On Saturday I was lounging around in bed watching DVRed episodes of History Detectives, when I heard the distinct sound of someone turning my doorknob. This was a shocker since I live alone and wasn't expecting anybody. Luckily my door was locked; I don't always lock it when I'm at home. I threw on some pants (because who wears pants when watching History Detectives anyway) and snuck over to the door to see what was up. Nobody was there, but some jagoff had left a card for tree-trimming or something like that. Now, whether he was actually turning my doorknob or not, I can't say, but it left me a little nervous. Later, I was reading a different forum when someone said that they had left their door unlocked and gotten all their stuff stolen, and other apartment-dwellers chimed in to say that people try apartment doors all the time. I am not sure what would have happened if I were actually home, but now I'm quite a bit more wary of Jose's Tree Service. I don't even have any goddamn trees, it's an apartment. FOCUS: Have you ever gotten any shit stolen? What was it? Did you make it easier on the thief accidentally (e.g., did you leave the door unlocked)? Did you plot revenge on the thief, find him pawning your stuff on Craigslist, and then channel Nettdata and punch him with OVER 9000 PSI of power? ALT FOCUS: Have you ever stolen shit? Tell us what paltry things you have taken that were worth an eternity of torture and agony in hell.
FOCUS: Have you ever gotten any shit stolen? What was it? Did you make it easier on the thief accidentally (e.g., did you leave the door unlocked)? Did you plot revenge on the thief, find him pawning your stuff on Craigslist, and then channel Nettdata and punch him with OVER 9000 PSI of power? Yes. We've been burgled twice (4 days before Christmas in 1991, nice. and August 2005). In the first robbery, my mom got ALL of her jewellery stolen that she wasn't wearing (all stuff my dad had made for her for birthdays, anniversaries, etc. - +- 15 years worth of stuff at that point. Yes, my father is a manufacturing jeweller, so it was all gold stuff, mostly 18ct. Yellow gold I think.). My dad also had his .303 SMLE stolen (he kept the bolt somewhere else - enjoy your wooden club, dumbfucks - apparently the gun was later recovered by the Police and destroyed. Nice.). Surprisingly, they left my 3 week old PC and all my stuff. After the first robbery, we had a security gate fitted, in addition to the Yale lock on the door and the regular door lock. The second robbery was the one where I got fucked. All of my Nike tracksuits were stolen (I had 4 of them) and a few of my t-shirts, trousers, etc.. Bear in mind Nike stuff here is all imported and it's about $80 a tracksuit. The one tracksuit was only 2 months old! They got everything down to the curb before being disturbed and then they bolted with MY stuff and left everything else, including both PCs. They managed to kick in the window burglar bars and entered through there, destroying the lock on the security gate on the way out by kicking/bashing it until it gave way. The kicker? My mom wouldn't file anything with the insurance company (we have household coverage and they were listed items) because she didn't want the premium to go up. Thanks, now I just have no fucking tracksuits when it gets cold. I haven't bothered buying anything else because I know if it gets stolen, I'll be the only one whose wallet gets fucked. It's nice having parents who don't give a fuck about your stuff, especially when it WASN'T THEM WHO FUCKING PAID FOR THE ITEMS IN THE FIRST PLACE - all those items came out from my pocket money for chores and whatever odd jobs I'd done. I'll remember when I get burgled and if any of their stuff is there and gets swiped to not file "because I don't want the premiums to go up". The cops never caught who it was either time, despite the second robbery having huge handprints ALL OVER my cupboard door revealed by fingerprint dust. Nice of them to clean off the fingerprint dust once they were done. Cunts. That was fun day's cleanup time - do you know how hard it is to remove fingerprint dust with normal household cleaners? It SUCKS. So, no revenge on thieves. My dad *thinks* he knows who committed the first robbery, but can't prove it. Typing any more will give me a thrombosis, so I'm going to stop.
