It was daylight burglary, and lots of fun!

Wellington is having a bit of a problem at the moment with buildings getting ready to fall over.

The earthquakes have highlighted weaknesses in new buildings and old buildings. One building in particular, which was being fixed up after being damaged in a previous quake, is just over the road from the office.

Engineers went in and inspected it, and found it near to collapse, so everyone around it was evacuated and the street was cordoned off. This is an issue for us. One of the streets that was cordoned off, leads to the office. So we have no access to the building. We need to keep working in order to keep living. And to do that we need our computers and papers etc.

There is no telling how long the cordons will be up and how long we will be banned from entering the office. It could be months.

So we hatched a cunning plan.

The boss said there is access to the back of the building through a bar on the next street. We could go through the bar, into the office from the carpark, grab the gear we need, and be out before anyone spots us.

It was a good plan.

But for this heist we needed a good crew.

So the boss made a few phone calls, and pretty soon we had accomplice one and accomplice two ready to go. We agreed to meet at the bar and make entry into the building.

We arrived almost all at the same time, and found parking close by, which was unusual. Accomplice two had still to arrive, so the boss (generous man that he is) bought us drinks while we waited for him to turn up.

He then chatted with the barman about getting access to the alleyway out the back. That was when things started to go awry.

After trying all the keys he had, the barman confirmed that the door was sealed, and we couldn’t make access to the alley.
About that time accomplice two turned up. He was sure we could get into the alley through another bar. You can see where this is going huh? Our daylight burglary was quickly turning into a bar crawl. But it was Friday afternoon, the boss was buying the drinks, so ……

We followed accomplice two to the second bar, and sure enough we managed to get through and into the alley.

We were in!

Sneaking up the stairs (because it’s more fun to sneak) we paused outside the door to the office for a final briefing, sorting out who would grab what.

Then with a nod, the boss opened the door and we entered. They immediately went down on their knees so they couldn’t be seen through the windows, and crawled to their desks to retrieve papers and computers and screens.

I walked to the other end of the office, unconcerned that I would be seen. At one point I stood next to accomplice two, him on his knees and me on my feet – our heads were the same height, so I figured I didn’t need to bend down.

We grabbed what we came for and legged it (or kneeled it) back out to the kitchen, where we couldn’t be seen from the street. Once there, we bagged up our swag and exited the building, going out the way we came in, with no-one on the cordon the wiser.

We passed the cooks from the bar having a cigarette and walked through the bar, laden down with computers, and screens and dangling mice. With a cheery ‘chur bro’ we, left the bar and wandered around the corner and loaded up the getaway vehicles.

Then we all went our separate ways agreeing to meet up later on to sort out the cut.

It was a good heist, well organised and planned. We had a good team, who knew what they were doing and were very efficient and professional. I’m sure we could have tackled a bigger office no problem.

So if we are not allowed back into the office for the next few months, it’s no problem. We can still carry on working, and a couple of my colleagues have a new skill to add to their CVs.