Fun with internet scammers

I got an email addressed from Princess Lilly. I opened it because I used to have an online friend by that stage name. However it was a spam, scam email from India. I thought the story was so interesting I decided to respond with my own story. First is their email to me and then my response:



--- On Sun, 6/8/08, Princess Liliy wrote:

From: Princess Liliy
Subject: Hello my dear,
To: hiddencomedian@yahoo.com
Date: Sunday, June 8, 2008, 5:10 PM

Hello my dear,

Compliment of this good moment. This letter may be a surprise to you,I'm Princess irene Liliy Ousman Jammeh.from Ivory Coast 22 years old, height 5 ft 11 inches, weight 61. I got your profile from internet search and i would like you to do me a great favour which will possitively manifest your life and mine. I'am the only child of late king Ousman Jammeh from Ivory Coast in west Africa.

He was murdered alongside with my mother on there way to mutanza town which left no trace. I escaped to a refugee camp in a neighbouring country Dakar the capital of Senegal when his kingsmen tried to poison me so that they could inherit what belongs to my father.i will give you the details of my proposal on your next email together with my pictures. I hope you will wellcome my concern with pleasure,untill i heard from you.

huggs and kisses.
Princess Liliy

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Check out the all-new face of Yahoo! India. Click here.

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Dear Princess Lilly,

I am so sorry to hear about your loss and the attempts on your life. That must be horrible. However I too have suffered the same type tragedies. My father was a very wealthy man and was accidentally pulled apart in a tractor accident while attaching a hay bailer. My mom likewise was killed running to help him and the tractor shifited into gear making her a human hay bail.

My only brother to our family fortune met his fate the other day. While taking a dare he decided to masturbate with a cheese grater.

Ever since then that tractor has mysteriously showed up and tried to mow me down. But it ran out of gas and my life was spared. I will be more than happy to hear your proposal as I am sure it will benefit both our lives and bring us prosperity and happiness forever.

Yours in Christ and Prana,

Sauron



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New entry:

I got a response back making another request of me. I mentioned I had a fortune myself of millions in Italian lira which is about $6,500 US. First part is their email response and then my response back.


--- On Mon, 6/9/08, liliy princess wrote:
From: liliy princess
Subject: Hello my dear,
To: hiddencomedian@yahoo.com
Date: Monday, June 9, 2008, 5:15 PM

Hello my dear,

how are you today?i thank you for your reply which i received now it makes me to confide more on you because no body cares for me since all this while.actually i have a proposal that is the reason for contacting you.am Princess Irene Ousmik Jammeh from Gambia,a female student from University of Gambia Banjul the only child of late king Ousman Jammeh .Am 24 years old.caring, loving and home oriented despite the fact that I am from royal family.

I would like to build up a solid foundation with you in time coming ,if you can be able to help me in this transaction.well, my father died earlier seven months ago and left I behind. He was a king, which our town citizens titled him over eighteen years before his death. I was a princess to him and I am the only child and the only person who can take care of his wealth now because my mother died fourteen years ago during the birth of my only brother Jallow who equally died after few hours he was delivered.

My father left the sum of USD,($3.7 M) (THREE MILLION SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS,)in a finance company. This money was annually paid into my late fathers account from Shell petroleum development company (spdc) and chevron oil company operating in our locality for the compensation of youth and community development in our jurisdiction.I don't know how and what I will do to invest this money somewhere in abroad, this is the reason i finally decided to contact you to see if you can be able,there is no risk on this transfer .when i contacted the bank with my late fathers documents they told me to look for a foreign partner whom will lay a hand on it because the citizen of senegalis is not allowed to partack on such transfer.

I will send my photographs and phone number as soon as i hear from you.Yours sincerely,
Princess Irene Liliy



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Dear Princess Lilly,

I would love to help you in your financial plight. I understand the problems with moving money around in order to secure it. I have continually moved my inherited fortune of 7,973,738 million lira from bank account to bank account in order to keep it from publisher's clearninghouse from seizing my money in order to pay my family's huge McCalls magazine debt. So far so good, I have my money.

So please send pictures and instructions to what I need to do in order to help you secure your inherited fortune.

Your best friend forever in Chakra Can,

Sauron



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Another response to my last letter:


--- On Tue, 6/10/08, liliy princess wrote:

From: liliy princess
Subject: My Dearest Mr.Sauron,
To: hiddencomedian@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 5:30 PM

My Dearest Mr.Sauron,

how is your day? i hope you are fine,Well i thank you for your reply of yesterday it makes me to live again beyond reasonable doubt, i pray that for all our days that this will be the beginning of our never_ending relation_ship.when you receive this money into your account you have to get intact with your Bank manager, always follow his instruction so that you can be able to get intact with the money for security purpose. i will like to have your identity for me to proove on you the more.All this you will do for me when this money must have been transfered into your Account and they are my despirate passions.

1) You will help me to get my traveling documents to join you over there in your country to continue my education then you will manage the money for me in any good investment.
2) After the transaction you will withdraw some money and send to me to pay for my flight ticket to you country.3). When i arrive in your country for the disbursement of the money on agreed you will withdraw 20 percent of the total money for your effort, and 5 percent for any expenses that you may encounter during the transfer process.

In other for me to introduce you to the bank as my foreign next of kin in which this money will be transferred into his account, i want you to send this information to me so that i will send it to the bank; YOUR FULL NAME, RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ,YOUR OCCUPATION, YOUR NATIONALITY, YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER,YOUR AGE,TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBERS.As soon as i received your next email indicating your willingness to help me by sending the above mentioned information, i will instantly send to you all the necessary information to commence the transaction so that you can get me out from this refugee's camp as soon as possible.

You can get me through the office telephone number of Rev. Mark Williams, He is the presiding Rev. in the camp and his telephone number is +221,767,46,96,02 Whenever you call him, tell him that you want to speak with Princess Irene Liliy and he will instantly send for me. The attached below is some copies of my pictures and i will love to have yours. I hope you will not betray the trust that i bestow on you and i will be happier if you promise me that you are always there for me. As bible said that two is better than one. Have a nice day.

Have a lovely day and i am waiting to hear from you.
Princess Irene Liliy Ousman Jammeh


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Dearest Lilly,

Again your plight has touched my heart and I am reading your instructions. I want to say thank you for the two pictures, you are very pretty and if my sexual orientation were that way, I would be juiced right now. However being gay and a bigot definitely cuts you out of my desire. However if I wasn't such a bigot I might be interested but after coming out of the closet I no longer have an interest in women.

It hasnt been easy though being a bigoted gay person. I am the only person in my klan that marches in pink robes. This has been a problem for my fellow members but they knew me before I turned gay and understand.

