Sunday, July 29, 2007

More lying, cheating and stealing

As I said before I got sidetracked. I found out the schedule of the guy running the paper office and knew how much time I had to explore to find the money and figure out how to steal what I wanted.

The whole thing was going to be entirely blind and if anyone at all came in while I was doing it I was going to be busted. The office was set up with an L shaped counter with a piece that flipped up so you could get behind the counter. There was also a locked gate under the flipup top.

No problem there as I could just climb over the counter. That part was simple. So one day I did and I found the money drawer almost immediately. Only 4 drawers behind the counter and a few doors to store junk under the counter.

Considering only one of the drawers was locked it wsn't to tough to figure out where the money was. How to get at it was the problem. That was the part I hadn't been told. Because I only had less than a minute to do my thing it took me a few trys to figure it out.

First I tried picking the lock, shaking the drawer and wiggling it around and pulling on it as hard as I could without actually breaking it. None of that worked. I came quite close to getting caught behind the counter a couple of times and that was a major rush.

Conditions were seldom right for me to risk it so it took a couple of weeks. Turns out it was fairly simple in the end. What I had to do was open the door underneath the drawer and then slide my hand up, bend it over and I could get my hand on whatever was in the drawer.

A piece about an inch high had been broken off one side of the drawer and that left enough space to get my hand in. Had a total of about 3 inches of room to work with but I had small hands and wrists so it was okay.

The first time I just felt around to see what I could feel. Bank money bags was all. So then I started positioning myself so I could see what was actually in the drawer and what the manager was pulling out. He seldom got in the drawer while any of us were around so that took another couple of weeks.

I forget what day we were supposed to pay our paper bills at the office but I knew that's when there would be the most money. No brainer there. So when I finally decided to steal some I knew when, where and how.

The bus depot had pretty well dried up as that manager was taking more and keeping more of his precautions and the amount of cash found in open cars was never that much. Plenty of cigarettes, booze and other junk but mostly just loose change here and there.

So I finally hit the drawer. I crawled under the counter, reached up and felt around for the bag with the money in it, go it out and opened. Lol, my hands were shaking from the adrenaline but I managed it anyway and took ten bucks.

Didn't want to be greedy as I didn't want to lose the opportunity to steal from there on an ongoing basis. Seemed hilarious to me that I was stealing money from the paper office to pay my paper bill.

That happened on an ongoing basis for quite a long time and I never got caught. Seems the money was never missed either. I was always paying attention and listening to the talk and never, ever heard a word about it.

While I never got caught, I eventually did get implicated but that's another story. Did I know he things I was doing were wrong? Certainly did, problem was I didn't care. Lying to my parents, cheating at gambling and pinball and stealing were all wrong and I knew it every time.

It just didn't matter and I had no fear of the consequences.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't find it surprising (given your family's treatment of you)that you didn't care that what you were doing was wrong and that you didn't care about the consequences--after all, you had taken worse punishment at home for committing no crime at all!

But how did you decide to care about not doing wrong, and decide not to do wrong?

IMDepressed said...

Tough question and I'm not sure there is a clear answer. Mostly I grew up or after I turned 18 I wasn't willing to pay the price for petty crimes.

It just kind of tapered off. One reason was someone stole a TV from a girlfiend and she blamed me but I didn't do it. I knew who did and it took me 10 months to make him admit it to her.

I'm sure there was a defining moment when I decided to stop but at this point I don't really know what it was.

At 40 I discoverd personal responsibility for ones actions and choices which meant I wasn't the one to blame for all that was done to me. However I'd stopped stealing and lying before that.

Maybe when I lived with a chick who had a daughter and we worked together to teach her right and wrong.

I honestly don't know, at this point, why I stopped. It's one of the reasons I'm writing down my life story. Perhaps it became so easy there was no arenaline rush anymore so no point to it.

I'm sure I'll figure it out as I continue writing. Lol, when that will be I don't know tho.

I'll have to think about it for a few days and see if I can figure it out.

I know, it's an unsatisfactory answer but it's the best I can do for now.