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About 900 rolls of toilet paper have been stolen from city hall restrooms in Tokushima over the past three years, with the trend showing no sign of coming to an end any time soon.
City hall cleaning staff began noticing that toilet rolls – which are left out on a nearby rack so that they can be easily replaced (or stolen, as the case may be) as necessary – were going missing back in 2010, and so started to keep track of their numbers.
Between 2010 and 2012, a total of 900 rolls were found to have been taken from the ladies’ rooms on the first and second floors of the public building, and a further 30 have been recorded as stolen so far this year alone.
In an effort to stop the rampant paper pinching, city officials put up signs in each of the restrooms, warning that while taking something as seemingly insignificant as a toilet roll may well seem like a harmless act, it is still considered theft and punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to 500,000 yen. The notices also flatly warn that “if [you are] discovered, we will inform the police,” suggesting that staff are reaching the end of the roll themselves.
Those who ignore the warnings and pocket a roll may still flush when they get home, however, as each of the toilet rolls left in the restrooms is now routinely stamped across their cross-section with “property of Tokushima City”, making it clear where they came from.
For now, though, staff remain on high alert and will be keeping an eye open for would-be roll raiders.
Source: Yomiuri Online
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26 Comments
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nath
Good story. Japan is indeed no longer a safety country. Crime is rocketing,
Daniel Neagari
But if you put a stamp on it... now it will get some sort of "exclusiveness" on TP.
Supporter of Cornholio are in da house!!
Laguna
Mon dieu! Given the price of institutional-use toilet paper (some 20/roll), this means that the huge, bloated facility likely typical of most city halls in Japan is being looted of 17 yen per day, every single day of the year!
Perhaps they could put out a collection box. Better, find something more important to do than to gaze at their navels.
Alex Einz
how do they know it wasnt just used up after some serious curry dinner
gogogo
Inside job, the staff are stealing them.
HowardStern
What uni student pays for toilet paper? Next you're going to see waiters patrolling for backpacks at the all-you-can eat joints in town. The cat is coming out of the bag :(
CrazyJoe
I hope the thief is caught and gets one year per 300 rolls.
praack
oh god, punishment must fit the crime- 6 months of public service during weekends working in a waste treatment facility.......
House Atreides
Put RFID tags into the toilet paper roll tubes.
poppler
Yeah, because someone stealing toilet paper makes me feel so unsafe.
Imagine the top crime story in Chicago or Rio de Janeiro was toilet paper theft, lol.
Jimizo
If their toilet paper is anything like the stuff we have at work and they're using it at home too, the culprits will be those who can't sit down.
Jessica Marie Sato
There is NOTHING worse than doing your business and then looking over to find NO TOILET PAPER.
James Dean Jnr.
900 Rolls in 3 years (1096 days, 2012 was a leap year), that's 0.82 rolls per day. Who gives a crap?
FightingViking
@AKBfan
More like "rock and rolling..."
A.N. Other
They should use Izal. Teflon on one side, sand paper on the other. Like wiping your backside with an angle grinder.
One of my lasting memories of being in primary school.
John Galt
Just a reminder but those rolls of tp are bought and paid for buy taxes which are forcibly extracted from the citizens. So, the tp is public property.
Cricky
We must all try hard to wipe this type of crime off and flush it away.
presto345
Who is we?
The toilet paper rolls disappear from ladies toilets, so it seems obvious that 'ladies' take them trying to balance their budgets. Somehow it is similar to what I see at the supermarkets: women ripping off a bunch of plastic bags from the rolls at the check out counters when stuffing their bought items.
C Harald Hansen
Wow, that's 82% of a whole roll every day. Outrageous.
Cos
Meanwhile, every year, they are thousands of rolls of 1 man notes that vanish from the budget of every major public project in Japan. Why are they not checking that sh*t instead ?
Precisely, as a taxpayer I don't want to pay useless salaries for idiots that spend the day counting tissues that cost 1 yen per taxpayer in a lifetime...
itsonlyrocknroll
Metal, thief proof toilet roll holder for conventional toilet rolls.....
https://www.spaldings.co.uk/Shop/ProductDetails.aspx?SubcatID=791&GroupID=10590
Job done, excuse the pun.
Hawkeye
Less than a roll use a day missing and some staffer had to keep count says a lot for the state of the local government and news reporting in sleepy Tokushima-town but hey they made international news on JT and I even wasted a few minutes posting which shows how really bored or stupid I must be. Probably both. lol Gambatte Tokushima toire kami dorobu chan
lostrune2
Girls taking their bags into the toilet stalls heheheheh
stormcrow
This looks like it should categorized as soft crime.
Larry Woodworth
Police are following the paper-trail of the crime.