Ketchup Bandit
This is the Tale of the Ketchup Bandit. I swear it’s all true!
November 27, 2002
At work, I have a drawer where I dump any extra condiment packets I have from fast food places, so when I’m short some ketchup or hot sauce, I have them on hand.
The surgical hose is for wrist exercises, by the way; I’ve not been shooting up at work.
A few weeks ago (probably early November or late October), I went in to grab some ketchup and it squirted out; a hole had been ripped in it. I went through and eight or ten packets had been torn open. I had to spend some time going through all of them and cleaning the cubicle up.
Fine, hah hah, very funny, someone was playing a prank. But I could *not* sort out who would do it. The thing is, I didn’t think anyone I knew would be enough of an ass to pull the prank *and* do it anonymously. It wasn’t a big deal, but why go to the bother of doing such a thing if the victim didn’t know who was responsible?
Well, a week or so later, I found another ruptured packet. Fine, perhaps I’d just missed it from the first time; no big deal. Then, this week, I found another one, torn open all the way down the side, and clearly in a place I wouldn’t have missed it.
The mystery needed to be solved. I borrowed a webcam from a friend and set it up to take a movie whenever there was movement. And lo and behold, that very night he struck (Nov 27, 2002). The three torn packets above are the fruits of his labor this night. This guy is part of the cleaning crew; I’m not really sure what his vendetta is against me, or if he’s responsible for anything else along these lines.
This is a video of him in the act, his first visit to my cube at 9:34pm on November 27.
And this video of him coming back at 10:27pm on the 27th, apparently to empty the trash.
I’m torn as to what to do. Clearly this is a violation of trust, and he should no longer be allowed in the building. However, I want to get more video, so I think I may hold off a bit in reporting this.
December 2, 2002
When I came into work, I showed this web page to a few people in the IT department. At least 2 other people have had similar events. One guy had some crackers ripped open, and thought it was a mouse, a week or two ago. The guy across the hall from me looked and found some ketchup packets ripped open this morning. In this picture, the packet on the right is from his cubie, and the one on the left is a 4th one I found this morning that I had apparently missed on the morning of the 28th.
I’ve talked to a couple of other people who have had similar experiences recently in other parts of the building (an engineer and someone in accounting). The stuff is torn open in a way so that it looks like mice did it; I assume this is his intent to throw us off track.
We’re going to try and set up some more cameras to get better angles on the bandit tonight.
December 3, 2002
Well, we had two cameras running last night. Unfortunately, the new one crashed before the bandit arrived. However, we did get some good video of him in the act again. I can’t quite make out what he’s using to rip these guys open. Also, it appears that he’s stealing some loose change out of my drawer. Here is the ripped packet from this morning (sorry for the crappy pic; I don’t want to move the webcam from its spot).
This is the video of him in the act last night, December 2, at 9:41pm.
I just spoke with the guy who handles facilities. He and his boss, in charge of operations, are aware of the page and the situation. I’m going to try and talk the operations manager into letting this run one more night before getting rid of the cleaning crew. I would like to print out a copy of him in the act and put it in the drawer for him to find on camera. We shall see…
Okay, I spoke with the operations manager and told them my plan. They agreed to hold off until tomorrow to get this guy fired. I’ve just printed out three pictues from the videos which I will leave in the condiment drawer. We should have some interesting video tomorrow!
DAMN!
Damn, damn. Sorry folks, I think the show is over. The company is (rightly) concerned with liability if he were to do something when he found the picture. This is what I had in my drawer for him to find when I got word it wasn’t going to be.
Thus it seems we near the end of our little adventure. Management is going to meet with the cleaning vendor and I’m sure this asshole won’t be allowed in the building again, to say the least. I’ll post here if I learn anything more about it.
All right, plans changed again. The operations manager just came and talked to me, and they have not yet done anything today. They’re going to wait until tomorrow, and want to get another round of video. However, she asked that I do not have the picture in the drawer, so we won’t get his face on video when he realizes he’s busted; damn.
December 4, 2002
Well, he got another packet last night. However, *both* fucking webcams crashed before I got any footage. One of them got him coming around to vacuum, but neither got him in the act.
