Thieving scum

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

I new a ex co worker who had some bones broken in his right hand.
I saw him liberating the hard to find Insert tools for the Plessy style plugs and sockets found on old MOD alarms.

It was proven it was not my fault I dropped a 7.0ah battery into my tool big was it.

 

[ronan]

When i was growing up it was very firmly instilled in me "Thou shalt not steal" along with other advice . I suppose parents teaching kids that now days is too much to expect ?

 

[nickk]

When i was growing up it was very firmly instilled in me "Thou shalt not steal" along with other advice . I suppose parents teaching kids that now days is too much to expect ?

Don’t generalise,all my kids have that instilled as well as manners.

 

[daleyd]

y

Bet you have a free tools with an arrow stamped on them.

I do, if you could find me the actual person I stole them off I’ll gladly return them. I guess I could post them to Buckingham palace but not sure what she’d want with a terminal screwdriver and a small set of adjustable

 

[Lewis_RX8]

Ive posted it before ,,, but in Africa on site , anyone caught stealing tools gets a very very severe beating , its looked on as taking food from the moths of the tool owners wife and children , very very few tools go missing.

I suppose that's the nitty-gritty , Need tools to earn a living and no tools nothing to live on even more so over there I imagine so can see why.

 

[Ubique]

Bet you have some free tools with an arrow stamped on them.

I've got some with a 'Crowsfoot' on them, they were written off in the fire at Donington despite being thousands of miles away at the time.... Same goes for when the Atlantic Conveyor went down, CQMS' everywhere were reconciling stock accounts very quickly....

 

[Maker]

Maybe worth investing is an engraving tool (Aldi or Lidl have them on offer) or a set of stamps ?

I don't think it makes a difference, if the police recover them it helps suggest you're the rightful owner but it doesn't prove it. I've got some tools with a name engraved on them, they came from eBay ages ago, I'm pretty sure they came from widow selling her late husband's tools but they may well have been stolen, how can I prove it.

 

[ronan]

Don’t generalise,all my kids have that instilled as well as manners.

There you go with them old fashioned notions again !

 

[frank horton]

they cleared my workshop out in S Africa.....I went back to the UK get my mother out of a wheel chair....only gone a month....
they took all my Snap On stuff that I got from working in America, plus all my Wadkin wood gear, 2 Harley Davidson Electra glides and a 2.0ltr methanol HD engine for drag racing
and so much other stuff......
u could not get insurance at any cost.....
now I never leave my stuff alone....
luckily I left my 2 Indians back in the UK.........
hard lesson to learn.....esp when stuff is flogged for pea nuts to get drugs.....

 

[slim_boy_fat]

It's not really fair to youngsters to tar them all with the same brush - all the local kids I've encountered are polite if you acknowledge them.

Small communities seem to get it right more often than not, at least up here, and possibly because more folk are related?

 

[Mick Annick]

That’s grim.

When I was an apprentice our workshop got burgled twice, both times the company paid up; we had to submit a list of what was missing, they called in the Snap-On man who replaced the lot, irrespective of the original make.

The sad thing was after the first break-in the company beefed up security including the gates and fencing, only problem was the site was on former gravel pits with a river running through it, so they nicked our workshop dinghy which we acquired for messing about on the river to row down to the fishermens car park to make their getaway: the firm drew the line at paying for a replacement

 

[The Artilleryman]

Because the workers would steal anything they fancied. Yes off their own employer and even other workers. I asked about security - they said they could do nothing or the unions would organise a strike.

Other side of the coin.
I was acting union rep. (whilst incumbent was off sick) back in the late 1980's.
I had to deal with 2 cases of theft.

1. Bus Conductor had put his days fare money in the drop safe bag and placed it in the drop safe draw but not pulled the lever, due to being distracted by a member of the public asking about lost property. Another conductor went to pay in and seeing a bag there, took it, rather than pull the lever. All this on cctv, said conductor suspended following day, subsequently at 3rd attempt to hold disciplinary hearing (failed to attend all 3 hearings) I informed the Garage Manger "off the record" "I expect you to have a water tight case, so that when I defend my union member to the best of my ability he will be sacked. I will not tolerate anybody who steals from there work colleague's, if they steal from the company it's up to the company to prove it and my job is to defend them."

