Monday, August 27, 2007

Monday Morons--As if the problem weren't bad enough

Well, I have been meaning to blog about Homewrecking-sluts. Not her in particular, but just them in general. There was something in particular that I found out, which perhaps doesn't really go with the Monday Morons theme, but I was going to blog about it anyway.

But then I got something in the mail that made me mad. And I remembered that I got something similar about a month ago. I meant to blog about it then, but I guess I forgot.

So the Homewrecking-sluts can wait. Unfortunately, they are not going away anytime soon.

For the past year or so we have heard on the news about some odd thefts. People are destroying air-conditioners and refrigerators by cutting off the copper tubing. They then take the stolen copper to a scrap metal place and sell it.

Since they get paid by the pound for the stolen copper, they like to steal from big places that don't have much in the way of security. Churches and charities are often the victims.

Destroyed air-conditioners are expensive to repair, but the destroyed refrigerators and freezers are even more upsetting. People walk into their churches to find that fifty gallons of ice cream have melted or two hundred hotdogs have gone bad. So not only do they have to pay hundreds or thousands to get their appliances repaired or replaced, they either have to buy more food or cancel whatever they had planned for that weekend.

I think this is a very strange crime to get involved in. Without even getting into the morality of stealing, stealing stuff by the pound is odd. Stealing money I can understand. Stealing cars I can understand. Stealing jewelry I can understand. But this makes about as much sense to me as stealing nails from Home Depot or bin stuff from Whole Foods. You'd just have to steal tons of it before you'd make any money.

But stealing copper tubing just seems to be the thing this year.

And if the problem weren't bad enough already, now there are coupons. We get this thing in the mail called Valpak, which is a blue envelope full of coupons. Most of it is useless to me. There's an ad for acne medicine, and coupons for carpet cleaning and for roof repair, and stuff like that. But there's usually four or five coupons for Sonic and a Chinese restaurant and a couple of BBQ places, so I always open the envelope just for those.

Last week we got the usual stuff and a coupon for an extra ten cents a pound on any copper we could sell to a certain recycling place.

????

3 comments:

Tara said...

I had not heard about the copper tubing theft before, that is definitely weird.

That ValPak thing arrives every so often at my place too. I never use the coupons. I put some aside to use, but usually forget to take them along. I almost ordered the acne stuff awhile ago, but I'm glad I didn't.

Philip. said...

I know we used to have problems with people stealing lead off church roofs.

Also, people dig up thick electricity cables, burn off the plastic and weigh it in.

Scum!

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