I had my first apartment broken into my sophomore year of college. Our buddy's cousin grew up in a shitty part of town (Norwood, or Norhood as it's called) and been in jail for assault. He seemed shady but was a nice enough guy and our buddy vouched for him before this. We had been out drinking before and his buddies crashed on our couch, I had thrown my wallet on our coffee table as I had always done only too find it missing the next morning after they left. This guy swore up and down he didnt think they did it until someone called me after finding most of the contents of my wallet strewn on an off ramp to fucking Norwood. He confessed they had probably done it. We barred him from our place after that. But he had been bowling with us and new our routine of going on Tuesdays (college night). So we suspect it was him and his buddies. We had two keys for our door, one for the deadbolt and one for the knob. My roommate had lost his one for the dead bolt and had just been locking the knob as he was too lazy to get a copy. As we arrived home that night he was ahead of me and shot me a half knowing half freaked glance when the deadbolt was locked. I opened the door and they had cleaned out my computer, my PS2, my first bowl and and my roommates bowl, and a case of DVDs. The back door was wide open and they had gone out that way. Other than the unlocked deadbolt my computer case was a custom one my brother had made me, it had a sweet carrying handle that must have made it a breeze carting off. Since my roommate had gotten a DUI/possession charge earlier that year as well as a drunk and disorderly conduct charge he was on weekly random testing. He was freaked out that the police would bust him since we had the stereotypical college fireplace mantle lined with booze bottles. He left me there too call the police myself and give the report. I told them who we suspected did it and gave the dudes name. They didnt find any finger prints (though it wouldnt have mattered much since they had all been in the apartment in the prior 3 months) and really had nothing to go on. We totally cut off contact with the kid. For about a year the investigator called me periodically fishing for information on they guy since he'd been busted with drugs before and was hoping to nab him again dealing. Having totally disassociated myself from the guy I never had anything new or useful. Our buddy was actually pissed we suggested his cousin was in on it too the cops. Whatever the dude was a white trash loser. It could have been worse, that same year a rapist was breaking into houses in our neighborhood and forcibly assfucking dudes. One was on the next street over not 50 yards from out place. It took them 3 or 4 years too catch the guy... Or it could be even worse and I could have Durbanites life...
FOCUS: I use to keep my wallet in my backpack when I partied in college because I figured it could fall out of my pockets or easily get picked by someone. Not sure how they did it or how they knew that's where I kept it, but someone managed to open up my backpack and fish around to snipe it in the little nook I kept it in while I was wearing it. College kids are assholes. More recently I decided to pick up snowboarding. Now more rational people would rent a few times and maybe take up lessons, but I was determined so I bought a brand new board, boots and bindings. I've been a skier since age ten and never once had anything missing, but the FIRST DAY I go snowboarding it gets stolen. I guess you could say I made it easy on them since I left it unlocked on the rack, but so does everyone else. I took it as a sign and never tried again. ALT FOCUS: I've mentioned these before, but - College accidentally gave me double the dining dollars I ordered, hello sushi everyday for lunch. My first job out of college accidentally gave me just under a grand in an insurance premium refund that should have been about $10, hello big screen tv. I feel bad about the college one since even though they raped me (well, my parents) on tuition that's what we signed up for. I feel a whole lot less bad about the job though, they probably fucked me out of around three grand while I worked a job that was contractually in a higher pay scale than I was receiving, plus I probably would have gotten one of my friends fired or severely disciplined if I pointed out the error.
We've been rolled at work. What was probably some kids climbed up on the first storey roof above the child care centre below us, broke a window and got in. The walked past thousands in server equipment and only stole a router and a mini stereo. Trashed the place a little. I've never had a house of mine broken into, but the front door is always locked when it's closed. Even if it's open, I've got triple bolted, stainless steel security screens. Unfortunately, those couldn't stop some thieving bastard from unscrewing and stealing the bonnet protector from my car.
