I sent someone to jail today. How was YOUR workday?

This old coot came in today wanting to buy broken fence pickets. We sell broken fence pickets for 50 cents each just to get rid of them. (The good ones are $1.49.)

I went outside, looked around and didn't see any broken ones. Lots of good ones but no broken ones. I went back inside and told the guy there were no broken ones. He charged outside and pointed at the rack of good pickets. "What are those? Those are broken pickets. I want them at a discount." No, those are the full-price ones. "Well, I want to negotiate a lower price. I don't want to pay that much for those pickets." (Lots of people try to haggle prices in my store. Most of them don't scream at you while they're haggling.)

After I told the guy, in no uncertain terms, that the prices in my store are not negotiable, he starts going on and on about how he's working for the Eastover Civic Club and that he wants the stuff free if he can get it and highly discounted if we won't just donate it. And then he went on this big spiel about all the good Godly works the Eastover Civic Club does and how Jesus would be very happy if we'd donate 320 fence pickets to the Eastover Civic Club. I told him fine but I just had to confirm that the Eastover Civic Club was going to do the project.

I got out my phone book and looked up the number for the Eastover town hall. As I looked for it, he handed me a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. "Here. Just call this number and they'll confirm it." By this time I found the number in the phone book--it was different from the one he gave me. I called the one in the phone book.

"Hello, Eastover Town Hall? I have a customer standing in front of me says he's building a fence for the Eastover Civic Club and I just need to check on how big it needs to be."
'Is it a real old guy in a hat?'
"Yeah. Why?"
'Don't let him leave. We're sending the police right now.'
"Huh?"
'There ain't no fuckin' Eastover Civic Club, man. Just don't let this guy out of your sight.'

Turns out this cocksucker's a fly-by-night fence builder who has gotten at least one free skid of fence pickets out of just about every lumber dealer in the Cape Fear Valley.

:)

Sounds like something out of the Depression.

bushlicker to me.

As much as I love epithets, these are a bit lowbrow...

Glad you busted him for the con. Good work, looking up the number for yourself. You might wanna alery your state's Attorney General's office too. Chances are he isn't just working the scam in your area. Help get the word out so others don't fall victim to this routine. He must not be working alone if he has someone answering the phone at the number he wanted you to call.

for quite some time.

What happens is that the dude rips off a lumberyard in the name of the town of Eastover. Then someone who's really FROM Eastover comes in to buy something and they're treated like low-level scum. So they have wanted to have a word with this gentleman for quite some time.

And the weirdest thing, as I learned from the cops when they came to take him away, is that no one's aware of his ever having lived in Eastover. (Eastover is a wide spot in the road right next to the Interstate. There is basically nothing there except three antiques shops, a bank and two gas stations. You can't even buy serious groceries there.) So he just pulled this Eastover Civic Club shit out of his ass.

What a crazy scam and a crazy thing to risk arrest for. I guess it takes all kinds....

"Yeah..Muggsy..We cleared almost a cool 50 bucks on this one"..Geez...

:hi:

Normally I'd feel bad about it, but not not in this case.

he was trying to steal $480.00 worth of pickets from you, then turn around and charge some Schmuck, probably $1000.00 for them upon building the fence, with his labor on top of that....

Yeah, I woulda sent him to jail, too! Good job.

:yoiks:

.. really jack with the social compact. Good work!

If you build it, He will return and be proud of the wooden fence.

Then comes the harvest.. . and woe to the unbeliever, and to the person who refuses to give his humble servant wooden fence pickets at a discount or preferably for free, on that day. Thus speaketh the Lord thy God.


;)

Jesus, as we all remember, worked as a carpenter before his dad told him to get off his ass and start saving souls.

(Jesus informed his father that he had no ass; carpentry in those days didn't pay all that well, so money for transportation was not in his budget. Jesus' father failed to see the humor in that comment.)

:sarcasm: