Comment by dkarl
2 years ago
I think it's more like a common experience. My wife and I both work, so we have cleaners come in every two weeks for a deep clean. We've used several different companies, and apparently it's standard practice to unplug things when a power outlet is needed. They don't unplug computers that have monitors, and they don't unplug things with visible clocks that would need to be reset, so they do take some care not to inconvenience us, but they'll unplug anything else, including NAS appliances, DVRs in the middle of recording shows, etc. When we hire a new company, we make sure they mark down a special request that they not unplug anything, pointing out that we have ample outlets and can help them find one or free one up if necessary. I also replace any network connectors that lose their little plastic locking tabs, because they're likely to slip loose when things get jostled around during cleaning.
It is a common story and sometimes those get put in the collective blender and we get apocryphal stories out of it. Here's two stories of my own:
Back in the mid 90s, I built out a system that gave every school in a district their own webpage that was carved out of some government funding for providing internet access. There was no budget for hardware though, so it ended up running on a repurposed workstation in somebody's office. One Tuesday even the cleaners unplugged it to vacuum and it didn't power back up after being plugged in. On Wednesday somebody helpfully stuck a piece of paper saying "don't unplug" to it, which seemed to solve that problem until the whole project was mothballed.
In the late 90s, I worked at a company where we started getting complaints from the staff about machines being getting slower over time. Nobody took it seriously until there was an inventory of machines taken and we found that a large amount had significantly less memory installed than they should have, somebody was stealing half the memory sticks from each. Hidden cameras were installed in the office and it turned out that somebody on the cleaning crew came with a screwdriver and ESD bags and knew how much to take to leave the machines working.
Goes again to show the usual thing that gets you caught is repetition.
Had he struck once or twice and then left the rest alone nobody may ever have figured it out.
I would expect the repetition generally comes out of necessity. If he's selling the parts to feed himself or his family he's that much less likely to choose to stop if it means giving up some source of income, however ill-gotten.
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For critical devices you could use red outlets. Different colored outlets are scary.