Kind of a timely thread since I woke up this morning to find our back door wide open. My husband is out of town so it is just me and my killer attack shelties, so I am choosing to believe that it blew open. Not too far fetched since there is something wrong with it and the wind can blow it open if the deadbolt isn't locked. Fortunately everything looks in order, and while my shelties may not look vicious I know they would raise quite the commotion if somebody came in the house. They didn't make a peep. My apartment in college got broken into twice, it was kind of a shitty first floor apartment. The first time I was at home in the living room with my roommates when somebody slit the screen to my bedroom window and just swiped a handbag I had in there. Fortunately it was not my "daily" so had nothing of value in it. Kind of scary that we were home while they did it. Also scary realizing how easy it was to get in. We didn't have central air, and this was Virginia so the option was to sweat our asses off with the windows closed or risk providing easy entry. I started sleeping at my boyfriend's place more often after that. The second time, same thing, except this time nobody was home and they stole the standard stuff just laying around and then went in our kitchen and took all of our FOOD. Yeah, I moved to a third floor apartment after that year.
Only you would start a thread....about crazy/funny behaviors....That you read about on the Internet! Did you feel all mischievous? Imagine...stranger danger at your very own house! Man, wouldn't that like be, crazy, if we drank that beer?? If we like, tried smoking?! When our parents aren't around? Focus: Right around the time a dude who regularly dealed weed to survive (after he was fired from Red Robin or some restaurant) moved into our house...I started lockin my door. It was summer 2010 and people in the house were desperate to find subletters for the summer. Now, I made friends with this mofo....he seemed nice enough even if he was dealing out of our damn kitchen and drinking/smoking himself into a coma every night. And if he had tried coke, shrooms, heroin, LSD and every drug out there...and liked them all. It was when he owed a big nasty tempered dude (another dealer) a sizable amount of money ($600) that he decided to get the fuck out of town before he ended up hurt. On the way, he swiped items of value from every room and tenant (laptops, electronics, DVD, bottles etc) in the house.... ...except mine. Phew.
Maybe my apartment is an anomaly, because I've never had anything stolen and no one's ever tried to see if my doorknob was unlocked (and it frequently is unlocked when I'm inside). Fuck, once I came home from the bar and slept with the door practically wide open and everything was still there in the morning.
I think I've mentioned my teenage kleptomania, so I'll talk about being stolen from. It was in college, and I had three roommates. There was the girl I shared my bedroom with, and two other girls who shared the other bedroom. It was the start of spring break and my bedroom-mate and I were packing up our cars. We thought the other two were in the apartment, so we left it unlocked. From the time it took me to walk to my car, pack it up, and get back to the apartment, someone had gone into my apartment, stolen about 20 of my DVDs (just the discs. They left the cases), some jewelery, cash, and an IPod from my roommates. It took me about a year to figure out that my three roommates probably stole the DVDs. One distracted me while the other two stole my discs. They were all drug addicts who couldn't keep a job, so I'm assuming that's what happened. Do you think I'm being paranoid?
About 10 years ago, there was a rash of thefts in the area by someone entering homes during the day through either open house doors or open garage doors. Went on for a few weeks and the incidents were happening in more than just one town. I remember commenting to my father-in-law (a retired cop) that more than likely, the thief will eventually hit the wrong house and be greeted by an armed homeowner. Sure enough, about a week later, two thieves were apprehended after entering a home through an open garage door and were subsequently shot by a 9mm-toting homeowner. Working from home, I usually left our garage door open during the day as my home office window faces out to the driveway, but when those thefts made the news, I got into the habit of keeping the garage door closed. My neighbor didn't. Their house is on the corner lot and their garage faces onto the side street we live on. The wife parked the minivan in the garage, left her purse and other shit in the van and the garage door open. Broad daylight, someone pulled into their driveway, cleaned out not only her van, but all of her husbands tools and shit from the garage (of which he had a lot--he's the neighborhood Tim-the-Toolman Taylor.) Between our alarm system (which is wireless) and the dogs, I really don't worry about it. Even the guy who's been servicing our pool for 10 years can't go into the yard if the dogs are out. Our lab had a meter-reader pinned to the fence one time. I guess the "Beware of Dog" sign on the gate wasn't explicit enough.
