Refrigerator Thievery

July 16, 2001 - Kathleen Martin is a career woman, a wife, and a mother, trying to do all of those designations simultaneously, without losing her sanity, not to mention her wits. And one thing that makes her life very difficult is shopping. There’s not a lot of time to be running to the grocery story every couple of days just to pick up something that she missed, so the family has come up with a "list" system, and they do all the shopping at one time, get everything they need for a couple of weeks, and then no more trips to the grocery store until they absolutely have to. But she was having a very frustrating situation in which she was not able to pinpoint the culprit.

Somebody in the family was opening up the refrigerator, taking the carton of milk, and drinking from it without using a glass, and then putting it back empty. Orange Juice was disappearing, pop was disappearing, everything seemed to be disappearing at an alarming rate, and nobody was admitting to the crime. "All I heard was ’I didn’t do it’" Kathleen said, "from both the kids, and the husband as well."

This refrigeration perpetration went on for some time before she decided to do something about it. "I stumbled on your site while surfing the web, and I got a great idea." Kathleen purchased and installed the VCR Commander in the kitchen so she could solve this great mystery of ’who was drinking all the beverages.’ She set the motion detector behind the refrigerator door so that every time it opened, that would trigger the VCR to turn on, the camera would be watching from the other side of the room, and she would have the answers to her most puzzling questions. Who was drinking all the beverages?

What she discovered was almost too much to take. It started near three in the afternoon when the kids got home from school. First her son opened the door, picked up the carton of milk, took a drink, and then put it back in the refrigerator. Only minutes later, in come her daughter. She rummaged around looking for something to eat, but settled instead on a bottle of soda near the back. Once she found something, she poured a drink for her, and then one of her school friends. But later that afternoon, here comes dad/husband. "I couldn’t believe it" Kathleen said. "It seemed the corruption went all the way to the top." Dad opened the refrigerator, peeked in, and pulled an ice tray out of the freezer, filled a glass with ice, and put the ice tray back in the freezer "without filling it back up again I might add." Then he took out the pop, poured a glass. The container was empty, but instead of throwing it away, dad just put it back in the refrigerator.

"Needless to say," Kathleen said, "that night we had a family meeting and I played the tape. There were no excuses because everybody was caught right there on tape. The evidence against them was overwhelming." Kathleen was sure to get a conviction with this evidence.

Well now things have settled down. The crime has died down, and the kitchen is once again safe for drinking. Drinking the pop is okay, drinking the milk is okay, but not from the container, and when someone uses up the last ice cube, it’s their responsibility to fill it back up again.

So now Kathleen can add another title to her bevy of responsibilities... that of detective. And another case is solved, and the XCam2 and VCR Commander have once again restored order to her kitchen.

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