Joe and Donald are mechanics at an auto repair shop

[News Junkie]

Donald has a history of being shady and disagreeable with customers and co-workers. Donald is fired. He packs and leaves with his personal tools. The shop notices a very significant amount of their tools are gone as well. They contact Donald, who says he doesn't have them. The shop presses him and he then claims he has only a few of the missing shop tools. When the shop insists he must have more, Donald wants to negotiate on the return of any more tools he may have, and even claims some of the tools with the shop logo are his. Exasperated, the shop manager contacts law enforcement. The police obtain a warrant and search Donald's property, discovering many more shop tools.

Joe retires. Joe discovers a few smaller shop tools mixed in with his tools that he brought home. He returns them immediately. As the weeks go on and he tinkers with projects at home, he periodically discovers a few more and returns those as well. He assures the shop he will return any more he discovers. The shop manager doesn't contact law enforcement.

Donald wonders why they were treated differently when both had taken shop tools home.

[Atticus]

1. Very well done! Thank you. nt

[forgotmylogin]

16. Accidents happen. Unless you don't treat it like an accident.

The government deals with gazillions of pages of documents and it is inevitable people are going to go "oops" occasionally; a page slips out of the stack and lays in the bottom of a hanging file drawer for a couple months. Usually this happens with the less-critical documents that NARA isn't so worried about. If you purposely wheel an entire file cabinet full of nuclear secrets out, that's likely to not be an accident.

I have made the same point with library books. Library books are not your property but you can borrow them. It might slip your mind to return it but if you keep them past the due date you may incur a small fine upon return. If you keep them for years and don't notify the library, then they start to consider that you've stolen their property which is a big deal.

I have told the story about forgetting to return a music score to my state University library over the summer and bringing it back two months later with apologies. They were quite happy because apparently not returning a book to a state-run library is "stealing from the government" which is a felony which would have been a lot of paperwork for them. Because I didn't go "oh well, they've probably forgotten about it" I just paid like nine dollars in overdue fines instead of getting arrested the next time I ran a stop sign.

Same thing when I interviewed to work at the IRS they talked about how they know people are behind and have problems with back taxes, but if you stay in communication with the IRS and let them know regularly what's going on it's much less of an issue and they'll delay going through the legal process of garnishing your wages. If you don't communicate, they can only assume you're on the run and have to take the drastic measures.

[Bayard]

2. Excellent!

[PCIntern]

3. Terrific!!!!!

Very well done.

[RockRaven]

4. Indeed. Anyone who persists in conflating the two situations is either irredeemably obtuse or

purposely deceitful. Either way, it's a sign that they should never be listened to about anything.

[CTyankee]

5. I think the repukes are using this as an argument that ole Joe just ain't up to the job.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. Now tell all the Sunday-morning-talking-up-Republicans shows.

[barbtries]

7. perfect analogy.

may i share it?

[calimary]

8. I think we should all share it. It's an outstanding analogy!

Really makes the controversy easy to understand. Boils it right down.

And further annoy opponents by changing the Joe and Donald names to Pete and Andy or some such. Then the reveal at the end - “that’s actually the case with Biden and trump.”

[Cha]

9. TY & don't give a shit what magas LIE

about it.

[peppertree]

10. Donald would be the Joey Buttafuoco of mechanics

"Hey, they offered me good money - you know?"

[Dave Bowman]

12. Lol, good one.

[peppertree]

19. Why, thank you

With Cheeto, the jokes just write themselves really.

[Dave Bowman]

11. Great post!

[Aussie105]

13. Donald's followers are trying to release the Flying Monkeys!

Every chance they get.

Misplaced indignant rage is their modus operandi.

Joe says . . . What, me worry?

[NullTuples]

14. Mwaaa - Chef's Kiss!

[Emile]

15. Hell even a Trumpy might get it.

[BaronChocula]

17. What shop is this?

I don't think I wanna take my car there.
(Please don't reply. I know it's an analogy )

[aggiesal]

18. Now I'm wondering if I brought any tools home when I worked at the auto repair shop. n/t

[hippywife]

20. This sounds like...

Goofus and Gallant, Highlights Magazine for Adults.

[Raven123]

21. Excellent!

[central scrutinizer]

22. You left out the part

Where Donald gives a bunch of the shop’s tools to his son-in-law who sells them to a rival shop

[Sneederbunk]

23. You should direct your example to the DOJ.

[alotus51]

24. Or.

Or….Biden is ripping along in his corvette when a cop pulls him over for speeding. Biden receives the ticket and promptly pays it.
Comrade Trump is driving ( I know unlikely, he probably doesn’t know how to drive) when a cop attempts to pull him over at which point Trump takes off, he sideswipes several cars, runs red lights, drives up on sidewalks and finally crashes and then complains that he is being persecuted when he loses his license and has to pay a large fine.
But no difference, Right?

[Emile]

25. K&R

[Best_man23]

26. As a former Auto Technician, this thread resonates with me

Experienced both situations firsthand, where service managers and/or techs were fired or left/retired and took shop tools with them. The service manager at the first shop I worked at sold many of our shop tools to local pawn shops to fund his gambling addiction. Turned out he was also in debt big to a couple of loan sharks tied to the Mob. He was finally caught after gambling away $2K the shop had received from a customer who had picked up his car late on a Friday and paid the bill in cash.

In the Donald case, just have to wonder if any of those shop tools ended up being sold at a "pawn" shop as pilfered tools so often do in real life.

[Earth-shine]

27. One of the things that separates us from the animals is the ability to use tools.

I can picture Joe using some shop tools to work on his Corvette.

The vision stops there.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

28. Trump full case

Full Case against trump:

✅ 1. Had classified docs

2. Hid

3. Refused to give back


Because Biden had ✅#1,. This negates a third of case against trump.

One could argue if it's a third of case I suppose. Good analogy except before we knew President Biden had classified docs, we were all saying that having them at all was a horrendous breach. Much worse that taking tools home.

[Joinfortmill]

29. Good!

[Wednesdays]

30. Go tell that to the M$M

You're preaching to the choir here.

Good post, at any rate.