"Shop"lifting

[bEdhEd]

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?

[BigJ]

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

[matthewdenny]

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.

[jwallace15]

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.

[colin340]

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

[Tyler2517]

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.

[Whippet]

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

[team222badbrad]

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.

[Christopher149]

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

[JohnFogarty]

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

[ThunderPorpoise]

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.

[Andy A.]

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!

[Meiers23]

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

[Jay1986]

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

[jwallace15]

Originally Posted by Jay1986

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

You, sir, must have very large pockets.

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