Theft in restaurants is nothing new, but one recent case in Greater Manchester, England, has left even seasoned staff scratching their heads.
Stole a Sink?
A woman allegedly stole a £150 (S$254) sink from the bathroom of Jardim Rodizo, a Brazilian restaurant in Altrincham, leaving staff and the owner baffled.
The incident took place on Thursday evening, February 20, when restaurant owner Robert Mellman and his team noticed something was off during a routine bathroom check.
The sink, along with some pipework, had mysteriously disappeared, according to the Manchester Evening News.
The CCTV Footage
Initially confused, Mellman and his staff turned to the restaurant’s CCTV footage in the corridors leading to the toilets, hoping to make sense of what happened.
The footage showed a woman entering the restaurant carrying a small, seemingly empty black handbag. She headed straight to the bathroom without interacting much with the staff.
Minutes later, the same woman reappeared on camera. This time, her bag looked noticeably fuller. Mellman believes the missing sink was stashed inside.
“I’ve seen a lot of things, but never something like this,” Mellman told the media.
Easy Target: Sinks Simple to Disconnect
The restaurant has separate men’s and women’s bathrooms, each with individual cubicles containing a toilet and a sink behind a locked door.
Mellman explained that while the sinks aren’t particularly expensive, they are imitation stones and not difficult to disconnect from the plastic pipework.
Not Your Usual Theft
At 8:17 p.m., the woman left the restaurant, seemingly unnoticed. While Mellman, 72, is no stranger to theft in his decades-long career — with items like wine bottles occasionally going missing — the sink incident took him by surprise.
“I’ve had people steal lots of things over the years — bottles of wine and things like that — but never something like this. This is quite unusual,” he said.
“All we could do was laugh”
Though the situation left Melman perplexed, he couldn’t help but find some humor in it.
“All we could do was laugh,” he said.
The theft has since left both the restaurant team and patrons wondering what someone might do with a stolen bathroom sink — a mystery yet to be solved.
Watch the video here:
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