shoplifting

Woebot

Well-known member
i want to hear gerard on this and also ome. theyve some very very funny stories.

dead tempting to tell everyone else's stories on this thread.

besides stealing records off friends. all "pretend" quasi-theft. quite gutless. the only incident is almost too pathetic to recount. but when did they ever stop me?

in wh smiths in cirencester i doctored the price tag on a rexel handheld tape print machine. remember the ones which issued that plastic sticky strip? i changed a £10 tag to £1. and the woman at the till just went "oh dearie i think the price tag on this has been damaged. let me get you another....."
 

jed_

Well-known member
jack said:
why is that?


they are small (and therefore easy to steal) and very expensive for what they are - something like £5 for 4 blades. of course they are too expensive and have a high mark up, this is why people steal them (in bulk usually, to sell on on market stalls etc.) but because they are stolen so often that drives the price up further. in many supermarkets now you can't even buy the things off the shelves, you have to take a card with a picture of the item printed on it to the checkout and they give you it once you have paid for it.

ahem, i saw this on TV and don't even (wet) shave. honest!
 

bassnation

the abyss
labrat said:
I was thinking about this recently when woebot said he'd nicked his copy of Art into Pop; Me too! back in the days before Waterstones had ''beepers''.
whats the best/craftiest bit of shoplifing you've done ?
what's the best thing you,ve nicked ?
dont worry i' not a copper!!!

DO A RUNNER
DO A RUNNER

as a teenager in south wales, we used to bunk off school, get the free bus to asdas (put on for the benefit of pensioners - suprisingly no-one ever questioned why some schoolkids were catching it) and then shoplift things like black forest gateau - the height of sophistication for us, anyway. we'd then eat the spoils in a local park. the larger and more ludicrous the item, the more kudos you'd get.

one of my mates nicked a 12" picture disk of michael jackson's "bad" from woolies- dodgy choice, but can't fault the execution.

never did it for money, or financial gain - just the pure arenaline buzz of doing something wrong. in agreement about not nicking from friends or family. having said, i used to nick the odd 10p to buy a single cigarette from the local newsagent when i first started smoking. obviously such days and exploits are long gone now.
 

bassnation

the abyss
dominic said:
i've always been pretty fearless & shameless when it comes to filching drinks

i.e., when i'm too brok to go out . . . . then get there and realize i need a few drinks

so people turn their backs or leave drinks unattended, which opportunities i then seize

the only real hazard is unwanted disease, sore throat

back in the pre-smoking ban days, there was the risk of cigarette ash in beer bottles

god, i remember people doing that. round my neck of the woods it was called SEP (someone elses pint). there would always come a point where somebody would nick the local pyschos drink which could be dangerous. funny how these things are never an issue when you have a proper income!
 

Lichen

Well-known member
Once stood guard outside a sport shop in Oxford whilst a scrotty little raver I'd met that day knicked loads of whistles to flog at a big rave we planned to hitch to that evening.

Mind you, I was wearing tennis shoes I'd knicked from my Dad (part of my Blue-Peterish raving costume) and had funded the trip on money lifted from another family member's bank account, so my account is far from clear.


Whistle posseeeee! :)
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
bassnation said:
god, i remember people doing that. round my neck of the woods it was called SEP (someone elses pint).
my midlands corrispondent informs me i'ts known as dreadnoughting in the black country.
 

PeteUM

It's all grist
labrat said:
my midlands corrispondent informs me i'ts known as dreadnoughting in the black country.

I'm guessing that's related to why we used to call it minesweeping, as in "That's mine, that's mine...etc"
 

zhao

there are no accidents
PeteUM said:
I'm guessing that's related to why we used to call it minesweeping, as in "That's mine, that's mine...etc"

you limeys have 3 nifty names for EVERYTHING don't you? haha... one of my buddies used to do that all the time... after last-call any glass with half or more than half in it would get rounded up and taken care of. as cracklicious as I used to be back in the art-college days, sight of that always made me wince a little bit
 

sufi

lala
locations of ancient woolworths stores follow precise geometrical pattern


matt parker, based in the school of mathematical sciences at queen mary, university of london, has analysed the locations of the 800 woolworths stores to reveal precise geometric patterns. This was based on the work of mr tom brooks (a retired marketing executive of honiton, devon) who found similar patterns in prehistoric monuments across the uk.

Mr brooks looked at 1500 sites and found that some of them follow geometric patterns and he concluded that they must have been part of a sophisticated navigational system. This was reported in the uk national press on 5 january 2010, with the daily mail reporting that the patterns were so “sophisticated and accurate” that “he does not rule out extraterrestrial help.”

matt parker then decided to apply this technique to another ancient and mysterious civilisation: That of the woolworths stores.

“we know so little about the ancient woolworth stores, but we do still know their locations” explains matt parker, “so i thought that if we analysed the sites we could learn more about what life was like in 2008 and how these people went about buying cheap kitchen accessories and discount cds.”

the results revealed an exact and precise geometric placement of the woolworths locations. Three stores around birmingham formed an exact equilateral triangle (wolverhampton, lichfield and birmingham stores) and if the base of the triangle is extended, it forms a 173.8 mile line linking the conwy and luton stores. Despite the 173.8 mile distance involved, the conway woolworths store is only 40 feet off the exact line and the luton site is within 30 feet. All four stores align with an accuracy of 0.05%.

