from passengers before they left the turnstands and 4) for stealing a hotel room key that was found on him when the police caught him in my store. If that wasn't enough, he originally was here from a middle eastern country (never was told which one) on a work-visa and it expired 4 years ago. So, our store's theft was the tip of the ice-burg for him. Basically he was sentenced to 2 years of advanced psychiactric therapy and then after that was finished he was to be deported back to his home country for committing three felonies.
Since then I have only had a handful of people try to steal from me since then. Whenver someone asks if anyone has stolen from me I always reply: "Well, the last person who stole from me and tried to get away with it is getting deported. Do you really want to try your luck with me?"
Anyone else have some good stories?
. Glad to hear I'm not the only one from out here
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