Here is my current information:

Sauron
Black Castle #3
Moargard, Middleearth 90210-666

I dont have a bank account unfortunately. However I have saved 1000 Kellogg's boxtops and can send them to you. They are redeemable for many things including a blow up kayak so that you may paddle over here. I am sorry I don't have enough for the safety helmet. I also can send over a few gifts too. I will send a civil war chess set, a civil war monopoly set and a civil war solitaire game plus I might part with my French-Indian war operation game. In addition I will also include my collection of Perry Como's greatest hits on laserdisc for your enjoyment.

I know it is not much but let me extend these things which I am sure you can pawn for a zillion dollars. If you do manage to make it over here please look me up. I work at McDonalds in Kenya, NH. Just ask for Sauron and order the #3, it is my specialty.

Anyway thank you for letting me help you and I hope you make it out of your labor camp soon.

Sauron, the Oracle of PhilaDelphia


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Yet another reply and installment of playing with email scammers:



--- On Wed, 6/11/08, liliy princess wrote:

From: liliy princess
Subject: Hello Dearest Sauron,
To: hiddencomedian@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 6:01 PM

Hello Dearest Sauron,

how is your day? i hope it always come fine,i have received your email and i have more hope on you now despite all the sufferings and cheavrings in this camp i know that the good lord has come to put an end to it and that is what i always pray for,any way i heard all your promises and i think i like all that.

i went to the bank this afternoon with your informations and they told me that your information is not capable for the transfer.they complained that you don"t have an account in which the money can be transfered.they also said that since you don"t have account that they have to transfer the money through werstern union transfer, but it will be sent little by little till the said amount is complete or through their diplomatic means of transfer in which the diplomat will convey the transfer into your country face to face,i don"t know the best for you but they assured me that any of the two means is well gurranteed.

your information is not complete but right now there is no need sending them to me because i have already told them that you will send it to them personally,please sir remember that you are all i have now in this earth if not God.so i will like you to take me like a sister while this transfer commenced,don"t cheat on me because i pray every time for your prosperity,like as you promise to send me gift and more,i need any gift from you, any one you can be able to send for now because there is much suffering here in this camp.for now i will give you their contact and you have to contact them based on your wish for the transfer.do update me immediately you contact them many thanks..bellow is their contact;

have a nice day,bye,

princess Liliy Ousman Jammeh.



Att;
Name;Agence Assurance Securite.
Address;crescent avenue san Darker/Senegal.
Telephone;+221,33,20,86,80,86
Email;agenceassurancesecurite@mailbox.hu
Telefax;+221,228,60,82,51
Contact person; Mr.Siabo Baizon

my dear, i suggest you write them like this ,but you have to put all informations except your account as you said earlier.

Good day sir,

my name is chra sauron ,am the next of kin to princess Irene Liliy Ousman Jammeh.and i would like to know the neccessary proceedure to commence her transfer ........am age..... ...am from .............i live at........

am male by sex, i don"t have an account and i will like to choose .........on this transfer.i hope you mail me soon explaining the proceedure for her transfer.

regards,
Chra Sauron.





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Dear Princess Lilly and Chra Sauron,

Thank you for you quick response and Western Union Information. However I am unable to use Western Union as well because of my great grandpa God rest his soul. Apparently he used to cut down Western Union telegraph lines for fun back in the 1800s. However Western Union caught up with him and hooking up a fake telegraph line to a several cow electric fences. This unwittingly created a tesla affect that amped up the voltage into to hundreds of thousands of volts. This in turn fried my great grandpa like a piece of bacon. My family still go to the memorial pole and wire left with his biscuit size charred remain.

Unfortunately I wont be able to send those Kellogg's boxtops as my cousin stole them to redeem them for blow up sex doll in which he has already poked a hole in. He tried patching the hole in an apparent re-viginization of the doll but no longer became a usable device other than to talk to. In a fit of disgust he has left the said doll in a church pue for next Sunday's service in Topeka, Kansas.

Now since the klan has kicked me out for being homosexual I have had to turn in all my robes of white, pink and fuscha color. Also they took my civil war games in like manner that had too much blue colored pieces.

However what I can offer you is a my rare collection of ancient Babylonian coins which are made of stone. Because of time, the salesman told me that they look like regular pebble stones by now. However assuredly at one time King Xerxes was on them.

I also have a countless collection of nano-technology robots that I have in a box. I have pains takingly combed them out from where they like to live on me and put these little crab like robots in a package for you.

And lastly I have collection of movies I can send. They are classic greats I am sure you will enjoy like Ishtar, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Nurse Betty, Battlefield Earth, and Hoodwinked. These are on VHS so I hope you can make them work.

Again sorry for you plight. I must go now for my yoga session. It involves me being on the toilet and farting all the bran out of me. For a brief moment I float in the air like Yogi's.

Take care and may all your lsd induced dreams come true,

Sauron, third cousin to Thor.

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--- On Sun, 6/15/08, liliy princess wrote:

From: liliy princess
Subject: Dear Sauron,
To: hiddencomedian@yahoo.com
Date: Sunday, June 15, 2008, 7:34 PM

Dear Sauron,

how is your day? i hope fine, i have been trying to understand your conscience for a long time but i can"t understand any.
right now am hoping on the furture,not that you can"t be. but as of the moment is full of bitter and am not happy ,
I told you all about my late Father"s deposite and you keep on making fool of mine and i never realise all that,but in any case
i will put all things to right and i can"t hesitate to forget about you because you have fool me to the extend that the bank
is teasing and laughing at me, may be you have come accross some frod and scammers,but that could not be the reason why you should
have no regard on me because you didn"t know me for the first time.

i have finnaly decided to let you know that my late father"s deposit is prospering right now that am mailing you
i couldin"t email you for long thats because am not happy of what am discovering from you.
assuming you requested for the documents of my late father"s deposit in other to be sure of what am saying, i would have send them to you,instead you keep making fool of mine, is unfortunate, am fade up" am sure" i will defenitely succeed this time,
have a nice day.and do not contact me if you must be the same.
princess irene liliy.

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Dear Princess Lilly,

I am sorry you feel I have been making a fool of you. I assure you that my stories are as true as yours. I have real concern for your plight. I am sorry to have embarrassed you with your bank. Let me share with you some pearls of wisdom that was given to me by my late great uncle Otis. "Banks may fail, stock markets may crash, people may be no damn good but they will always need real estate and will pay through the nose to get it." The bottom line is one person's desert is another's new beachfront property. I think that is what he was trying to get across to me.

I hope that gives you some direction. Answers to life for me usually are kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls doorstep for a day and then read to me cryptically by a talk show host. But that is just me.

I am sorry that I could not help you much further. I have been strapped by the gas prices to such an extent that I have been forced to join the Shriner's just to get one of those little cars they drive so I can get to work. If you like I can get you one of those fez caps.

