Stuff acquired from work

[PositronicRay]

Alfa numeric said:

Morningside said:

Not sure about stolen but someone I know had lots and lots of greenshield stamp books. He used to work at a garage and either never gave them out or was given them. He had goodness knows how many tools from them books.

An old work colleague once told me about a family member who was fired from Sainsburys for using his nectar card every time a customer didn't use theirs. He racked up thousands of points in a matter of weeks and was surprised when they caught him!

PDI centre, when fuelling cars one of the drivers used his loyalty card all day long. Sometimes up to 20 times a day.

[wildcat45]

robinessex said:

A very large company I did my apprenticeship took a more positive spin of stuff being acquired. You could buy anything they had in the store(s) at cost price, off cuts of metal from the bin were sold at scrap price. and if you wanted to make something for yourself, you could come in on Saturday mornings, and do it as long as it didn’t bugger up production work.

Bloke I know owned a factory where he allowed this. It was a metal fabrication works that made stuff for industry. A lot of his staff were young lads with Scooby type cars and he'd happily let them use the gear at weekends to make stuff. It was all OK so long as he knew.

Seems a very sensible way to keep the staff happy and have people on site when the place would normally be locked-up and empty

[AndrewEH1]

Best I got was a bunch of metal free-standing shelving units. Not worth that much really but they were going to be binned and I happened to be working at the right place on the right day. Obviously had permission from the manager (he was offering them out).

[Ayahuasca]

I have a pair of boots, and a magazine from an SLR.

[jesta1865]

i know a guy who works at dagenham fords, considering what he's said about the security now, i'm surprised they let you out with the air in your lungs.

i used to work with a guy who left to work for the BOE, he used to have to visit the mint and said security was so tight, you couldn't get a penny out of the building you didn't have going in.

when i was at uni i worked at the local asda, one xmas the management where off on their xmas party, so one of the warehouse lads decided that the damaged boxes of booze were going home with him (one or 2 bottles smashed and boxes all floppy etc). he got most of them under the back gate one by one (bottles) but the champagne wouldn't fit, so not being the brightest spark, he threw them over the gate. he was surprised they'd smashed on the road behind the store he got away with most of the rest. they (warehouse guys) didn't like the spirits manager, so told his boss that they'd seen him moving it all when the reps came in after xmas to collect the damages.

i used to work at an american bank, and was tasked with the project to refresh the bankers desktops for the division that I worked for. 1 monday morning they had gone from the cupboard we had been storing them in. cctv showed security holding doors open for the guys nicking them as they had letter-headed paper and branded overalls and caps on. glad i had been away for the weekend so the BiB ruled me out fairly quickly

[Rude-boy]

wildcat45 said:

Bloke I know owned a factory where he allowed this. It was a metal fabrication works that made stuff for industry. A lot of his staff were young lads with Scooby type cars and he'd happily let them use the gear at weekends to make stuff. It was all OK so long as he knew.

Seems a very sensible way to keep the staff happy and have people on site when the place would normally be locked-up and empty

I know a chap who runs a business where there is a fair bit of stuff that is useful outside the day job. They are fairly straightforward about these things. Ask and unless obviously taking pee you will almost always be told not a problem. Don't ask and get found out (highly likely) you will shortly be leaving their employment.

[RizzoTheRat]

For legitimately acquired stuff, I got a full set of hiking/camping kit out of a job a few years ago. Goretex Boots, socks, 3 pairs of hiking trousers, fleece, goretex jacket and overtrousers, rucksack, rollmat, sleeping, stove, water bottles... Had to give the goretex bivvy bag back and was expecting to have to give back all the non clothing items but they were happy to let me keep them.

[soad]

fk all.

[knotweed]

DervVW said:

Quhet said:

I live within smelling distance of Cadburys in Bournville and know quite a few people who have worked there.
If you're on the production lines, there is a policy that you can eat as much as you want. I think the idea is that you stuff yourself stupid and get ill off it and are then put off it and get on with your job.

Yes I heard this too - I'm pretty sure my uncle that has worked there 30+ years hasn't eaten chocolate in 30+ years either!

This is true of the Thorntons factory. I had a Christmas job there one year

[louiebaby]

As a very honest chap, I've asked, and been granted:

• Full crockery set from a Little Chef ready to go to Uni
• Jennifer Aniston promotional poster from the L'Oreal days when I had a Saturday job in Boots

I've done the odd bit of printing at work, but nothing that really took the piss. I suppose it is technically stealing though.

[wseed]

The posts of stuff going missing from car plants reminded me of a house I went to view some time back. The loft was boarded out with Leyland Trucks packing box material but the finest bit was the external sink waste running outside was made from stainless steel, presumably a truck exhaust.

