This node was inspired by How to get past the alarm gates in retail stores.I was heading to the Barnes and Noble because, dammit, I could. No classes that day, no nothing, and I was sick of being cooped up in that dank, dripping cave the university deigned to call an 'apartment'. The thing was that I could get to Barnes and Noble, but not inside - a gaggle of people were standing right at the doorway, listening, laughing, watching two men at the center of the group. One was waving an X-Acto knife this way and that, illustrating the story he was telling with slashes through the air to punctuate. The other merely filled in details here and there - mostly, he just had that happy hangdog look of someone who knows he's been gotten by a prank, and gotten good.
This is apparently what the first man did.
First, he gained control of his friend's wallet. I missed this part of the story; I assume he simply picked his friend's pocket, although you, dear reader, may find more elegant ways of going about this. He needed the wallet so he could get his grubby mitts on his friend's driver's license. In Oklahoma, the driver's license is a sheet of paper encased in hard laminate.
From there, he grabbed a random book from the bookshelf and located the security sticker therein. For those not in the know, Barnes and Noble puts squares of metal-stamped paper inside of their books. When these squares pass through the front-door security gates without being demagnetized, the alarm goes off. Well, this man found the security sticker. He had brought in an X-Acto knife and a lighter; he had the driver's license and the security sticker; now, the prank would commence.
He slit open the side of the driver's license with the X-Acto knife, right on the edge, where the two sheets of hard laminate joined. He then slipped the security sticker into the license (on the backside, so it didn't cover up the picture on the front) and sealed the laminate with the cigarette lighter. The driver's license was now rigged, and beautifully so; I got to inspect the license, and the only whiff of tampering came from the fact that the license contained something it shouldn't have. It was otherwise pristine.
The wallet was returned to the owner. They left, rather, attempted to leave the store, but an insistent bright, flashing light and a few overzealous employees kept them from escaping. I understand that it took over half-an-hour for the prankster to reveal the nature of his cunning ruse; by then, a crowd had gathered, and he gave everyone the rundown on how they could embarass friends and family with this simple trick.
I recall that a friend said a year later that the employees there had stopped responding to the shoplifting alarm; likely due to the constant recurrences of pranks. Now anyone could walk out with ill-gotten goods, crying wolf the whole way - none of the employees believed in real theft anymore.