Stuff acquired from work

[robinessex]

Now guys, I’m sure as good, honest PH’ers, we’d never dream of condoning theft. But I’m sure, like me, we’re guilty of having the odd company article on our person as we leave to go home !! However, in the past, I’ve heard/known of some very ingenious methods of acquiring your employers bits and pieces. What were they? I once heard that a whole car was smuggled out of the FoMoCo Dagenham production building bit by bit. The lateral thinking option. Guy in the carpenters shop makes a lovely wooden wheel barrow in his dinners hours. It sits by his bench for a few weeks, until the Eureka moment. He goes down to the company disposals, buys a few bits for peanuts, loads it onto his wheel barrow, walks out the gate, giving the security guard the ticket for his disposals bits!!! Guy has a nice side line supply local electricians with cable. How? It so happens, his workbench is on a wall that is the boundary of the work site. It has a hole thought it under his bench. Cable drum is placed there, with the end poking through the hole. The transfers takes place late in the evening. The clever one. A guy whose house backs onto a factory. Realises that very hot steam pipes run along the factory wall across the bottom of his garden. Hooks a heat exchanger around the pipes, and gets free house heating !! And don’t ever read a list of stuff lost by the MOD !!!

[robinessex]

straight dad said:

Any chance of the OP smuggling some paragraphs from work?

This is a forum, not A level English paper. Is the spelling ok ?

[robinessex]

Thanks to the last two posters, you've enhanced the content of this post immensely.

[robinessex]

Not stolen, but lost, then found! A stock audit at a large electronics factory revealed a missing bar of silver used in the plating shop. This, along with other precious metals, was stored on a locked (secure) cage in the metal store. An exhaustive search and inquiry failed to find it. A few years later, one of the store guys wanted the scrap chunk of metal door stop to hold the door open, so he called out for someone to propel it across the floor to him. When he picked it up, he noticed it had a few shiny scrapes on it. A quick scrape with his pen knife revealed a shiny thing below all the muck and dirt. The silver bar had been found!!!

[robinessex]

straight dad said:

robinessex said:

straight dad said:

Any chance of the OP smuggling some paragraphs from work?

This is a forum, not A level English paper. Is the spelling ok ?

Re spelling, I wouldn't know as I couldn't be arsed to read your car crash of a post. Mind how you go.

Edited by straight dad on Monday 30th November 04:13

Thanks for the contribution, much appreciated by all

[robinessex]

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.

[robinessex]

Camaro said:

This was going on down under a few years ago.

Mind boggles how they managed to get that many engines and gearboxes out, also how Holden had no idea it was happening until the Police found one on a separate investigation!

http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/thieves-ta...

Bloody amazing thay X engines went in, and only Y came out !!!

[robinessex]

el stovey said:

parakitaMol. said:

WOW so many amazingly true stories. Just awesome.

Maybe? But I wouldn't mind betting that far more stuff is acquired than will ever be talked about, through some pretty devious means as well. I know of companies where all the senior managers had their gardens looked after by the companies maintenance dept, and also custom made furniture courtesy of the carpentry shop. And commodore of the company yacht club whose boat was provided courtesy of the Fibre Glass shop. And of the days in banks before computers when large some of money were borrowed for a few hours into employees own accounts to acquire the interest. Here's my offering. Many years ago, I was the franchises of a service station, through one of the dodgiest companies ever in that business. For ever adjusting stock and things to their advantage. As an engineer, pretty sharp in mathematics, I became intrigued as to how/why the invoices for the petrol delivered, and the stock check each week had such a big error. Then one day it came to me. The temperature, and hence the expansion of the fuels wasn’t being accounted for. Tip a tanker of cold fuel into the underground tanks, it warms up a few degrees, and vola, you now have 50 extra gallons. And vica versa, stick a tanker of warm fuel in the tanks, and you loose 50 gals as it cools. So you timed the deliveries so you got mostly cold petrol delivered. So, now armed with a thermometer and well as my dipstick, and a bit of maths, each week, I could ‘acquire’ 50-100 gallons of petrol. Whoopee

Edited by robinessex on Tuesday 1st December 09:13

[robinessex]

When the Plessey factory started to close places in Iford in the 1970's, loads of machinery was sold of to employees for scrap value. Of course, turn up with truck to buy your lathe, and lots of very costly accessories and hand tools would be chucked in a box for your attention as well!! I think it’s fair to say, when office, factories, etc., close, lots of stuff is exported shall we say unofficially. Of course, lots of it is basically written of, and has virtually no book value anymore anyway.

[robinessex]

In my early twenties, where I worked, one of the directors had his office next to ours, so he could spy on anyone he thought wasn't working hard enough. Nasty bit of work. Occasionally, his wife would pop in for a lift home after shopping. The complete opposite. Very friendly, a bit scatty, and (most thought) gorgeous. One day, she popped in for a lift home, forgetting he’d buggered of on business for a few days. So I, being a gentleman, offered her a lift home. She cooked a nice breakfast! Does this count ok ?

[robinessex]

I was told of a similar incident. Again, it was an office being cleared out, everything was scrap, it had to go. Again, it appeard that a safe had been overlooked. Except this office was about 15 floors up! Yes, you can see it coming ! It was levered onto a 4 wheeled trolly, and propelled as fast as 4 guys could push it towards a rather flimsy out panelled wall. Through it it went successfully, and disappeared from view. The 4 guys, upon arriving outside, found the safe buried about six feet into the lawn!!! Never mind, it was empty as it happened.

[robinessex]

Many years ago, when our roads were maintained by the local council, whenever the roads got a makeover, lots of drives seemed to match as well after they had finished !!!

[robinessex]

Above was very common years ago when stuff was sorted and recorded by hand.It cost more than it was worth to do, so it mostly it went to a good home. It can happen today when stock computer system have no input capability to input stuff that's surplus to requirements, especially if it's all done with scanners and bar codes.

[robinessex]

I'm sure most here will condemn outright theft, but there are grey areas. The main one is when companies scrap something, and have no clear channels of disposal, except the rubbish bin. I don’t see anything wrong with that, it often recycles things, which is good. The other grey area, is when the company buys something you use for your job, and over a long period of time it becomes ‘yours’. So when you move on, it goes with you. Again, very few companies would want it returned I’d guess.