"Shop"lifting
 

I've left safety glasses on my head and I have kept tools and camera lens covers in my pockets. There are days when I forget that they're there and I take them home with me, and have to return them the next day. Probably the most expensive thing I accidentally took home from the shop was a camera lens cover, since it costs more to replace than the cost of other little tools I've taken. There are students who take home some stuff from our shop on accident, too, and I'm sure other FRC team members have had the same experience. I don't think I've never taken home anything worth more than $50, though. So that led me to wonder:

What's the most expensive thing you've accidentally taken home from your shop?

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

The sum of all my taken Dry-Erase markers. (I'm one of the controls mentors :) )

I found a spike in my pocket the morning after bag and tag. The last few hours were busy and I must have forgotten I put it there.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

I've found deburring tools and wrenches in my pocket at home before (and even a #29 drill bit), but I've never taken anything really expensive. I caught myself with an RSL in my pocket yesterday as I was walking out the door to leave, though.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

my whole family mentors 5 people we have to take a bag of safety glasses back every few weeks. There is also a growing pile of aluminium cutoffs on top on top of the washer

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Our team does not have the ability to use much of our schools metal shop so we send some students to a community collage (a bit of a drive). Now wanting to save man hours we only send components that need to be accurate so the drive train and a few other things.

The day you realize that you accidentally left 2 and a half swerve modules in your back pack. When you forgot to unload the cargo at the meeting. For those that don't know those things don't run cheap.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

The charger for the driver station computer. That's a mistake I'll never make again.

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I try to discourage the practice of placing items in pockets.

Sure it occasionally happens. Not only does it lead to items being taken home, it leads to unhappy team members who cannot find the item that someone else placed in their pocket moments earlier such as bolts/tools. Once in their pocket they tend to walk away or forget about having the item on them.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

Not myself, but I think one student managed to go home with a Jaguar in his pocket.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

I've had a talon in my pocket before. Those things are so small it's easy to forget they are there.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

Not expensive per-say but one year we used one kind of small nut for the whole robot and somehow wound up with only one wrench that fit them. Low and behold I left after the first day of competition with that little precious wrench jingling in my pocket. I managed to get it back the next day. I was just glad I had checked my pockets when I got home.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

My day job involves servicing medical research equipment. One day I got home and realized that I had brought home a platinum mesh electrode used in a piece of equipment I had worked on that day. I had put it in a petridish and put in my pocket so it wouldn't get damaged while I worked. I put the whole thing back together and forgot to put the electrode back in place. Oops!

The cost of the electrode was probably about $1000 even though it was maybe only a couple hundred worth the platinum. The equipment would have been fine if it had run without the electrode but the experiment being done would have been worthless and it's difficult to calculate the cost of that. Luckily I was able to get it put back together correctly the next day before anyone had attempted to use it. Whew!

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

Sometimes I'll come home and empty my pockets to find a piece of hardware I had been looking for during the meeting I had just left. This happens way more often that I'd like to admit :D

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

I still have our classmate from 2012.....:yikes:

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

You, sir, must have very large pockets.

Edit: I just found a pressure gauge in my coat pocket.

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Most commonly I wind up with 7/16ths wrenches and teal T handles. Most expensive is probably the pair of victors that wound up at my house over the summer.

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I usually end up donating more stuff to our shop than I remove...

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I never thought that someone would bring up swerve modules. There isn't much that can top that.

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While I was a student one of our mentors forgot an 8" wheel in his pocket. we were searching that wheel for hours until he noticed it in his home.

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Someone on the electrical team thought it would be funny to put the old cRIO in their backpack for some reason last year when we were cleaning up. I'm sure he just wanted to play minecraft on it or something.

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Seconded. Most of the stuff in there was formerly mine. Now it's "ours."

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Amen. "Our" height gauge, several computers, a monitor and about 3 pairs of harbor freight calipers.

The only thing that is coming with me after I graduate this year is the height gauge. The team puts everything else to better use than I ever could.

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

One of our students has gotten in trouble with her mom after some pop rivets made their way through the washing machine. Twice. :)

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

You'd be surprised. I accidentally brought home one of our solid aluminum milled swerve modules from the 2011-12 offseason once. Upon realizing that we were never going to actually build them, it's stayed on my desk as a paperweight (and let me tell you, it is one cool paperweight!).

One of our team members took one of our two joysticks home after the competition last year probably to test something on it. He forgot to get it back. We realized we were missing it six months later when we decided to drive our base around during open house.

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I took this year's game piece home for testing over a weekend when the school was closed to us. The following Monday, our team spent 15 minutes looking for the ball.

After that we made a rule banning the removal of critical things no matter how valuable the "testing"

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

I've got half of our 2001 robot in my trunk, our only bot with treads. Are we counting added value for antiques?

Re: "Shop"lifting
 

A computer. We were flashing O-Droid XUs and I put one that wasn't being worked in my pocket so it wouldn't get stepped on and I got home and realized I still had it.