This is one of those boring personal threads where somebody asks for advice, this time legal!

Because you can't prove anything. That's why.

Ally xpost!!!

Yeah. This may be one of those occasions when you have to learn a lesson the hard way and move on. Unless you could figure out a way of getting the store to provide proof of purchase your way, which would be really hard, considering you paid for it with cash.

This is a really strong argument for keeping receipts, BTW. You should ALWAYS keep receipts for things like this. And you should try to pay for bigger-ticket items with either checks or cards (debit or credit) so you'll have an even stronger paper trail should something like this happen to you again.

You MIGHT be able to recover the machine after going through the rigamarole of legal action, but that's a very iffy sort of thing and not something you should really rely upon. Anyway -- yeah. Time will catch up with her, don't worry. But as for now -- live and learn, y'know?

Beat her, like the good folks said.

And: Mickey, the lesson could just be to purchase things with a credit/debit card or a check and keep your receipts so that if something like this happens again, you have proof that the property is yours and that if there's any damage incurred to it that the person who stole the item from you should have to give you the same amount of money you spent on said item. You know, so you won't end up hurting in the end.

But if a) she doesn't have the PS2 anymore or b) doesn't have any money, than you're not getting anything even if you can prove your case.

but you have to be! welcome to real life. sadly a lot of people are mooches and deadbeats -- being trusting is all well and good, but you still have to suss a person out before you can decide to trust them.

1) Damage her property (illegal)
2) Steal back your PS2 (mostly illegal)
3) Do nothing / buy a new PS2 (legal)

I should just slit her throat and leave the country.
NOTE TO FBI PROBABLY READING THIS: I'M JOKING

Any creative revenge ideas that won't get me arrested would be great.

so

1) phone her up and tell her you're really sorry you havent been a good friend recently, and, also you know she's having a rough time recently, and, that she hasn't got much money, and, as you've come into rather a lot of money recently, you'd like to make things up to, with a gesture of goodwill, and, "i hope you're not offended or anything, or see it as charity, but, i'd like to give you the playstation 2"

2) wait one year to 18 months, till she's forgotten all about you

3) a steady chain of pointless and untraceable minor revenges, that should last between 3- 5 years

If that isn't an option, get a new one, no legal proceeding, even small claims, is cheap enough to make going after a 150 dollar worth it.

Not saying that necessarily happened, just that there are lots of things we can imagine filling the mistier holes in Mickey's retelling. Which is just further reason to conclude that the whole story is maybe a mess and he should just write that console off.

Ally, I have no idea how I became gay in this questioning. Conversations with cops don't wory like conversations with normal people -- I was just saying whatever seemed most likely to make the conversation end, and somehow the fibs snowballed into some kind of boyfriend-trauma story. I think part of my goal was to make the guy uncomfortable and maybe exploit his possible confused-homosexual stereotypes to explain why I was behaving in a way he found weird. Unfortunately he was too dense to pick up on the homoerotic implications, and so my ploy totally failed to throw him off-script.

i'm still not understanding how she can see you with a straight face at work. i would give her one warning, then i would just socially bash the hell out of her. no joke. tell your boss. tell your coworkers. "piece of advice, NEVER lend anything to Katie." etc etc. i would just make it common knowledge amongst any shared acquaintances that she's a total theif and cannot be trusted. hell, post flyers up on campus. if you truly have the moral upper hand here, fuckin bomb them. tell their landlord that they have stolen property in their apartment.

none of these things will get your ps2 back, and maybe it'll start a war you don't want, but...

do they hate you because of the dumb roommate thread? i know i would probably be more than just a little pissed off if i was them.
m.

I'm not doing anything to get revenge on her that I haven't already done, meaning, call her out on this thread that most likely will never ever affect her.

Final part of the story: today as I was walking into work, I got there just in time to hear my boss saying, "Well okay then, you have the job" to Katie's boyfriend, Ian. The world is a cold, cold place.

I don't know how she could look at me anymore either. Today she passed by me. She looked in my eyes for one second, looked extremely guilty, and then took out her cell phone to stare at while she walked the rest of the way.

people get there's. and maybe they already are. i mean hell, she's dating a moron!
m.

If anything, I think it might be too late by now. I'd just be really cool to the entire situation and see what happens. I would imagine that acting really interested in getting it back was what freaked them out to begin with. If anything, Katie probably mentioned it to Ian and he went off on how you were always on his case, etc. You've probably given them something to bond over! The police thing completely blew it, because now you're the guy who can't even work out his own shit. I would have tried mutual friends, coworkers, anything before that. You've now pushed the cops on someone who you're probably going to run into. Baaaad. Just walk away, play it off, and if anyone ever mentions it, just go "oh man, I can't believe that shit happened, my dog died that week and my test came back positive and.. etc. etc." Make it into the worst week ever, play it off like you totally don't do that shit and the PS2 was just an outpouring of a week's worth of grief.

If getting it back is a big deal for you, then returning it is a big deal for them.

Honestly Mickey, the number of times you've referred to things as "your property" here raises a few flags with me, not least -- and pardon me for saying so, but it stuck out to me -- because of your extremely ambiguous description of your relationship with Katie.

Is there zero lingering attraction for this girl?

IRRITATION that a nice girl, who you say on this thread that you "like," is going out with an intolerable asshole like Ian?

A girl you later call a "bitch"?

The scene you describe at work is a classic of post-emotional-connection vibes, and maybe it's just a coincidence but your posts here at least suggest otherwise.

Ian and Katie started patching things up and they got back together. She stayed "friends" with me though. I got her a job at the campus student union, where I also work. She stayed friendly with me and when Ian wasn't around, we'd talk and hang out.

Judge Mathis is actually pretty good about listening to people argue about, say, a phone bill, and then suddenly going "hold up, you were totally pimping her cousin, weren't you," and then the guy's like "yeah," and the audience is amazed: what vast sage experience in human nature and behavior this judge must have to have figured that out! This whole PS2 saga is like some kind of Rorschach blot in exactly those terms -- there's all this concrete stuff about who had what when, but the actual progress of the relationships and how people feel about each other is so totally vague and muddy and seemingly random (unexplained sudden hatreds, weird m/f/m triangle dynamics, etc) that we can't help but start wondering.

That's why I keep posting here! It's like Law and Order or something, I need that turnaround bit where we suddenly see how it all went down.

You guys can keep looking for the secret plot twist. I promise to tell you if you figured something out that I didn't mention, but that really is the whole story minus banal details like what t-shirt I happened to be wearing on that day.

Also, regarding the cops... I have a feeling that if my question, instead of being "Can I in court?" was, "This bitch stole my Playstation 2. It's in her boyfriend's apartment. They are refusing to give it back. Should I get a bunch of friends together to kick their asses, or what?" ... I can imagine the answers I'd be getting then would be, "Don't risk getting arrested. Call the cops!" There ain't no pleasing people.

Though if he had, you'd have had to put out, right? "I should arrest you, faggit, but maybe there's something you can do for me first..." Nabisco + bent cop slashfic please!