Focus: I live in a fairly cool part of midtown Atlanta called Inman Park. This was the first house I had lived in since high-school. I always lived in condo's or apartments, and never felt anything but safe because no one could ever get past the front desk. Foolishly, when I moved into my current house, I assumed it was safe. The first thing to be stolen was my mountain bike and they scratched my SUV getting the bike out of the garage. Okay, lesson learned? Nope. A few months later, I was working in my new pond out back with the football game BLARING from the patio speakers, when I heard my neighbor yelling. I had left the garage open to get to the pond cleaning stuff and some ass-hat decided it was open season on the ex's car - in the middle of a sunny Sunday afternoon! The neighbor saw him enter the garage and start rifling thru her glove box. He called the police and they got him a few blocks away. This idiot could hear me, the game playing, and my 120 lb attack dog going nuts thru the fence, but he still had the balls to do what he did. It took my neighbor yelling for him to run. Now, I don't even shut my back gate if I am out there working and the garage is open. If some fucker can get past Teufel #4, me and all the guns throughout the house, he's earned whatever he can steal. Maybe I am paranoid, but I never assume I'm safe and I always close and lock my doors now. Sad.
A few years back, I had my car broken into the night before Christmas. They broke the door handle and then tried to steal the car by jamming something into the ignition to get it started. Luckily, it was a shit ride and I had to disconnect the battery every night so i could start it in the morning. They didn't get away with the car, nor anything else for that matter, but the feeling of intrusion and helplessness was unreal. About a year and a half after that, my job site in Portland got hit. Our storage locker which held all of our tools got broken into. We lost almost $12,000 dollars in one night. It was all covered by insurance and we got new stuff but that really sucked. There is kind of an odd bit about that though. It had sat unlocked the entire weekend and when we came in Monday morning everything was there. Then Tuesday morning rolls around and they broke into it. Cut the lock on our fork lift, hot wired the fucker, chained it to the door, and peeled it open like a fucking can of sardines. That still pisses me off.
FOCUS: I've had ~$250 stolen out of my wallet while I was at a house party and in the hot tub. Not too long ago I had an expensive pair of sunglasses, an ipod/iphone car charger and some other stuff taken out of my car at a bar. They did leave my backpack though which had my laptop in it[I forgot to take this out of the car]. I don't lock the doors on my vehicles. If someone wants to steal stuff it's nothing for them to break a window. ALT FOCUS: I have a collection of pint glasses from bars. If they have cool logos or sports teams on them I'll snag them every once in awhile. Also, bar coasters if they are in nice condition. I collect them and put them under glass to make cool tables. Usually I can just ask for them though.
I had someone break into my car while at school last year by breaking the window open. The only valuable things inside the car were a CD playing system that I had installed (2000 Chevy Cavalier), my GPS in the glove box, and the car itself. Apparently they were after the CD player, because while they didn't take mine (which isn't surprising, as it's an absolute pain to put it in, nearly impossible), they did break another person's window a few cars down and make off with his. Stupid thief. If you're going to break a window and not run off with the CD player you were sizing up, at least take a glance into the glove box. As it stands, all I got out of the incident was having to replace the window that my insurance didn't cover, and assurances from campus police that they would look into it. Never heard anything about it.
We leave the doors unlocked here, because well, we're in the country, and there is almost always someone home. Besides, we've only had one break-in in our town in the last 4 years. Plus, we have 3 dogs totaling close to 200 pounds. When Tonka is full grown, he'll be between 140 and 200 pounds by himself. Nothing deters thieves like dogs (particularly Mastiffs), especially when there are other houses down the road with no dogs.