The bisector of this same triangle then passes through the monmouth, west bromwich and alfreton store locations with an accuracy of 0.5%. There are also grids of isosceles triangles – those with two sides of equal length – on each side of the birmingham woolworths triangle. One such isosceles triangle made with stafford only has an error of 3% and it points directly at the northwich woolworths store that is itself only 0.6% off being exactly isosceles.

Matt parker concludes that “these incredibly precise geometric patterns mean that the people who founded the woolworths empire must have used these store locations as a form of ‘landmark satnav’ to help hunters find their nearest source of cheap sweets that can be purchased in whatever mix they chose to pick. Well, that or the fact that in any sufficiently large set of random data it is possible to find meaningless patterns of any required accuracy.”

these patterns were found from the 800 random ex-woolworth locations by simply skipping over the vast majority of the sites and only choosing the few that happen to line-up. Matt parker claims he could find many more such patterns, but he had some actual real work to do. He does envy mr tom brooks though, who with 1500 locations, had almost twice as much data to pull meaningless patterns from.

“it is extremely important to look at how much data people are using to support an argument” matt parker warned. “for example, the case for global warming covers vast amounts of comprehensive evidence, but it is still possible for people to search through the data and find a few isolated examples that appear to show otherwise.”

map showing locations and patterns:
http://standupmaths.com/images/woolworths-locations.jpg


original media coverage of mr tom brooks’ findings:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807855-did-prehistoric-satnav-help-britons-find-their-way
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-man-used-stone-sat-nav-navigate-country.html
:d
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
as a kid messing about i used to nick stuff like party-sized packs of chocolate bars, sets of screwdrivers, just any old shit you can lift from the supermarket without trouble, and i would wear an oversized Chicago Bulls jacket i would specifically borrow for the occasion off a larger mate. (i was a very small, short kid.)

you'd think it was obvious wouldn't you?
i did look more than a bit Keystone, after all, but never had a problem.

the one single time i tried to nick something without wearing my lucky charm (the item was either a baseball cap or pair of trainers from a high-street chain sportswear store, i forget) i myself then obviously got nicked.. :rolleyes:
 

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
I once stole an art book from the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre. Feel bad about it now, DCA is wicked

I used to swap labels on second-hand CDs at a record shop, also in Dundee. This ended when I changed the label on a Nirvana rarities CD from £8 to £3 and the counter guy peeled the £3 label off, gave me a look and said 'someone's put the wrong label on this'

When I was a kid and went to the sweetie shop with my dad I got into a phase of stealing wee items of confectionery. My dad gave me a cautionary lecture about shoplifting (I think the sweetie shop guy must have tipped him off and didn't want to pull me up himself :eek:)

Lol at the Woolworths story :D
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
haven't done it in a long time (& was never really good at it to begin with) but oh good lord so many stories from the punks, I'll see if I can relate a couple of good ones

-so the punks mercilessly nail REI (huge camping chain, fake "co-op", it's essentially the camping gear version of Whole Foods) for all their gear; sleeping bags, packs, etc. b/c it's mostly items too big to conceal there are two ways to do it. one is to nab smaller expensive items, like camping stoves, then return them & use the credit to get what you want. the other is "walkouts"; nonchalantly walking out with items in plain sight, as if you bought them. one dude I know once filled up a backpack with expensive gear, then got like a $3000 dollar road bike and walked out with everything; an employee actually held the door open & said "nice day for a ride". I also know people who walked out with a canoe.

-once at a rural gas station in Maine this girl I was dating stole 6 gallon jugs of Carlo Rossi. 2 at a time, 3 trips one right after the other. in the middle of the day. with us almost certainly sketchiest looking people for 100 miles. I thought the first time was crazy but then she just kept going back.

-a housemate back when I was living in Philly, getting busted at Whole Foods. one of the things he'd taken was a large cookie & when he got nabbed the secret shopper (who was a punk girl! so weak) was like "that's the guy, & that's the cookie" and the cop was all "sir, give me the cookie" and instead dude just crams the whole thing in his mouth. consequently he spent a night in jail, though he gave a fake name so he never had to pay the citation. call it a draw I guess.

-with the same guy, me & him getting materials - lumber & so on - to fix up the squat we were living in from a construction site at, of all places, City Hall

-getting busted once at a health food store in Manhattan. this whole crew of Puerto Rican dudes who worked there manhandled me down to the basement. then instead of calling cops they just beat me up, shook me down for the $3 I had on me and deposited me back on the street with a black eye and a busted lip.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I remember there was a newsagents by my nan's house when I was about 11 where this really dopey woman worked who would often be the only person on duty at the time. If she went around the back or out for a fag you could rob the place blind, no cameras, just those one of those curved mirror things that are useless if nobody's there anyway.

Me and my mate would stand around waiting across the road until she went outside for a smoke and we'd walk in, she'd shout "Be in in a minute, lads." and we'd load up our bags with porn mags that could be sold for a fiver each at our all boys grammar school before buying a chomp bar for 10p or some shite. I never got scared 'cuz she looked so clueless. She left after a while though. I've never stolen anything since. It was more scary flogging the mags at school, we'd hide them around the place so we wouldn't get caught with them, then lead the punters to the stash.
 
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