Stealing Shit

The only other time I stole something noteworthy was when I was blackout drunk. I was at a pretty shitty house party at this really wealthy guy's house and was drinking a box of wine with my friend. The last thing I remember from the night is trying to help my friend get off the roof (although neither of us could remember how he got up there).

Another friend who was the one who invited me came up to me in the morning and asked if we could give back all the wine that we stole. I didn't remember taking anything, but when we went out to my car, there were 5 or 6 bottles of very old and expensive wine. We happily gave them back and apologised, and left soon after.

When we got back to his house he went to get some of his stuff out of the boot (trunk) of my car and tells me to come and have a look at what is in there. Turns out as well as stealing wine, we had also stolen an airgun. My friend kept the gun, and the guy who's party it was never said anything about it.

Focus: Tell a story about something that you stole.

 

I don't steal shit, but I once inadvertently abetted in a theft. I was buying $2 worth of Xeroxed homework assignments at the campus note shop (required for class) with a friend who was a habitual offender. He had all the gas stations that let you pump first without paying scoped out so he could regularly pull, as he put it, "the gas and go." We were both in the same class and I was wondering why he didn't buy the notes also. He said he'd come back for them and that he didn't have the cash - I offered to loan it to him and he declined.

We get around the corner and he whips them out from under his sweatshirt. I was like "dude, what the fuck, it's like a dollar seventy. Seriously?" Seriously.

Many bowling alleys also engrave "stolen from Hackensack Lanes" or whatever on their house balls. This same guy had such a ball, which he claimed he bought off them, but I slowly came to realize that the engraving wasn't that far off the mark.

 

The only time I stole something sober was accidental. I was about 5 years old in a video game store in a mall reading Nintendo Power. I must not have been thinking because I rolled up it up and walked off with it in my armpit. The employee of the store chased me down in the mall, snatched the magazine from me and started screaming at me from stealing. My mother (did I mention she was with me the WHOLE TIME) also didn't notice I accidentally took it and laid into the asshole for berating a kindergartner for doing something they didn't even understand was wrong.

Even after she gave the guy the magazine back he still had a look of contempt in his eyes as if it was my personal goal to bankrupt his store through small time theft

 

From the "BANNED" thread:

 

I stole a golf club (Driver) by sticking it down my pant leg and walking out the store with a limp. I had everything planned out too. Walk in the store with a limp, walk out the store with a limp. The only thing I didn't consider was how my mom would loudly exclaim, "What's wrong with your leg?" at the exit. Luckily I didn't get caught and I was still able to still pull the club out in the car. I still remember her mortified gaze. I was such a preppy degenerate.

 

I was a klepto from around 5 to roughly 22.

I stole candy from gas stations, porn from movie stores (before they started putting the actual movies behind the counter), cd's and dvd's from roommates and friends.

It was never malicious. I would just see something I wanted and pick it up, and not think about it. Kid I knew in junior high, we went into a store, and as he walked out, the alarm went off. He looked chagrined, put a roll of bubble tape on the counter, said I'm sorry, and left with the rest of us. At which point he showered us with all the other shit he had stuffed in his pants and shirt. Bubble tape was the decoy, he probably stole $90 worth of shit from that store.

I quit stealing after getting called on it by a guy in C school (Navy thing) in VA Beach. It seems I appropriated one of his (unknown to me) autographed CDs. I liked it, played it in my car a lot for about 3 weeks. He heard me playing it (but never saw the actual disc), and assumed (rightly) that I had stolen it. I fended off accusations with half truths and denials, and everyone thought he was crazy, but I realized that I had gotten way too close to getting caught.

Haven't stolen anything since then, and I was 22 at the time.

Maybe sometime I'll tell you folks about my best friend and I's adventures attempting to be cat burglars whilst overseas, but I'm tired of typing right now...

 

You think I didn't hold back good stories? I'm willing to bet 95% of this board went klepto as kids.

 

I will tell my catburgler story tomorrow, when I'm sober enough to recount the details accurately....

(took me five minutes to type both of these sentences... God bless right click spell check)

 

I steal lots of things. I feel like this post could become braggish, but I'm really not, I know plenty of people who steal things basically just to say "OMG LOOK AT ME I STOLE THIS I LIVE ON THE EDGE (THE RAZOR'S EDGE)" and that's not me. That's not Payne.