Most of my money has been spent in taking care of my sister Minnie who lives in Orlando, FL. She got pregnant by accident the other day when someone slipped her a mickey. If I find the rat that did that, I will knock them to pluto. It is a goofy situation and she should have stayed away from pleasure island. Her boss Walt and supervisor Donald have been very understanding though.

Irregardless what money I did have I lost in a technology company investment. I should have known there was something wrong when their primary invention was a time machine. Apparently they were only able to develop one that could take you to the present so you could fix your issues in your own time. Their company folded after an industrial accident where the test pilots were lost in time. Those brave pilots will be missed and we only have their presence to remind us of them.

Well I am off to my new job. I have joined an expedition to find the elusive bigfoot sasquatch. A mythical creature that looks like an 8 foot apeman living in north America. We think the stealthy ability of this creature is it's fur. Therefore we are spraying the entire Oregon forest with Nair. As the hair falls off the bigfoot, we should be able to see the tall pink creatures running around easier. Kind of like chasing after streakers at that point.

Well I wish you well and hope you get out of your problems. If it becomes too much, you might take up phishing as a hobby. There are lots of things that will take your bait. Hope you reel in a big one!

May God bless you with many White Castle Hamburgers,

Sauron, captain of the Titanic





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--- On Mon, 6/23/08, liliy princess wrote:

From: liliy princess
Subject: Dear Sauron,
To: hiddencomedian@yahoo.com
Date: Monday, June 23, 2008, 11:51 PM

Dear Sauron,

How are you and your family today? Hope all is well by God's grace! I
am using this opportunity to show my joy of success in getting that
fund transferred with a help of another partner South korea to
you.Though it failed us somehow nevertheless i would not forget your
past efforts
and trust to assist me .

Now, I want you to contact my secretary on the information
below:Name:Rev.mr.Mark Williams, Ask him to send to you the total sum of
(US$1.200.000.00) One Million Two Hundred Thousand United State
Dollars in a bank draft which I kept for your compensation.

So contact him immediately on his e-mail: (mr.markwilliams4488@yahoo.com)
and send him the below information to enable him deliver your bank
draft to you.

1.YOUR FULL NAME:_________________________
2.YOUR ADDRESS,CITY AND COUNTRY:___________
3.YOUR MOBILE/FAX NUMBER:_________________
4.YOUR AGE AND OCCUPATION:________________

Regards,
Princess Liliy.



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Dearest Princess Lilly,

I hope you are ok and that you have found your prince on some lillypad.

I am excited to hear that Mark is working with you. I actually know Mark very well as we grew up in Little Rock, AR. You see when Mark and I were kids we often would enjoy a game of throwing ants on each other till one of us ended up needing medical treatment. He usually won until the one day I threw a black widow spider on him. After he come out of 6 months of coma we made upl and played cowboys and indians. I always played the Indian and he shot at me with his play rifle. However I used real bows and arrows and nailed him one day. After his long surgery from an arrow hit and replacement liver he recovered and forgave me. He even let me keep his scalp in which I took after defeating him that day.

When we became teenagers we used to play chicken with cars. However I learned that it wasnt very sporting to sneak up behind him and hit him with my car while he was walking. After his bodycast came off and we found a kidney donor for him, he forgave me and taught me manners. To make it up to him I took him camping in the deep forest of Alaska shortly after high school. I bought him some very heavy hiking boots to protect his feet. I felt bad as they proved to slow him down when we both had to run from a kodiak bear. Somehow my running shoes proved to be the best thing to wear. He survived the bear attack playing dead and we picked up where we left off after his 8 month rehabilitation in the hospital learning how to walk and talk again.

We parted in life for a number of years but happen to meet up again. I was excited to see he had married and had three wonderful kids. I was so excited to see him again and we went out partying all the time. We used to get so drunk and pick up women all the time. He even forgave me for that after his wife left him with the kids after finding us drunk with three women and a transvestite. I became his partner in alcoholics anonymous and because he was my friend I let him slide once in a while on the drinks. Even after his liver pickled from alcohol and he had to have another he thanked me for the good times.

Yet after that we split up and it has been years since I have seen him. So I am glad we have the opportunity to know each other again. I see he is a minister now, that is good. I would love to help him with his followers and make another impact on his life. We have a lot of catching up to do.

So I will get my information promptly to Mark so we can start where we left off.

Thank you for reuniting me with my old friend and may the diety of your choice bless you.

Yours in Shinto,

Sauron

The New Oil

As a kid I watched an Apollo mission land in the ocean. I wondered why are we so interested in going to the moon. We can easily see it from a telescope, what do we hope to find. I pondered that my whole life till now. Like Columbus seeking a new passage to India but finding a whole new continent, exploration is always financed for the purpose of trade. Those that accomplish it may do it for a noble principle of knowledge, science what have you. However it is driven by those with money seeking to control more money and more power through discovery. The same is why we spent billions on the Apollo missions to find some kind of resource on the moon that could be used. The moon presents a unique opportunity in that only a few countries can reach it. Which one can reach it first and mine its resource will command that commerce for a very long time. The Apollo missions gave us what we needed but we did not have quite the tech to understand what the potential fully was. So Apollo was cancelled when we had enough to study. This perplexed NASA people as they thought we were going to the moon for science, wrong. Most still dont understand why the missions were canceled at the end. It was blamed on Vietnam and other things but the reality is the people financing it already had what they were looking for. It was time to examine their finds and see what can be made of it.

Now we see China, Russia are going to the moon in a big hurry. Suddenly our own government has canceled numerous NASA projects in order to race to the moon again but why? It is naive to think it is for science or lofty reasons like pride. The real reason is that they finally figured out something that is there of great importance. So much so that a former Apollo astronaut and expert geologist as well as his scientist fusion partner have teamed to form a company to harvest what they discovered there.

The race is on for a new energy source. The oil companies have suppressed electric cars for decades in attempt to stay in the oil game. But they know that the time is nearing they cannot hold these technologies back anymore. Especially when we have electric cars today that can run on battery twice as long as an economy gas car, require little maintenance, pollution free, faster in response than a gas car, and only takes an hour to recharge on house current. Even plastics made from oil is being challenged as farmers have developed plastic from corn that is totally biodegradable. The oil industry knows that there is still 120 trillion dollars of oil left in the earth, but is not endless. The US seized control of the second largest supply, Iraq to sell to the largest customer of oil right now, China. However the problem is that eventually oil will run out, there are too many countries that can produce it in competition, and China and Russia are looking towards harvesting a new source that will replace it. So the US must make what it can off the oil but grasp the new energy source before the other countries do.

The new oil of the 21st century I dub the new oil is called Helium3. Right now fusion is the bright future of energy from Hydrogen. However hydrogen releases too many neutrons that tend to destroy the reactor in no time. However helium3 is chemically the same as hydrogen but releases few neutrons so a reactor can last a very long time. The problem is helium3 is very rare on earth. Where it comes it from is the sun. The sun sends solar winds of helium3 in abundance but our atmosphere shields us from it. However lucky for us the moon has no atmosphere and there are many years of collection of helium3 all over it. Millions of tons of helium3 are in abundance there. It is estimated that one metric ton of helium3 can power a large city for a year easily and there are millions of tons of it on the moon. This means safe, enivronmentally clean energy that is powerful, quite literally the new oil. We know how to make it work and power everything with it already. It is must a matter of getting it.

It is estimated it would cost 15 billion dollars a year to harvest helium3 from the moon. However the current value of helium3 is 1 billion dollars per ton. It is the most valuable substance currently by far. Now you know why three major powers of this planet are in a race to mine it. It means economic domination of the world for years to come and no other oil producing country can get to it. Oil becomes a useless lubricant eventually.

There is a contest with NASA right now for anyone to think of a space elevator to move material up and down into space from our atmosphere. The purpose obviously is to find a way to bring helium3 down from orbit without the nasty re-entry methods we use now. Traveling to and from the moon and transport has already been worked out. But what about living on the moon to have workers harvest it? Right now NASA has an underwater home in the Gulf of Mexico where scientist live for extended periods of time and take outside walks in makeshift suits to simulate the moon. They build things and examine the difficulties of building a moon base. This simulation is done in 60 foot of water with waternauts wearing heavy weights to simluate the 1/6 gravity of the moon.

How about water, food, supplies for people to survive on a moon base? A scientist using simulated moon dust, dirt made exactly like the moon's, was able to heat it to 800 degrees in a special device and extract Water! Moon dust is rich in oxygen so you have an ample supply of rocket fuel, air, water right there. There is also nitrogen in it so growing plants and food is easy. Helium3 is the energy source sought so you have plenty of fuel for power. The moon actually has more things you need to survive there than an earth desert. So living there can be totally self sufficient.

The US, Russia and China expect to all be on the moon by 2020. The race is on for helium3 the new oil. Who will dominate the new energy source for the 21st century?

Strangers With Candy sequel proposal by me

If you are a fan of Strangers With Candy you will appreciate it. If you are big fan you probably will hate it. Anyway if you dont know this show and movie, it is a production by Stephen Cobert and Amy Sedaris about an ex-con crack whore who goes back to high school at age 40 to restart her life. I wrote a sequel to their movie and submitted it to the producers of the show. Doubt I will get a response but if you see the gags and scenarios in a new movie, you know where it came from.

Strangers With Candy on Comedy Central
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Strangers With Candy – The Sequel “Stalker Brand Candies, because love never quits”

We start out a year prior to Jeri being in school. She is in prison and she is the slave pony to the queen prison bitch that runs the cell block four gang “the beauties”. Each woman in this gang has her gang name as a state, Jeri’s is Idaho. Reason being is she is the “ho”. The head of the gang or queen is ex Miss Universe and astronaut who was busted cocaine, prostitution and soliciting a minor on one of those catch a predator tv shows. She is beautiful and appears like a courteous Sandy from the movie Grease with an dark Darth Vader evil side. She has made Jeri her personal bitch as it was Jeri’s dad who was responsible the queen’s dad being jailed prior. However Jeri is not knowledgeable about this yet.

Back to the present. Jeri is in high school and her teacher Chuck Noblet is reciting versus to his science class out of the bible. He is teaching how after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden of eden they had nothing to eat, so they ate all the dinosaurs. Jeri interrupts Chuck and asks can she be a science teacher like him. Chuck replies that God does not allow things like this to happen and prove his point he directs her to go to that “heathen” guidance counselor. Jeri leaves the room and looks back somber at Chuck. Chuck tells her to go now because this is the closest to a career she will have.

Jellineck walks in the room as Jeri leaves, Jeri begins to say something to Jellineck but he tells her that he will deal with her in his class. Jeri walks away like a small child that is sad. Chuck stares at Jellineck and whispers “you complete me” with signs with his hand. Jellineck starts crying and cries all the way down the hall way for a while. Meanwhile Chuck is staring at the door and breaks thought to tell the class to now open their bibles he means science books to tower of babel. This is where things got racist.

The scene now turns to hearing principal Blackman behind his office door yelling that he does not want to ever hear about “you” bringing a gun to school. Knives are also supposed to be under 12 inches in length and no grenades. The door opens and it is the school nurse leaving crying and saying she is sorry. Blackman orders her to leave and bring back those medicines he asked for. He then points to one of the waiting students in his secretary’s office and orders them in his office. As the student enters his office, he asks if they brought their lunch money this time.

Jerri shows up to the door of the guidance counselor. The sign on the door says; “Guidance Counselor/Astrologer/Sex Therapist/Weight Loss Coach” She enters and this overweight man greets her. She sits down and tells him she wants to do something with his life like be a science teacher or maybe a guidance counselor like him. The counselor goes on a rant about you kids always are after his job. Just because they are younger and smarter they think they can replace him. He tells Jerri that he will see what is in the cards for her. He throws some chicken bones on a ouji board and stares at it. He states that her future is crack whore. She says, “Wow, wait I have been that already.” He says to wait a minute and he turns the board around. He then tells her ok your future career will be a politician maybe president of the united states. She gets excited and says, ‘Really!” He says, “Sure it is possible, I don’t really know since I ran out of board before it showed prison again for you, but that is not what is important. The important thing is you are in school taking the right steps. Now go out that door and learn. Please lock the door on your way out and tell no one you where here.” Jerri leaves all excited.

Jerri goes home her step mom gets onto her that she just got finished cleaning the door knobs and she just dirtied them up again. Jerri happily walks into her step brother who tells her to back up skunk monkey. She tells him that sticks and stones have broken her bones but words will always get you shanked. He begins to make a punching motion but tells her, that if she did not have those unknown diseases he would lay her out with one hit. They stare each other down as Jerri makes it up to her dad’s room. She converses with her dad in his coma state about what she should do. His coma body points to her room. She sobs as she wanders there. Jerri pulls out her shoe box of her mom’s ashes and asks her what she should do with the rest of her life. She stares confused and puts the box on the shelf. As she looks at the box sitting on her bed, her step mom screams, “lights out!”. Jerri turns her lights off and gets ready for bed. She looks at the box and says, “Mom, someday I will be someone important, you will see.” The stepmom screams, “No talking till tomorrow’s head count!”

The scene changes to the prison cell showing the back of the prison queen wearing her tierra. The guard tells her she is free to go now. Music of cape fear swells up and she turns with a big beautiful smile. As she leaves we see pictures of Jerri and her dad on the wall. The guard asks her if she is going to take all her packages of kool-aid with her? She states, I am going to use real makeup for now on. She passes the camera.