I wanted that thieving ba***** out of the company for good (had it been in the days of Bus Conductors being licenced by the local traffic commissioner, I would have made sure he never worked as either conductor or driver).

2. It was alleged that a driver was stealing diesel, the report was so pathetically inaccurate and poorly written it was embarrassingly easy to get the driver found off. Was he guilty? quite possibly. That manager was lazy and very tardy when it came to disciplinary reports, which made my job easy - not the same manager as the above one - he made my job easy, most of my wins were not because I was good at representing my colleague's, but management was F'ing useless.

I very much doubt any union rep. would tolerate work colleague theft. There might be on going problems with management, that means employee's will take strike action easily.
An instance of this was when a college graduate was appointed Garage Manager (300+ drivers) and decided to throw out the holiday rota system that we had used since LT times - worked well and was accepted as working in everybody's interest - the rep was told that at the pay talks, this was to be sorted or we will take strike action (you could have ended up having sh1t holiday allocation for 6 years, with what the garage manager was going to implement). Needless to say it was sorted, but showed how bad things had gotten under this manager.

 

[Melvyn Best]

When I was an apprentice we had stuff go missing , in the end our weekly football pontoon money went, the police were called and interviewed all of the staff . I was asked if I had taken it , my reply was no as I was going to win it anyhow . A new member of staff was caught out and eventually admitted a load of thefts , he was the only new staff we had had for years and nothing went missing before

 

[500e]

My old man said" whats the use of putting your name on tools they steal the name as well, he had some little marks that looked like scratches till you knew what to look for

 

[The Artilleryman]

When I was an apprentice we had stuff go missing , in the end our weekly football pontoon money went, the police were called and interviewed all of the staff . I was asked if I had taken it , my reply was no as I was going to win it anyhow . A new member of staff was caught out and eventually admitted a load of thefts , he was the only new staff we had had for years and nothing went missing before

Had the same happen when I was an apprentice, but this one could have turned out badly for an innocent person.

Football pools or pontoon (can't remember which) money was going missing, police were called in and money dusted with something. Next lot of money went missing and police arrived and wanted to scan our hands (uv light possibly) one after the other we all trooped in hands scanned, now we had a small body bay with 2 staff - main body shop was elsewhere - apprentice/newly qualified hands light up, luckily the plods decided to check everybody, rather than stop there. Just as well, the cleaners hands also light up he admitted to the theft straight away.

It seems whatever the police used to dust the coins with was similar to body filler dust. A very relieved paint shop employee got a very swift apologee from management and the police.

This happened mid 70's so no PACE, just go at them hammer and tongs.

 

[Barking Mat]

We had a load of cash go missing at work a few months ago.

Turns out I'd reimboursed a client and not run it through the till.

Had central office descend on us, as it looked like theft.

Not good, but easy mistake.

 

[Rudi McAnichal]

.. in Africa on site , anyone caught stealing tools gets a very very severe beating , its looked on as taking food from the moths of the tool owners wife and children ...

Perhaps traditional tribal justice was quite effective. Requiring a thief to repay what he had stolen, or compelling a murderer (or his family) to pay the dead person’s relatives, ensured that the victims of crime were compensated and the cost to the rest of society was minimised.

By contrast, in our culture every wrongdoing is regarded as a crime against the state. The perpetrator pays a rather small fine to the state, or is locked up in prison at the expense of the state while his dependents live on state handouts. The victims of crime are largely ignored. I am told that this represents "progress" and "civilisation".

 

[Edward Teach]

he was the only new staff we had had for years and nothing went missing before

I've heard similar to this before,
Some sly scum bag starts stealing, when the new worker starts the job !
(edited)

 

[Rkweld]

Don’t generalise,all my kids have that instilled as well as manners.

So do my kid but there are a fair few on both sides of that arguement these days. It seems the ratio is not so in favour of manners and respect for others these days.

 

[Migmac]

No real updates. Haven’t seen my son since yesterday