The Case of the Missing Toilet Rolls

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For the love of God will some one please explain to me why people steal toilet rolls.

I clean a place (I won't say where it is, but the general public go there) and several times a week the toilet rolls are stolen.

Yeah, I get that if you're unemployed, perhaps loo rolls are the last thing on your 'to buy' list. Even though Asda budget toilet rolls are only 13p a roll. But hey, wouldn't want to cut into your tobacco money, would we now?

And yes, you might be a student who is living away from home for the first time and has just discovered that toilet roll doesn't automatically replenish itself, like you thought.

There again, maybe you are like that celebrity on Big Brother who admitted she did it just for a laugh. Perhaps stuffing a loo roll in your handbag or inside your jacket does it for you.

There is even a facebook page entitled: 'I steal toilet rolls because I begrudge paying to wipe my ass.'

And sad though it is, I'm not surprised to find that stealing toilet rolls is #140 on the list of stuff unemployed people like. A site where one person bragged that they stole four rolls in one go!

Don't these people know you can go to jail for stealing? A girl in Iowa got three years for stealing toilet rolls. Do you know what her name was? Suzanne Butt. I kid you not.

This so annoys me that I'm on a one-woman crusade to find ways of combatting the problem. I have two quite brilliant ideas - what do you think?

Toilet rolls could be tagged. When the thief leaves the building the toilet roll screams like a banshee: "toilet roll thief about to leave the building! Toilet roll thief about to leave the building!"

Toilet roll holders could have a magnetic plate (spare rolls to sit on a magnetic plate) and all toilet rolls would contain a tiny dye pack with a radio receiver. This is activated when the toilet roll leaves the magnetic plate. After about ten seconds the dye pack explodes releasing an aerosol of red smoke or tear gas thus compelling the thief to chuck the stolen roll. Okay, the down side is we'd still lose the toilet roll but I'd lay money on it being the last toilet roll that person would ever steal!

Or we could just employ a woman called Ingrid, with the body of a shot putter and a penchant for bodliy contact, to frisk everyone as they left the building. Although it worries me that some would-be toilet thieves might actually enjoy that.

Jeez. Y'know, it's not just toilet rolls, either. Since I've worked in this place, we've had the hot and cold sign on the taps stolen and someone even unscrewed the plug for the hand dryer and nicked the fuse. I mean, who carries around a screw driver?

Well, I have to look on the bright side. At least it gives me something to write about!