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A stranger secretly lived in my home

theguardian.com

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Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#101

Post by jacquesm »

Scarblac wrote: post #45
stevezsa8 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your office got off lucky. We had a guy walk into our office behind employees. No one challenged the trespasser... he walked off with a stack of laptops.

As a teenager I worked in a large logistics center for supermarkets. Usually we would fill trucks that brought the supplies to the supermarkets, but rarely they had ran out of something small and would come to us with a van or so. So one day two guys drive up with a van, park it at a loading dock, go into the warehouse and start loading the van with coffee. They even got help from some workers. Turns out they weren't…

A story from the RAI congress center in Amsterdam has it that someone purposefully scratched a 911 on the Porsche display, cue a car transporter that shows up the next morning with a big logo on the side that gets help from the staff to remove the 'damaged 911' so that it can be replaced with another. They never found either the car or the guys. This was before CCTV was common, but still, a couple of hundred people must have seen the whole thing and absolutely nobody thought anything strange was going on.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#102

Post by smoldesu »

stevezsa8 wrote: post #31
whirlingdervish wrote: post #24

A couple years ago one of the devs I work with came in to the office very early for some reason and discovered a man sleeping in one of the conference rooms. After the fact we discovered that an emergency exit door wasn’t locking properly. He didn’t take anything even though he could have easily made off with tens of thousands of dollars of electronics. He just needed somewhere to sleep.

Your office got off lucky. We had a guy walk into our office behind employees. No one challenged the trespasser... he walked off with a stack of laptops.

Are you not insured for that kinda stuff? As long as you don't own the company, that seems like a pretty negligible situation to be in.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#103

Post by pottertheotter »

jacquesm wrote: post #99

I had a tacit agreement with a homeless guy I discovered one day sleeping in my car. I'll keep the doors unlocked and you don't mess it up and by 7 am you're gone. He was by far the best tenant I ever had, we did this for close to two years and then I moved. The area where I lived was an older industrial zone in the East of Amsterdam, there wasn't a whole lot around there other than a salvation army post and I figure…

That's so compassionate of you. I don't know that I would think of doing that.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#104

Post by symlinkk »

uberduper wrote: post #98
nsxwolf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also might have attacked or raped someone. That is not a safe situation. It’s not just about property.

That's a bit of a leap, isn't it? Couldn't you say the same thing about every person you meet?

Not every person you meet is on drugs and has nothing to lose

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#105

Post by jacquesm »

pottertheotter wrote: post #103
jacquesm wrote: post #99

I had a tacit agreement with a homeless guy I discovered one day sleeping in my car. I'll keep the doors unlocked and you don't mess it up and by 7 am you're gone. He was by far the best tenant I ever had, we did this for close to two years and then I moved. The area where I lived was an older industrial zone in the East of Amsterdam, there wasn't a whole lot around there other than a salvation army post and I figure…

That's so compassionate of you. I don't know that I would think of doing that.

Well, if you take into consideration how crappy the locks are on those old cars then maybe I had a very cheap security guard ;) He really was a nice old man and super embarrassed about the whole thing.

The funniest bit about this is how I discovered he did this, one day I got up too early thinking I was late, rushed out and drove off without my usual morning routine and when I heard a voice behind me asking if he could please get out of the car, my heart nearly stopped :)

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#107

Post by jacquesm »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #87
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been wondering how I'd feel if someone cleaned out our recycle bins, before the truck picks them up. Our house alone goes thru a lot of aluminum.

In NYC a few years back, old women and men (elderly, often Chinese?) would regularly go through the trash refuse bins and collect cans and bottles. It was apparently a way to feel useful and busy while also earning some money. One of my passing thoughts is that recycling could be a way to keep people occupied and also perform an extremely useful service. That is, expand on this. The cynic in me, however, feels that t…

In NL we used to have door-to-door collectors of metals, paper, vegetable matter ('schillenboer') and glass. Then it all got industrialized and a couple of large companies got exclusivity from the municipalities. Who now have to supply them with mandatory minimums in tonnage or face steep contractually agreed upon fines. And here we are trying hard to reduce the amount of waste. It's such a complete fuck-up. Every yard now looks like a miniature recycling center, with up to five containers in some municipalities (we only have four, but they take up a lot of space and the smell is incredible). (the categories we have are 'remainder','plastic','vegetable/green','paper', and they are emptied irregularly and have a strange mix of capacities, in total there is about 1000 liters of volume across those four containers, and they take up 2 square meters).

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#108

Post by oAlbe »

symlinkk wrote: post #104
uberduper wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a leap, isn't it? Couldn't you say the same thing about every person you meet?

Not every person you meet is on drugs and has nothing to lose

Wait, how do you go from "is sleeping in the conference room without taking anything" to "is on drugs and got nothing to lose"? Like, WTF? Life happens to be hard at times for some people. For certain people, many people, it is very hard very often. That doesn't mean they got nothing to lose.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#109

Post by corndoge »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #74
bloodguard wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had an AC tech ask us if we knew someone was living on our roof. Turns out an coworker's GF kicked him out of his house* and he was living up there. Tent, free wifi, showers next to the bike room, full kitchen and big 80 inch TVs down in the conference rooms. He was livin' the life. He said he usually took down the tent and hid everything every morning but just got complacent. *Yes. His house. She told the cops sh…

> Yes. His house. She told the cops she felt in danger. Cops told him he had to stay somewhere else and go through the eviction process. Mad world. The pendulum needed to swing toward protecting women by default. As these things happen, it may have swung to a point where nuance needs to be applied. Your example seems fairly complex. I couldn't opine on it w/o knowing the details of the complaint. I can offer a differ…

> The pendulum needed to swing toward protecting women by default

He owned the house. If she felt in danger, the cops should come and escort her out of the house that doesn't belong to her. I don't see how your story is related to this.

Re: A stranger secretly lived in my home

#110

Post by itwy »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
pottertheotter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so compassionate of you. I don't know that I would think of doing that.

Well, if you take into consideration how crappy the locks are on those old cars then maybe I had a very cheap security guard ;) He really was a nice old man and super embarrassed about the whole thing. The funniest bit about this is how I discovered he did this, one day I got up too early thinking I was late, rushed out and drove off without my usual morning routine and when I heard a voice behind me asking if he cou…

That's hilarious. How did the rest of the conversation go?
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