The Tale of the Picky Theif

Last week, I had the inside of my car detailed.  It's not that I'm fancy or rich or anything; it's just that my car was pretty dirty.  In addition to the backseat being covered in crumbs from Clara and Henry sitting back there to and from Chicago for Thanksgiving, I spilled a still-cooling cherry pie on the passenger seat soon after I bought the car.  I don't begrudge my niece and nephew being messy -- at their age and for as long as we were in the car, I expected it -- but with the mess they made, the mess I made, and the car just getting dirty though normal use, I decided I'd rather pay someone to deep clean it rather than spend the time myself and not do as good a job.

After calling a couple of places, I decided to go with one in particular due to the combination of good pricing and a convenient location.  I even coordinated with a coworker so I could drop the car off during lunch and pick it up at the end of the day, so I wouldn't need to wait around.  I made sure to remove most of my personal items from the car, as I had been instructed.

When I came by to pick up the car, the crew was finishing up the last few touches.  I should say that the "crew" was just one guy.  Not the owner, though I got the impression that he does plenty of the hands-on work himself.  No, the crew was an uncomfortably-thin looking man with at least one tooth missing, a couple of tattoos on or near his face, and one gauged ear.  The man had made a lot of bad life decisions, is what I'm saying.  After paying and driving away in my car, I was impressed with the job they did.  They cleaned up the cherry stain so well that I couldn't tell it was ever there.  The inside looks like new!  I was very happy with the job they did.

That's where I was expecting this story to end, but there's a little more.  On Saturday, I went to a grocery store that locks up their shopping carts.  You insert a quarter and it unlocks, you lock it up when you're done, you get your quarter back.  Pretty basic and it eliminates the need to send an employee out to collect the carts.  I keep a bag of change in my car, mostly just as a place to store it (I see change as more as an inconvenience than anything else).  I reached into my glove compartment, pulled out the bag, and found nothing but pennies.  I laughed out loud.

While it was frustrating (and a bit disappointing) that one of the people at the detail shop stole from me, I thought it was hilarious that they went to the trouble of just stealing the silver coins.  Apparently whoever stole from me (I assume it was the crew member) has high standards of what they're willing to pilfer and pennies just do make their cut.