Jerri stands at her sidewalk waiting for the bus and waves to the students across the street where the high school is. The bus arrives and she gets on sitting next to Megawatti. She asks what he is reading and he states it is about evolution. She says really, I use to love science fiction. The bus stops and Tammi Littlenut steps on. Jerri tells Megawatti to sit in the seat in front of her to make room for Tammi. Jerri yells for “Copperhead” to sit with her. Tammi reluctantly sits and Jerri begins to make sweet talk to her. Jerri asks her if she likes movies about gladiators. About that time the bus stops and walks on is queen prison bitch and cape fear music swells. She sits in the seat next to Jerri and asks her how she has been. Jerri asks what is she doing here. The queen tells her that she is going back to high school and starting over. She asks if she can come over after school and catch up on ole times. Jerri tells her no. Queen informs Jerri about a lot of things her friends might be interested to know about her and immediately Jerri agrees to the visit. The bus stops at school and the driver yells for everyone to get off. Everyone starts shuffling towards the front and the driver tells them to leave out the emergency door in the back, the front is for entering only.

Jerri and Queen are in Jerri’s room and Queen is looking around. Queen tells Jerri she is impressed and begins to tell Jerri it is fitting that her dad is in a coma. Jerri asks what she means. Queen begins to tell her about what her dad did to his. The scene goes to that time as Queen narrates. She explains how they were friends and knocked over cigarette trucks together. That was tell her dad was caught and ratted out the Queen’s dad. He testified against the Queen’s dad at the trial. As the accusations are read the jury is crying. One juror looks at Queen’s dad and silent says, “how could you?” While another juror is reading crime and punishment magazine. Later the judge asks the jury foreman if they have come to a verdict. The jury foreman stands up and lifts a ventroloquist dummy and the dummy states in a high pitch voice, “He’s guilty!” The vision goes back to Jerri’s room and Jerri says I am sorry but I did not do anything to you. Queen states that she is right and the past is the past. Jerri says good and goes to the bathroom. Jerri returns and the Queen is doing cocaine lines using the ashes of Jerri’s mom on a mirror. Jerri screams asking what she is doing with her mommy. Queen asks her if she knows how much drugs her mom did, the street value is incredible on her ashes. Jerri kicks her out. Queen looks back and tells Jerri, I will beat you in every way.

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I am working on the rest later. My scenerio is the queen becomes class president and her picture shows up everwhere as she is loved by all. The principal and guidance counselor has her picture up and so forth. The rivalry goes on through the movie as Jerri tries to compete with queen.

Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

There is a mild form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. It is a very common ailment that certain famous people like Einstein and Thomas Jefferson all had. Not saying I am in the same league with these guys but we all had to learn to cope with the issues of it. One of the common thing I share with other afflicted people is poor grades in school. We often are not very good with managing money or running a business by ourselves. If we can manage to get help like a tutor for school or accountants for our business, we can get by. However for many people they do not have these resources and often fall victim to the condition to where continual employment even is hard.

A friend of mine with two autistic kids showed me a book called Pretending To Be Normal wrote by a lady who had Asperger’s. She wrote that as a child the teacher told the class it was nap time and to pull out mats to sleep on. She stood there as the teacher got more assertive in telling her to get a mat. She explained she could not. Frustrated the teacher called her parents and when they arrived her father asked her why she was not getting one of the mats. She responded because the mats are all gone. Her father asked what were all those sitting on the shelf. She stated they were not mats but rugs. Her father asked her to get a rug and take a nap which she did right away. That is one of the issues with Asperger’s is mental blocks. We have a hard time connecting the dots and what is a simple procedure for most people to assume and work out becomes a difficult and even impossible task for us. I will explain why this is later.

In one of my last jobs I had a number of employees working for me in an IT department for a software company. One of them was a shy guy about 30 years old who moved over from another department to mine. He had this autistic and had barely learned how to work with it. People would ask him if he would take a look at a computer issue for them. He was more than willing to do it and had no laziness about him however it might be hours or never before he would do the task sometimes. It was fairly disruptive to the point my upper management wanted me to let him go. I had to do a little more work with him but was able to get him on track. If you gave him a project he felt overwhelmed and had no mental roadmap to know what to do in what order. However if you outlined the project step by step he worked faster than anyone I have ever seen. For example I gave him a clipboard of blank paper and asked him to inventory the systems. The board sat there for days. I took it away and put another clipboard of preprinted papers showing blanks next to “name of system”, “operating system” etc. He had everything filled out in an hour. You had to get the logic straight in his head on what to do. After that, he was ok.

Let me start from my beginning and give you a peek inside my experience. As a young kid I seemed to pick up habits very easily. Now days people know them as OCD ticks. It is like an uncontrollable need to repeat something over an over. It varied from one habit to another but there would be at least one all the time. I learned to hide these habits and do them as part of normal movements or routines so that people would not notice. However it was noticeable no matter how hard you try. You always let your guard down at times. I managed to learn to focus the need to perform them to normal things like listening to certain songs. You would play a series of songs but always repeat your “favorite” one to get the feeling of relief. People would just think you like that song a lot. There is some kind of tactile feel to resolve a neuro need to repeat certain functions. The condition uses an emotion to give you “reward” feeling when you accomplish it.

Friends were tough to keep because the condition makes you very geeky in one respect and naive in another. I seemed to know a lot about astronomy, much more than my teachers. However some kids would tell a story and all of them would be conversing back and forth about it but I would be lost and have no clue what they are talking about. Often times you become the butt of a joke because they know you cannot keep up with them. However things that you decide to excel in go way beyond most people’s commitment to accomplish. You seem to have an unending drive to complete a task which stems from the OCD thing. If you learn to use it, you become single minded and able to get things done quickly and well.

School was very hard for me. If I like a subject, I could ace the class with little effort. However most of the time I was failing. In 7th grade it came to a head for me in school. I had a mental block about doing homework. I simply could not do schoolwork at home. I wanted to and felt motivated but would just stare at the school book doing nothing. Eventually I would put it away and play. It got so bad that even my favorite subject astronomy was an impossible task. NASA had sent me a giant poster of Mars with tons of data at that time. I was supposed to do a report on anything I wanted. I was trying to do one Mars. I could not get the words on the paper. My dad and just about everyone else in the world had no idea about this condition and he thought I was just being bad by not doing my work. He kept telling me to do my work and I finally lost it and began to bang my fists on the poster crying. He got mad and whipped me with a belt. As I just laid there helpless he realized something bigger was wrong. He then sat down and started asking me questions. I was able to do the report and did it well once he connected the dots in my mind for me.

