To Catch A Petty Thief

March 18, 2016 12:54 PM

I've recently had 2 items take from my desk overnight and I'd like to get some options on how to expose this petty thief.

What it says up top. No lecturing on whether its worthwhile or to keep valuables inside my desk. They took earphones (so gross, a few weeks ago) and a charger (recently).

What relatively affordable ways can I expose a thief? Install a small camera? Booby trap another charger with a gps (probably way too sophisticated and $$)? What options are there? Let's get creative people, and please again NOT LOOKING FOR ANYTHING BESIDES SUGGESTIONS! Thanks!!

posted by driedmango to Grab Bag (19 answers total)

Best answer: Cover everything with glitter.
posted by sciencegeek at 12:58 PM on March 18, 2016 [32 favorites]

How big/formal a workplace are you in? If you have a security department you can report petty theft to they can open an investigation. You might even have an official company policy about this sort of thing. You can also, though this also depends on your work environment, ask around. It's rare in my experience that only one person gets victimized like this, but people sometimes don't speak up because they don't want to make waves. If a co-worker or a member of the cleaning staff is stealing stuff having multiple employees bring it to the attention of the higher-ups will ideally provoke a more substantive response.
posted by Wretch729 at 1:05 PM on March 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Best answer: ATPR powder. A light dusting on the pull of your drawer will turn the thief's fingers bright purple for a week. Make sure you wipe off the surfaces before you touch it yourself.

Or coat something enticing with it and leave it in plain view, if you're not above straight up baiting this jackass.
posted by phunniemee at 1:11 PM on March 18, 2016 [16 favorites]

Best answer: Motion activated spy camera - several options available

This one is on sale right now.
posted by lizbunny at 1:14 PM on March 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

This is kind of overkill, but you can get a Trail Camera from a place like Cabelas or Fleet Farm. They're for finding those pesky deer on your hunting trail, motion activated, most can do video and stills, some are infrared if they're doing it with the lights off.
posted by Sphinx at 1:18 PM on March 18, 2016

Don't set up a camera at work! You will creep your co-workers the fuck out.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:20 PM on March 18, 2016 [33 favorites]

A camera is the best thing but may violate your local laws and or employment policies. My employer would treat someone setting up an unauthorized camera as more serious than the petty theft. Proceed with caution!

So the boring but real solution is to make this your employer's problem. If the person is stealing from you, they're likely stealing from other people too.

That also takes care of handling the situation if the culprit is identified. Even if you did have a GPS lock on the thief's house, what is the best case realistic scenario for how it plays out for you?
posted by Candleman at 1:23 PM on March 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Best answer: A drawer alarm would scare the crap out of them but not help you identify them. But... you could pair it with a sound-triggered camera, if set to a sound level that is generated by the alarm.
posted by lizbunny at 1:27 PM on March 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You could also set up a drawer-pull glitter/confetti bomb. There is no way that person would not still be covered in *some* glitter the next day.
posted by lizbunny at 1:38 PM on March 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I love the glitter and powder ideas, but as a former HR person, I must insist that you go through proper channels. Security, HR, and the legal department are all going to be severely unimpressed by any DIY approach. Especially because this person might also be five-fingering company property, trade secrets, etc.
posted by SMPA at 1:43 PM on March 18, 2016 [34 favorites]

Does your workplace have an overnight cleaning crew? Stay late enough one evening to talk to them, and let them know that things have been disappearing and could they please keep an eye out for unauthorized people.

Since this is happening overnight, chances are super high that it actually is one of the cleaning staff, if there is one. Talking to them about it in a non-accusatory way makes it known that it's been noticed and may encourage the thief to stop (and hey, maybe some random off the street is sneaking in... but then you'd expect to see computers and other larger items going missing).

This has been an issue at several of my workplaces. When it escalated and was investigated (read: someone from security actually looked at the tapes) it resulted in the cleaning crew's contract being terminated. This super sucks because cleaning companies are often very low margin small businesses and it hurts the owners and the crews, most of whom are not stealing, a great deal.
posted by charmcityblues at 1:59 PM on March 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

I recently got a GoPro knockoff for $20 that has motion and sound detection. Comes with everything you'd need, but you'll have to pay double if you want it in less than a month.
posted by rhizome at 3:34 PM on March 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

My co-worker's headphones went missing overnight. Our IT department looked through security footage and found a cleaning crew member who came in wearing black headphones, but left with white ones in his ears. Guess what color the co-worker's headphones were...

He was immediately fired.

Having it on tape is the surest way to prove someone is stealing, but you shouldn't set up a camera without talking to your supervisor.
posted by tacodave at 3:46 PM on March 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is always our cleaning crew. If someone gets fired inevitably we have another petty thief on the crew within 18 months just due to turnover. You have to lock stuff up to prevent it
posted by fshgrl at 4:38 PM on March 18, 2016

Best answer: This happened to me. My colleagues and I set up a motion sensor web cam to capture video. Turned out to be the night janitor.

It was under the jurisdiction of the university police since I was working for a university. I showed them the video and they wanted to capture video using their own equipment. He did it again on the police-owned surveillance equipment and got canned. Apparently he was a repeat offender.
posted by theorique at 6:15 PM on March 18, 2016

Best answer: If you have an old Android device (I can't speak for Apple hardware) then you can easily install an app like this to turn it into a surveillance camera. In the past I used a similar app that emailed me a photo when it detected any motion.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 6:31 PM on March 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you have a computer that stays on your desk (not a laptop that you take home), perhaps you could install an app or screensaver that that silently starts recording photos or video when it senses motion—one that you could set to turn on at say 5:30pm, and off at 6am...?
posted by blueberry at 8:57 PM on March 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Are you sure that the charger just didn't fall into the cleaning lady's bucket? Or that the headphones fell down the side of your chair?

(I am SO sorry. I just watched this episode).

Seriously though, I am nthing an ap or hidden camera in an old phone, or if it's a computer station, you can even use a computer webcam set to livestream.
posted by Dimes at 9:00 AM on March 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Not sure why my previous comment was removed. I asked for no lecturing. Appreciate the ideas and answers that actually honored my request. Thanks!
posted by driedmango at 7:43 AM on March 21, 2016