Man in orange Home Depot apron turns out to be air conditioner thief

#1

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/16/man-in-orange-home-depot-apron.html

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#2

I Love Larceny?

#3

I have an orange sweatshirt that I love wearing on weekends for yard work etc. I walked into a Home Depot one afternoon recently and I can’t tell you how many people came up to me asking questions. “Where’s hardware?” “Do you have wood stain?” On and on…

#4

Look like you belong and no one will ask questions. I like the geocaching and if I ever have occasion to try to find a geocache where there is too much foot traffic to not look suspicious – and I need to poke around some bushes or something – I don a high-vis green safety vest and no one has ever said a word.

#5

Orange apron to orange jumpsuit. Oh the irony hurts…

#6

Thievery is bad, but I do love it when a good plan comes together.
I think the primary downfall for most crooks is greed, though.

By the way, I wonder what happened to Shannon?

#7

#8

It’s so fucking hard to find someone to help you in Home Depot, at least in my neck of the woods, if someone is wearing a burnt umber pocket square, it’s worth a shot.

#9

these are not the air conditioners you are looking for…

#10

When i worked retail it wasn’t uncommon to have a bold shoplifter totally fill up their cart and try to casually leave the store. I’d say 90% of the time they’re obvious and caught red handed but there’s a few that don’t get noticed until the second they’re just outside the store.

#11

I seem to recall there was a case where some criminals, in order to steal a load of servers for the data, actually had a truck signwritten with the name of a fake haulage company, had company uniforms made, and turned up with pallet loaders. Nobody asked for identification.

#12

Plain stupidity may play a part in this also.

:slight_smile:

#13

Not that stupid, he got away with it the firs time.When I worked at walmart 20 years ago they were serious about keeping track of their vests. though I ended up taking mine home when I quit.

#14

This exactly, or simply walk out the front door with their stolen items in a Kmart shopping bag, not bothering to pause, just acting entirely normal. The dumb shoplifters were the ones who tried to stuff clothes in their coats, they always got caught.

And per this guy, if someone wearing a Kmart vest with a nametag had headed out the front door with a couple of air conditioners in a cart, I doubt I would’ve said anything, assuming they weren’t being all skeevy about it. We went through staff so quickly that I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. At a store as large as Home Depot I doubt many employees can keep track of who’s even on the floor.

#15

So. What are your ‘shopping’ plans?

:smirk:

#16

Well the ones from 20 years ago look nothing like today. But really, I am not big on stealing stuff…

#17

My guess is it’s either a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend whose nametag he stole.

#18

She’s dead, she smells so he really needed these air conditioners

#19

Its not “stealing”, it is “staff discount”. :wink:

#20

These kinds of stories can be seen as low level cons. We like to think of con-men as running complex schemes, but it’s all about building confidence. You can do it with a uniform, or just do it with an attitude.

A guy I worked with years ago (when we were in our 20’s and broke all the time) ate for free at a local chain coffee shop for months. The first time was an accident: he ordered a fancy sandwich and iced-coffee drink, went to sit down and eat it, realized he hadn’t paid and yet nobody said anything (there was a quirk in how the counter/cashier were situated.) So he did it again every day for months before they caught on (and then only made him pay for that one meal, though they probably suspected him of a lot more.) The fact that he ate in the store most of the time made it seem legit, so nobody thought twice.

At one of my old jobs this was referred to as “profit sharing.”