The same thing happened at school with my 7th grade English teacher. He was a no nonsense Manhattan school tough teacher that moved to Texas in our little community school. I showed up with no homework so he sent me to detention after school. In detention I got my work down for the next night with no problem because I was still at school. However the next time I had homework to do at home I showed up at school with it unfinished. I got another detention and then another and another because he was going to show me who was boss. After so many of them he was about to issue another one and I started crying in frustration. He finally took me aside and told me if I get my homework to him before the end of the day he would take the detention off. I got it to him in no time. He then called a parent teacher conference and I tried to explain that I simply could not do homework at home and don’t know why. The school sent for an hour each day to speak with a psychologist. After a few weeks of that they sent me to testing one school day. It was my usual psychologist and a few others put me through a battery of tests. They checked my memory, hand strength, ability to reason and so on. Lots and lots of tests. Basically they told my parents that I had excellent memory and could reason out things extremely well. However I have something they do not understand although they have seen it before. I cannot seem to stay focused and have problems calculating certain tasks. The solution was I kept seeing a psychologist for the school. I continued to have bad grades and they actually passed me on to keep my with my same age friends in classes even though I did not pass certain grades.

By the time I reached high school I had started developing my own techniques to get around the issues. Since I had a hard time with homework I would excel in test and in school work so that it would offset the zeros I got for no homework. This was important in my sophomore year since my dad passed away of ALS and the shock of it caused me to not do any school work for a while. I had to make at least a 97 on my final exams to pass most of my classes, which I did accomplish with 98s on all of them.

I had to develop much more mental tools as an adult in order to exist in a job and deal with life’s normal renderings. Little did I know that shortly later these tools would be the instruments for my survival through some extremely hard times. They also gave me certain advantages over normal people. For example my friends that smoke have tried to quit and everything has failed them. Patches, hypnosis, counseling, scaling down, nothing seems to get over their physical and mental addictions. I smoked for two years and one day just quit. I felt the physical addiction tugging hard but was able to use my condition to ignore it. After a few days the tugging started going away. I simply used the mental blocks what kept me from doing school work to block me wanting a cigarette. Even my body’s cry for nicotine could not get pass that block.

The condition gives you a single-minded ability to accomplish things. It is like you are in a tunnel that pays attention to nothing around you except the destination or task you need to accomplish. If the task was to learn the piano, you could learn it a fraction of the time that normal people do. You simply will understand what it takes to play it do it with precision if your mind can put that task in the “tunnel” so to speak. If not then you have to learn it like everyone else at a normal pace. If a block develops about how to play like puts a condition in your mind to where you can only play white keys, then you have to figure a way around this block. Like a person who stutters learns to avoid certain “problem” words they quickly replace them with ok words and we never know they stutter. In like manner I learned to move around the blocks without loosing pace. At work I learned to put each job task in the “tunnel” and I get things accomplished fast. Often times I am done with a day’s work in an hour and spend my time goofing off on Yahoo waiting for something to break at work.

However because the condition allows relentless pursuit to work on things, I have literally worked for 30 hours or more on fixing server issues. Issues that would take weeks to do normally. I hired into the Men’s Wearhouse one time in their corporate office. They had a team of IT guys, about seven of them and were all very smart. I fixed about a dozen issues they all had been working for at least six months in a few days. My manager told me to take it easy and just cruise the internet for a week or so because I was intimidating the other IT guys. The other guys were actually smarter than me at this stuff but I had a vigilant ability to pound on the problem till solve and reason it in different ways. It is the ability of bypassing mental blocks I have learned all my life that gives me a new way of thinking of things. This is excellent in troubleshooting computer work or even writing stories and even telling jokes.

There are still many things that hinder me in this condition. I have had to learn a great deal about stress management because emotions can run high in people with Asperger’s. Like anything tools can be developed to deal with it. You cant get rid of it but you can work with it.

Snakes Alive! Incident at 16

My neighbor emailed me a picture of a Burmese python that was eating sheep. I find the picture interesting because it shows the teeth these animals have. It brings back vivid memories for me as I was bitten by one that was 15 foot long. When I was a teenager my brother had a little zoo going on. He owned a mountain lion, tiger and three pythons. The smallest was 12 foot and the largest was over 20 foot.

The mountain lion hated everyone except my brother. He could hand feed the thing meat and it would purr like a kitten. However it and I were absolute enemies. I cant tell you how many times that cat and I have got into it for it trying to attack me.

Now the tiger loved everyone, except the mountain lion. I say it had a good judge of character. I had a lot of fun with it. However being over 600 lbs, that made it harder and harder to play with as it got bigger. We had made an outside chain link cage for it with a large metal tub full of water. It loved water and spent a lot of time in the tub. We gave it a radial truck tire to keep it busy but it shredded it in no time. So we gave it a bowling ball thinking that migh last longer. It took it and threw it against the cage making a giant dent in the chain link. That was not a good idea so we took the ball out. It was friendly but if food was around you didnt want to be near it. The demeanor would change to viscious until that food was eaten.

His pythons were kept in a glass cage. The 22 foot one was in a cage by itself because for some reason it did not like the other two snakes. It was not very sociable and was hard to move around seeing it was over 200 lbs. The 12 foot and 15 ones were very sociable and like to hang around people. My little incident happened while my brother was away and I was tasked with feeding the animals. I had done it numerous times. I opened the snake cage and changed their water. As I put the water in and was about to close the cage, the 15 footer struck my hand and started coiling my arm. I pushed the coils off but he kept coiling up as fast as I could push him off. I am not a panicky person and realized that as long as I keep him on my arm and away from my ribs, I am in no life threat. So I let the snake coil most of itself on my arm and lifted him out of the cage. The 160 lbs snake seem to bear no problem for me at that moment weight wise. I wanted to get him out of the cage so the other one would not attack seeing I was bleeding like crazy and it might smell it.

I lowered the snake on the ground and began pushing the coils off before he snapped my arm in half. By this time the snake had realized it made a mistake and was no longer on the attack. However it was trying to unhinge itself from my hand. I had to give it some slack since the teeth are barred back to let him push forward to release me. As soon as he did I ran to the sink and started washing off the blood pouring out the holes in my hand. I poured some alcohol on it which I was about to use to get the snake off if it had not released me. That was some major pain. After bandaging myself up, I put the snake back in the cage.

I learned from then on to wake the snakes and irritate them a little to make sure they are not in hunting mode when cleaning their cage. That is one thing about exotic animals, you will get hurt someday. Not if, when.

All the snakes eventually got sick and died simply because Houston, Texas is not the climate they are used to. My brother had kept his two cats at a large cat preserve till 1993 when a major Houston flood occurred and all the cats in the facility started swimming out as the water rose over the fences. Police in boats shot them all.

I miss the snakes and the tiger mostly. Not that cougar though.

Stories from Tech Support

I have messed around with computers for a long time. For three years I worked for Dell tech support and over that time heard numerous strange things from customers. It got to a point that Dell compiled a bunch of stories for a computer magazine article. I was remembering some of them and decided to throw into a blog. You may have heard some of these before or variants. I am sure some of these have happened multiple times with people. So if you got a few minutes or more of life to waste you can read about my geeky tech support stories.

