Amnesty Failure

Every now and again the Kiewa Works would have an amnesty on stolen and borrowed items from the job. It was pretty well accepted that if you needed something at home, just take it from the job. The Stores were complaining that the quicker they were ordering stock, the quicker they were running out. So HHC Williams, the Works Superintendent, thought that an amnesty on all stolen and borrowed items would hopefully weed out the missing stock and highlight the fact that workers were wrongfully obtaining items. Each intersection of every street in Mt Beauty was to be the placement point for these items. There would be no incrimination if you placed items at these points. Well, it was amazing. The day after the commencement of the amnesty, there was shovels, rakes, cement mixers, bags of cement, corrugated iron, hand tools, wheelbarrows, ladders and all sorts of hand tools. Mc Ewans Hardware at the time could have opened a store in Hollands Street with the amount of stock on each corner. The amnesty seemed to be a huge success for HHC, in its first night. The smile on HHC's face soon dropped the next day. It was as if the resident workers were saying, "Shit, I haven't got a ladder", so it disappeared from the pile the next night. Then another would say, "I had two wheelbarrows, so it won't hurt to put one out to make it look good. "So that wheelbarrow would be taken away by someone without a wheelbarrow. So the great amnesty plan succeeded for one day and all the Works got back was broken and useless items.