Curiouser and curiouser
Okay, sounds like they’re not going to bust him today, so we’ll hopefully get one more shot at getting some video. A new development has come about that makes me wonder if this guy actually has anything to do with the damn ketchup packets: I cleaned out my drawer completely, and found some mouse droppings and a bunch of shredded stuff in the corner. A lot of these ripped open packets were *definitely* the work of a mouse.
All of them? I don’t know. Is it just coincidence that every time he goes in there I find ketchup packets ripped open? Hard to say.
It is certainly clear this guy is going places where he should not. I am going to put some change in the drawer and count how much is missing in the morning. Unless the mouse is hoarding change…
Here is the bait. I got a wad of change to put in here, and have carefully inventoried it:
24 quarters
1 dime
2 nickels
8 pennies
$6.28 total
Is he stupid enough to steal some even though there is a camera on the desk right in front of the drawer?
I’m betting yes; I mean, just look at that hat.
December 5, 2002
We had a power outage in the building last night at 9ish, so both of the webcam PCs got rebooted. They hadn’t captured anything before that, so no new video. All of the money still here this morning, so he either didn’t come or didn’t take the bait. I think they may not have been scheduled to clean the place at all last night.
The operations manager is meeting with the cleaning vendor at 2pm. I’ll let y’all know what the result is, but I think we’ll not have any more opportunity for video of this guy.
Canned!
Just got word back from the facilities dude; they met with the vendor today, who has something like 150 clients in the area. They must have sensed this was a big issue, as they came with the president of the company. Anyway, they guy is being fired and they want to get a copy of the video.
I haven’t seen any evidence that the mouse has been back. I did hear that on Monday, the 2nd, someone killed a mouse that was underneath his desk. However, that’s not the end of them, as apparently another one was spotted elsewhere this morning.
December 6, 2002
Well, the little fucker is back. Next week I’ll try putting the camera in the drawer (possibly with a mousetrap) to try and get the little bugger on camera.
So it does appear that this poor sap that is the cleaning dude just happenned to be going through the wrong drawer at the wrong time. I feel a bit bad about it, but it’s not like he didn’t bring it on himself. Merry fucking Christmas, I guess.
December 11, 2002
Sting Part Two
Well, now that I got some poor sap fired for petty theft just before Christmas, I decided I must actually get the REAL Ketchup Bandit on video. I just set up the webcam inside my drawer, empty except for a light and 3 ketchup packets (one of which has already been pierced).
Should this work, the next step may be to do the same thing, with the camera pointed at a mousetrap. Am I that cold-hearted? We shall see, we shall see.
December 12, 2002
Mouse Tales
Well, here he is, the *real* Ketchup Bandit. I’m torn whether I should put a normal mouse trap in there and get the little bugger getting killed on video, or if I should get one of those no-kill traps. Too bad I don’t have a cat any more; the little rodent would have made a nice Christmas present for Kee Kee.
Video of the little guy’s first visit to my cube, at 12:36am on the morning of December 12th. By the way, a few seconds was cut out of this video where he was off-camera, but it was all taken within the space of 120 seconds.
His second visit of the night, about an hour later at 1:31am.
This (and the next) video is unedited.
And some more video of him at 1:35am.
Whatya think? Too cute to kill?
December 13, 2002
I had planned to wait until Monday to set up the trap. However, I guess the facilities crew has set up a bunch of traps with poison, so if I want to have any chance at getting the little guy ("Heinz") alive, I’d better do it tonight. I’ll probably stop in in the morning to see if he’s been trapped.
December 16, 2002
Nothing yet. The trap is pretty big, and I don’t think the little guy got the memo that he needs to go in the door to it. He did trip off the motion sensor; you can see some shadows and a bit of dust floating down in front of the camera, so he was in the drawer, but never close to the entrance to the trap.
The facilities dude said they didn’t get any mice in the poison traps yet, so little Bandit still has a chance to live. I’m going to try and leave a little trail of ketchup packets and cat food leading into the trap.
December 20, 2002
Well, no sign of the little guy all week. I don’t know if he just got spooked or what, but he’s not been back since last weekend. I’m going to take the trap out for the holidays (I’m out all next week), because I don’t want to come back to work with a stinky dead mouse in my drawer.
March 3, 2003
It’s been months without a peep from Bandit; he never showed up in the drawer again that I can tell. I guess this is the end of the story…