Anyway, I've stolen pretty much everything imaginable from any of the big stores you can think of (Wal Mart, Target, department stores, grocery stores, etc). I'm not a klepto, I just don't like paying money for things because I never really have much of it. For instance, why would I spend ~100 dollars on a Halloween costume ensemble that I'm going to wear once? Especially when the price of the actual goods is marked up 1000% as it's manufactured by little Filipino children. It's how I give back, honest.

I think my favorite thing so far was walking out of Wal Mart with an entire table and couple of chairs. Most recently, two pairs of suspenders two days ago from Macy's. I'm never going to steal anything from an actual person/ mom and pop store or anything like that because I'd feel bad and that's definitely not cool, but I have no qualms with stealing from the likes of Wal Mart.

 

I've never shop lifted here in the states, but back in my tweens I stole anything and everything, regardless if I would use it. The main focus was on alcohol, lighters, and candy.

One strategy took four people and was reserved for mini-marts. Two kids would pretend to reason with another kid who giggled maniacally and slapped them. Once the employees were distracted, another would slip into the store's booze section and start loading his back pack. Now, the crazy kid would start knocking things over and hurling fruits at the floor. He'd sprint out of store and then while the other two paid for the fruit and profusely apologized the kid with the back pack would quietly shuffle out. Other times we'd take our parents' over sized jackets and load up the sleeves. This was usually done at a small store with only 1-2 employees. We'd spread out and just sneak whatever we could. This also had the highest amount of stolen goods that ended up in a trash can less than 200 yards from the store. Yeah, we were pretty fucking cool.

The biggest heist we ever tried was a vehicle they used to drive prospective tenants around my compound. Think of a smaller version of the tour buses you see in places like Orlando and San Francisco and you'll get the picture. How did we get the keys? I burned things to distract the guards while my friend stole them. Now that we had them we planned a big sleep over (yep!) with a few other friends who wanted in. We snuck out to the club house around midnight and fired it up. We were going to plow it straight through the compound gates and victoriously tour Beijing. Fortunately as we were approaching the gates and the guards were starting to swarm we all had the sense to bail at the last minute. We hopped the walls back to our friend's house and agreed there was only 2 ways that could have ended. Ass whooping from parents. Ass whooping and deported.

Never shop lifted here, but seriously, how often do those guys actually check your receipts? I thought they only did that at Sam's club. It's the beepers that you have to get around.

 

Shit, where to begin. When I was in high school, I drunkenly stole a lot of random shit just for fun.

Road signs, traffic cones, a penguin from some guy's lawn, various other lawn ornaments, potted plants, lightbulbs, the plastic trays from fast food restaurants, salt and pepper shakers, entire stacks of sweet and low packets, a jamba juice card, a bottle of Drambuie from some guy's parents' liquor cabinet (I didn't like him), car magnets..

..and my favorite: a chicken. There were chickens that would roam around freely at this park near my house, and we managed to capture one and put it in a box. We left the box in front of some girl's house, and the next time she saw us, she asked, "Did you guys leave a bloody chicken on my porch?" It was very, very hard to keep a straight face while denying that one.

I've also stolen a bunch of shit from Goodwill, since they get it for free anyway and I know a guy who works there.

The only thing I've stolen from a real store (besides candy from those giant bins) is a bottle of vodka. And I was such a nervous bitch when I did that. I remember planning the whole thing out, before grabbing the bottle, hiding in the paper towel aisle in order to tuck the bottle into my pants, and walking out.

One of my friends (who got out of jail last week for unrelated charges), on the other hand, had a different approach. He would walk into a store, grab two cases of beer, put them in a shopping cart, and walk out. He was caught about half the time, and would have to try a different store.

I feel like a pretty terrible person after this post.

 

I haven't stolen anything other than pens because copywrite infringement isn't theft.

 

I have something called a "conscience," and it's on overdrive. Meaning, for example, when I turned 21 and was legally able to buy booze, I'd still get nervous handing the cashier my real ID. I'm pretty sure if they tried to confiscate it I would have given it to them.

The closest I ever came to stealing was about two years ago. I was at WalMart getting beer and I ran into a girl I thought I recognized from my freshman year of college (which was in a different city, and several years prior). She wasn't physically attractive and I was engaged, but being friendly I went up to say hi and ask if it was her. She immediately freaked out as I approached, which I thought was weird, and got all nervous and jittery and tried to fake friendly (yeah, it wasn't my friend). Then she grabbed a bottle of cheap wine, stuck it in her large purse (where it clanked against a few others), said "we're cool, and you didn't see anything," and walked off.