In the defense of non computer people we have all done stupid things on computers. When I was a teenager my oldest brother bought a PC clone and it had a hard drive full of software. He asked me to analyze it and then teach him how to use it since I had worked with computers before. I was happily going through running utilities on it to see what they do. I ran one called “F” and suddenly nothing worked anymore. I realized that I had wiped out the entire hard drive in an instant. At that moment my brother asked how it was going, I replied no problem. I called the guy that sold the computer to my brother and told him I ran the “F” program. He chastised me for about ten minutes on how stupid I was and why would I run that program. After he qualified my lack of brains, he then asked if I had enough synapses to have run the backup as per instructions that came with the computer. I told him I did that the first thing. He saved the day as I reloaded all forty floppy disks and putting the system back to normal.

When I hired on with Dell they put me through a two week training course. They told us trainees a story of a tech that did whatever it took to take care of a customer. This tech had walked a customer into reseating all the cables inside the computer and for some reason the hard drive would no longer function. The tech felt so bad for the hard drive failure that he went to factory, picked up another drive, then drove from Austin to Dallas and personally fixed this customer computer that evening. That was inspirational but I thought to myself, I aint drivin’ four hours to fix someone’s computer. However after training was over and we were paired with experienced techs, I had to ask about that tech driving to the customer’s house. The mentor tech I was with laughed and said, “Let me tell the reality behind that story. The tech did screw up the hard drive of the customer and did go out there to replace it. But it was for fear of losing his job he did it, not some customer service mission. The customer was Michael Dell’s father. I don’t know why they keep using that lame story like it was a noble thing that happened.”

A customer called me and stated he had an application error. So he tried to solve it himself. His solution was to erase the hard drive and when nothing ran, he went into computer’s bios and set a password that he now cannot remember. Nothing like asking.

One of the things that a tech support person hated was when a customer’s neighbor or relative come over to help because they are an “expert”. The experts always argue with tech support and never want to troubleshoot anything. These usually end up the longest calls and least productive.

A lady called a tech and stated that random characters kept appearing her documents. The tech trouble-shooted keyboard errors and since the woman was in Austin he asked if he could just drop by and look at it. He came back to work telling us he solved the problem. The lady had poor eyesight and kept leaning over to see the screen closer while her breasts kept hitting the keyboard.

One lady called me up complaining that her new system would not work. I walked through the cables and she had the keyboard, mouse and monitor attached but no power cable. She complained that the computer was not able to power itself and would use her electricity. I had to ask if she was serious and she was. It took about fifteen minutes to explain why that computer must be plugged into her wall outlet.

A guy called me stating he paid for a 120mb second hard drive and his computer says it is 115mb drive. He wants the 5mb difference paid back to him. I told him lets just partition and format the drive anyway and see about his 5mbs. What he didn’t know is that after you prepare a hard for use the space is bigger than the “logical” size. So when it formatted I asked him to check the size then. It was 127mb available. I then told him he owed us money for the 7mbs. He told me that he owed nothing and the extra 7mbs are his. I had to laugh for five minutes after the call was over.

One lady called up and could not get her mouse to work properly. After a little bit it was discovered that she had the mouse on the floor trying to use it with her foot. She had mistaken it for a sewing machine like pedal.

A guy called up and said his computer is eating his 5.25 floppy disks. He kept inserting one after another and it wont eject them out. I asked how was able to get another one in the drive without the previous coming out. He said they just disappear in the drive. I asked him to take the cover off and there were all the floppies inside his computer laying on the motherboard. He was inserting them in a small crack between his floppy drives.

A lady called complaining that her 3.5 floppy drive holder was full and she had no other place to put another floppy disk. I asked her were the holder was and she said it was built into the computer. I looked at her order and explained she was putting floppies in the tape drive.

We had a guy that legitimately had a lemon system. It had been repaired twice already and I got a call from our onsite repairman there for the third time. The customer was drunk and I could hear him in the background screaming F%$# Dell repeatedly. While I was trouble-shooting the problem with the onsite tech I heard a yell. The tech said he had to let me go because the customer just fell down the stairs.

One tragic call came when a new guy I was training proceeded to tell a guy that his computer was freezing up on a program called PCTools. The customer sat the phone down and started beating on his wife for installing the program. The new tech was obviously very disturbed and wanting to quit. I talked to him for a while and explained he did nothing wrong. We will just report the call to management and move on. After a few days when the new tech trainee was in good spirits I made a picture that looked like a product label. It had a picture of a real domestic violence situation and had the PCTools logo and listed features about this tech. He thanked me for lightening him up and this tech eventually became a manager at Dell.

I got a call back from a customer that said he followed the tech’s instructions the previous night and know wants to know what to do. I asked him what did he do so far. He told me he took the computer memory out and sat it on the kitchen table overnight to let the viruses leak out of it. I was perplexed. I looked up the call log and sure enough the tech wrote that he advised the customer to pull the memory out and set it overnight on a table to let the viruses leak out. I had the customer put it back in and fixed the real problem. I then had a nice talk to the tech.

I had trouble with a customer that really was not a technical issue. I had called an internal help group called the pros group. They were there to help unusual situations when all else fails. I had proposed a solution and the lady in the pros group told me to do it as I suggested. Well later a manager that really did not like me much, found out about what I did when the customer called back to thank me. He chewed on me for violating policies in numerous ways. I explained I had got the ok from the lady in the pros group. He told me to call this lady up and get her on the phone because he is going to chew both of us out. I called her and explained the manager wanted to discuss it and she said she would come over and talk about it personally. Now everyone wore badges and your badge number reflected what number hire you were. I was like number 5860 and the manager was like 4789 something. The pros lady came up and asked the manager what the problem was. The manager kept staring at the lady’s badge and stuttering. The lady explained that she did not see a problem and the manager very politely agreed with her. I looked down and her badge number and it was 3. She just smiled at me and told me “good job Mike.”

I have many more stories but these last two are the pinnacle ones I can think of.

This one I know is true because the letter was scanned and sent to all the techs, it was a classic. A vice president of a company had a Dell notebook. This notebook had a trackball mouse on top behind the keyboard. His complaint in the letter was that he had to pull this mouse ball out and clean it fairly often. He would clean it by putting it in his mouth and orally cleaning it. One day while cleaning it he started chocking on it and a fellow employee hit him in the back causing him to swallow it. After he passed the ball, he put it back as it seemed ok. However he refused to clean it in the same manner. Dell sent him a regular mouse to plug in but no one forgot the story.