Senior year of college, I was forced to take a 12 mo lease on an apartment with a friend, the lease ran August to August. After I graduated in May, I had to go to Officer Candidate School for my Marine Officer training, and as a result, had to sublease my apartment to someone. So I surf around and find a decent enough guy whom my current roommate approves of and we sign the paperwork. About halfway into June, I get a voicemail from the leasing company saying that the subleaser didn't pay rent this month or his portion of May's rent. I'm at OCS and I only have access to my phone for 20 hours per week, so I can't figure out anything as to what's going on. Anywho, I tell my dad, who is a former Marine, and he calls the subleaser and bitches him out for like an hour about responsibility and keeping your word. The kid ends up paying his 3 months worth of rent within the week soon after. A month goes by and I get a call from my friend/roommate who is still there living with subleaser, the voicemail says that my 360 console itself, no cords or games, and one controller have gone missing and subleasers ps3 console has gone missing also from the apartment. The call comes on a Monday after my friend/roommate was away the whole time and subleaser was the only one there. Also, I have a 50in tv in the apt, my roommate has his laptop, ipod and his ps2 also there, but those things were left untouched. Subleaser says that someone must have broke in and taken the stuff, but claims that all the doors were locked and the windows were intact. I call his bluff and say something like this: "So someone jimmied the door lock, took just the two consoles and 1 controller, left the huge fucking tv, laptop, and other expensive items, then locked the door and left?" Seems kind of ridiculous if you ask me. Anywho, the kid never confessed to it because he's a prick and I stand by my assumption that he stole my shit and almost stole my money.
I had six pot plants stolen from my garden by my neighbour. Since you can't exactly call the cops about something like this and he cowardly denied it when I confronted him face to face, so I filled a spray bottle with Diesel and layered his entire bak lawn at 2 in the morning while he slept. After three years, he probably still can't grow anything back there and I sure as fuck HOPE SO. I have zero tolerance for thieves, and I never will. I already caught somebody breaking into cars on my street last year and thrashed him. I called the cops three times before taking action, they refused to help every time, stating there's nothing we can do unless we pretty much caught him ourselves. To serve and protect my ass. Your Canadian tax dollars at work, folks.
My dad is a piece of shit. When I was 12 I got this fucking awesome bicycle for Christmas that was all big and black and went really fast and stuff. My dad worked nights managing a movie theater, so was usually home after I was in bed. One night he must have forgotten to close the garage door, due to being stoned while working, so the local shithead kids who cut through our yard and its creek to go do whatever the local shithead kids did back in those days stole the bike. Needless to say it was never seen again. I'll add that to the $60 he owes me for the broken window he borrowed money for, plus the immeasurable compensation that I'll never see for the fact that I was unlucky enough to be the recipient of his cursed genes.
My ex stole my dog and I'm 99.9% sure after we split he found out where I'd moved and stole my Z using a spare key I never got back, drove it like a nascar for about a week and dumped it. Why? Because there was no evidence of break-in and there was a creepy rose in the glove box. Creeper. He also stole my virginity. I should have listened to my Mother when she said she didn't like the guy. It would have saved my quite a bit of heartache and being stalked. I was fucking stupid.
Over the course of the last few years I was at my dad's before moving out, my clothes constantly disappeared. I wasn't allowed to touch the laundry machines for some reason, so I would leave my clothes in the hamper, and get half of them back. That was great. A few years ago a buddy of mine came back from the Navy - apparently they don't like it when you have coke in your system, especially when you're high on it when they surprise you with the test. We hung out for a bit and he left. The next day, my stereo was gone. I know it wasn't random, because my dad's house is in a nice neighborhood, and no goddamn one is going to break into a shitty-looking 89 Buick expecting to find anything of value. As for my own thieving escapades, I'm guilty of stealing Black and Milds from a local convenience store at the age of 14. I was an idiot, but what 14 year old isn't? Since then the only thing I've stolen was a key from Walmart. They had recently fucked me out of a job that I desperately needed (the fact that I was working there to begin with should make this going without saying) and I got an employee to make one for me. After waiting ten minutes for the three employees chatting by the automotive area register to stop ignoring me and ring me out, I said fuck it and left. Fighting the man or something.