She seemed like a sweet girl, and it took everything in my power not to tell a cashier what happened. I was literally biting my tongue.

I justified it in my head by saying it was cheap wine and the joke was on her the next morning, but I also realized that she had bigger balls than me.

I still feel terrible about not telling an employee.

[And not to get on a soap box, but you people who steal shit, are the reason why us normal people have to pay higher prices. Stealing valve stem covers or hood ornaments or whatever is funny, golf carts and shit like that too. But from department stores? From fucking good will? Fuck you.]

 

Yeah man, I love stealing from charities too.

 

Not very hard, you just walk straight out. As long as you look like you know what you're doing, nobody's going to say anything. Same thing that happens when the beeper goes off, just keep going and nothing's going to happen.

Yeah I don't really understand this either, you've officially missed the entire point of Goodwill.

 

I pretty much haven't stolen anything noteworthy since early college, and even then it was limited to telling my friends to buy some chips and bread while one of us crams dip/salsa/lunch meat in some hidden pocket or inside their pants. Also, that only happened while thoroughly intoxicated.

My most recent theft was a Vitamin Water from the refrigerator of a company I worked for...after my temp contract was up and I was not offered a full time spot. Take that! I also took all my business cards, since they have my cell phone #, in hopes of winning free chipotle or lunch elsewhere.

My most daring theft was much like the movie Ocean's 11 mixed with the classic tale of Robin Hood. Even though it was 6 or 7 years ago, I will still leave a shit ton out, sorry.

There was a huge scene in high school around local music. We would hit up concerts at small, local venues damn near every weekend, and deviate from that only when one of our favorite bands was in town.

2 bands in particular consisted of most or all of my friends in them, so I would see most of their concerts. Both of them bitched playing at Venue X because the human turd who organized these concerts barely covered gas money for the band. They did it for fun, and obviously with parental backing, but this guy was just a stingy douche who made about 2 grand every night off of 14 year old girls wanting to see shitty local bands.

We hatched this plan to swipe the cash box from one of his ball-sucking cronies. These kids were brown nosing pansies who probably got paid more a night to sit and slap on stamps or wrist bands than hard-working bands.

Let me break it down by position:

Me - The Driver (much like the Transporter movies)
Friend 1 - The Legs. His job was to swipe the box and jet to my car
Friend 2 - The Assistant. He had to ensure our safe getaway.

Legs comes up to the venue and up the stairs to the main concert area. He scopes it out, hood up and hat on, and purchases a ticket only when he realizes the kids working the door are scrawny shits and the box is not secured in any way. He runs back down to give the Assistant the news, and then tells me. I am parked about 75 yards from the door, and I had put on a bandanna over my license plate.

The plan is go. My heart is racing as Legs, a gifted cross country runner and gymnast, gracefully sprints back over to Assistant, who has a half stack on casters ready to deploy.

My job at this point is just to sit and wait by the semi-hidden gravel lot right by the road with my engine running and lights off. We didn't consider the fact that there may be traffic or even a cop car when I would have pulled out, but us thieves live life on the edge.

Legs recounted the story after we were far and away from that den of sin. He had walked up to the table with the money box while a band was playing and lights were dim. He paid for entry and after the kid put on Legs' wrist band, he shoved him and grabbed the money box. These kids didn't waste any time and began the chase. Legs leapt down the fairly long stair case in 2 mere gallops and Assisstant began carrying his half stack up the stairs.

The door guys didn't want to mow down a band member holding a 60 pound amplifier, and had to go around him, which was a much needed delay to pull this heist off.

Finally, I see Legs, gazelle-like, with a box of straight cash in his hands. I had prepped the back door to be open and even put piles of small gravel under my rear tires. The second he dove in my car, I floored it. A cloud of gravel and dust kicked up and we were off on the road.

A mile later, we pull over next to a police station of all things and take the cover off my plates. We then proceed to take back roads while counting the cash and dumping the evidence. We had a nearly 1k in that box, and my heart was still racing from the intensity of this getaway. We split it 3 ways and set aside a chunk to buy all of our friends at the show and everyone in on it playing scouting roles some California Pizza Kitchen and some handles of fine rum. At this point in our high school careers, Captain Morgan was unheard of since we mostly could afford Skol and Busch Light.

I haven't stolen anything significant since that night, and I haven't actually swiped something with a price tag in years since my intoxicated snack thefts.

I do still on a regular basis wind up with other people's lighters after a night of drinking.