The last one was one that happened with me. I got a call from a customer that was a church. They had a server computer whose motherboard had failed. They were under warrantee and should be fixed the next day. However the system flagged me that the motherboards for that system were out of stock for three months. Of course the customer was irate and that was not acceptable. I asked them to let me see what I could do. I called around from department to department and no one had a spare motherboard. I was told they would have to wait and no replacing their system with another. However one manager advised I call a certain vice president and ask him. This VP sometimes keeps a motherboard of each system just in case a major customer needs one and this scenario happens. I called him and was trying to talk fast to convince him of my plight. What I did not know till half way talking with him that out of habit I always said my name and company like I was talking to a customer. I greeted myself as Mike at Dell. This VP heard “Michael Dell” and I realized this when he was very cordial and said he would take care of this customer right away. I was embarrassed but laughing inside myself. I responded to the VP; “See that you get it done!” He responded with a yes sir! The customer called me back the next day and said their server was fixed.

To catch a thief

This is the story of a man named Jed who barely kept his family fed. Actually it is a life story from my early days when I worked at Radio Shack. Kind of boring but if you got some life to waste here it is.

My manager was transferred to another store and I was to follow as soon as a new manager took over. So it was just me and another full timer. Well my fellow employee decided to take an unannounced week long vacation since I was only the manager trainee, what could I do? After he came back I had his final paycheck stapled to a fired form. He was quite shocked and he asked me how I was going to handle this store without him. I told him I had a week to practice. Shortly later I moved to other store with my friend was managing.

I noticed some merchandise hiding under some magazines in the bathroom. I showed the manager and he had a surprised look. Obviously one of the employees was hiding it later to take it. He asked me which of the two other employees I thought it was. I said, it can’t be Adam, he doesn’t fit the type. However Chad definitely has a personality for it. Chad was a part time worker that worked all week as a copier repairman. For some reason he liked working 7 days a week, three weeks out of the month and weeknights randomly. He didn’t like to help out much with store duties just helping a customer once in a while. He had been there for a long time under two previous managers. When it was slow on Sundays he spent a lot of time playing a flight simulator game, he was hooked on it.

As time progressed things disappeared randomly. I knew in my gut it was he doing it. I even could tell which items he took from those that were normally shoplifted. I kept telling my manager he is taking the stuff and after months of it my manager felt I was just picking on him. It was too infrequent and random to catch him easily.

I went on vacation for a week and when I came back Chad and the manager had a story about a robbery that happened. Seems that a blonde guy ran into the store grabbed a display table with mounted camcorders and ran out the door with them. Chad had chased after him but could not catch him. I asked Chad, “Lucky you didn’t get hurt, he could have been dangerous.” I knew Chad was involved in it but I decided to humor it sarcastically. Chad stared at me I think knowing that I was on to him. I asked Chad, “So you couldn’t catch the guy running with a table top full of camcorders? I am also curious how this guy knew to come in grab the one table that was not bolted down yet and make off with it? Almost like he knew what to grab.” Chad replied that the guy was fast and obviously he had staked out the place beforehand. I said; “That is interesting Chad. You didn’t manage to get his license plate since it would have taken him a while to throw the stuff in his vehicle, start it up and leave.” Chad said, “His vehicle was parked on the side of the building and already running.” I responded; “You happen to know his truck was running and parked there but didn’t get a license plate.” Chad just stared at me. I decided then I was going to catch him in the act more than ever. I decided the best method was just irritate him to the point of making a mistake.

Chad also worked some weeknights which he floated as he felt. I noticed he would make sure to not work right after a shipment of inventory came in so he would not have to help put things up. Chad showed up the day after everything was put up as usual. The other employees groaned about this anyway. I grabbed an empty box and handed it to Chad. I had him follow me around as I randomly threw merchandise into it. After it was fairly full I told him that from now on I would decide his workdays in the evenings. I plan to make sure he is there when inventory comes in so he can help us. Now as practice he can put the merchandise in the box up. Of course that infuriated him.

The second thing is I traded Chad’s flight simulator game with a kid’s game from another store. So now he had nothing to play.

I figured he must be taking things on Sunday when it is slow and I am not working. So I traded schedules with another employee. I made sure when he worked, I worked. After a while the subtle things began to wear him down. The ultimate was when a customer found a bag of marijuana on the floor. I figured it belonged to a punk kid that was in there previously but when Chad offered to give me some cash to let him have half of it before the police came to get it, I knew it was his. I told him no and the police did pick it up. Well that set him over the edge. He had a very professional manner to him but I could see the anger fuming in his eyes. I kept making comments the rest of the day about that bag of weed just to keep his blood boiling.

Now it was the end of the workday and the front door was locked. However he was hanging around till I finished counting the money drawer and finished the daily reports. He always took out the trash and I knew he had something in it. I knew he was waiting for me to leave so he could drive around back and grab the trash with the stolen item in it. I kept going back and forth counting the money drawer and the back computer like there was an error in the sales for the day. It gave me the opportunity to look around and see what was missing. Finally Aha! There it was, a power cord to a small new notebook computer sitting by itself on the shelf. No computer though. I had him. I waited him out till he couldn’t take it anymore and he told me he is going home. I locked the front door behind him and as soon as he got in his truck I ran to the back and pulled the trash bags out of the dumpster. After closing the back door and looking out the peep hole sure enough here he come driving to the dumpster. He looked in and then started looking around. He stared up at the back door and knew he was caught. He got in his truck and left for home.

I opened the bag of trash and there was the notebook computer. I called the manager at home and told him what had happened. He apologized for doubting me the whole time and told me to handle it. I realized that technically I did not see him steal it and could not prove it. So I called Chad at home and it was obvious he knew what the call was about. I told him I found a computer in the trash. He gave me a hard luck story about his sister needing an operation. I told him that was admirable Chad, I wouldn’t go to jail for my sister. I guess she has needed this operation for years. I told him I knew about the dope and the camcorders too. He admitted it was his room mate that took the camcorders. I told him that since I am such a good friend, I will let him quit Monday morning. This all will be between me and him. If he doesn’t call Monday morning and tell the manager he quits, then I spill the beans to the company. He promptly called Monday and quit. My manager was smiling the whole time as he got the excuse for his leaving.

The end of the story, not quite. We hired a replacement guy shortly later. This guy lived in the same apartment complex. We were telling him the story of Chad and the guy had a blank look on his face. He told us that he knew of Chad and his room mate. Matter of fact they tried to sell him some camcorders. He even described the room mate perfectly. Then told us about other things they stole. The room mate was a construction worker and had stolen ten $10,000 lasers from his company. These guys were lifting everything they could. A little later I had a knock at my door and it was an FBI agent. She was questioning people that knew Chad more specifically his room mate. Seems the lasers were fairly missed among other things. I told her about the events and what I had heard.

I never knew what happened if anything to them. I guess Chad faired ok because years later I worked for Dell computers and he saw Chad repairing a copier. I did not make myself known to him but mentioned to a manager they might not want that guy here.