[wildcat45]

My late uncle worked for a company called Fiat Allis. They made tractor loaders - diggers that you'd use in quarry/open cast mine type places.

I remember that he and most of his work mates had knob type things on their car steering wheels - 1970s pre PAS days for ordinary cars. The same ones fitted to the machines they made.

I seem to remember you could spot a factory worker occasionally in town when he reversed his car. Quite a few had acquired the audible alarm from the diggers that they used when reversing and fitted them to Escorts, Cortinas, Marinas and other cars of the time. the Beep Beep Beep was a give away.

[Justayellowbadge]

Not workers, but there was a news story earlier this year about a supermarket that opened a Post Office within.

Didn't take scrotes long to realise they could wander round filling a jiffy bag with what they wanted and then the PO would helpfully deliver their shoplifting the next day.

[wildcat45]

Talking of car factory security, I've just remembered a mate of mine at university.

1991ish and he came from Merseyside with connections to the Vauxhall factory at Elsmere Port (SP?) I think his brother worked there.

He had a 1983sih Renault 5 with a fantastic sound system, CD auto-changer and other stuff. All the same as my neighbour's new Cavalier GSI 4x4.

[Carlique]

Not myself but my friend got himself a part-time job at McDonalds, so if you ever used to go through the drive-thru whilst he was on he'd put a big hand full of claimed monopoly instant win coupons in your bag for you. You'd only go through wanting a cheeseburger and come out with a months supply of free Mcdonalds haha.

[loudlashadjuster]

Few stories I know to be true because of personal connections.

First alludes to the Dagenham story in the OP, but it was a custom motorcycle frame, headstock etc. that had been fabricated/machined offshore in the workshop on the Alwyn offshore platform in the mid-90s and shipped back to the beach, piece by piece, over years. I reckon the chap would've gotten away with it too...if he hadn't submitted a story to the Total internal magazine explaining what he'd done, complete with photo of said machine with his grinning mug and a Total sign sitting in front of it...

Secondly was the common ruse by fitters in whisky bottlers to carry out 'scrap' lengths of thin stainless tubing/pipework with blinds on the end and filled with, you guessed it, uisce beatha. This was going back many, many years though, but it was common enough in the days before excessively punitive taxation would've forced closer attention to such carry on. Of course, the trick was to be able to carry 35lbs of pipe and whisky as if it were as light as 10lbs of empty pipe.

Lastly, when the Silicon Glen dream turned into a bit of a 'mare there were a few fabs in Central Scotland that were being decommissioned, including Motorola in Livingston. Let's just say that certain employees found out just how much platinum was in the wafer oven probes (hint: a lot) and they mysteriously all vanished one nightshift, never to be seen again...

Me? I'm scrupulously honest and have never stolen so much as a paperclip and retain the services of a very good legal team just in case anyone alleges anything different

[otolith]

Last time we moved house, I found an Iomega zip drive which I'd been allowed to take home years previously in order to work from home. It had been long forgotten, and as the cost of computer storage fell it depreciated to nothing. Not so much "stuff acquired from work" as "worthless crap from work cluttering my house up".

[Jimmy Recard]

DervVW said:

droopsnoot said:

.....

Not sure if either are actually true. Many tales of people around the Longbridge area having houses entirely painted in BL colours, as well.

Having grown up near longbridge, I too heard that rumour and I also saw plenty of 'austin brown' and 'yellow' in and around houses. I suspect that it might be more than a rumour!!

Having lived around there for years, I'm convinced it's true. Not just paint - people nicking things like microwaves and trolleys.

I know someone who worked at Longbridge from the mid 1970s to the late 1990s and he says that no one gave it a second thought.

[edgyedgy]

Starfighter said:

My dad worked at a large industrial site in the north east. A guy there used to commute by bike but was knocked off in the crush at the gate. It took 2 to lift the bike as the frame was full of mercury being smuggled out.

I have a selection of surplus items from when the factory was shut.

I have read this same story over on a Middlesbrough fc forum. There's another one where bloke asked his supervisor if he could take some metal offcuts to use in some diy he was planning on his garage. A couple of days later there was a big panic when the offcuts turned out to be unobtainium and to get them back the company built the man a new garage as I remember it from catflaporama.

[Bluedot]

Starfighter said:

My dad worked at a large industrial site in the north east. A guy there used to commute by bike but was knocked off in the crush at the gate. It took 2 to lift the bike as the frame was full of mercury being smuggled out.

I'm struggling to see how a bike could be ridden if the frame took 2 people to lift ? Surely it would take the slightest wobble and collapse to one side ? And that's without even mentioning how the wheels would take the weight.