The Great Cookie Caper

The late shift at the radio station (insert your favoriet call letters here) had a way of making night workers hungry.

David (fake name) and his coworker, Ryan (fake name), had been working late for hours, and by the middle of the night, both of them had developed a serious case of the munchies. Unfortunately, the station was not exactly surrounded by twenty-four-hour restaurants, and there was nowhere nearby to grab something to eat.

So they did what any two hungry radio guys might do at three in the morning.

They headed for the refrigerator.

The refrigerator offered little encouragement. They looked inside, hoping for a forgotten sandwich, a piece of fruit, or anything remotely edible. There was practically nothing.

Then David and Ryan noticed something else.

In the station lobby stood a huge, pyramid-shaped display made entirely of boxes of chocolate chip cookies. It was an elaborate promotion for one of the station's newest advertisers. The display was impressive—rows of cookie boxes stacked carefully from the floor upward into a giant pyramid.

And, as far as David and Ryan were concerned, it was also food.

There was just one problem.

The cookies were not theirs.

That did not stop them from coming up with a plan.

They decided they would take one box from the bottom row—carefully enough that nobody would notice. They opened the box without damaging the packaging, removed the cookies, and replaced them with bubble wrap. Then they carefully resealed the box and returned it to its exact position in the display.

To anyone walking through the lobby, the pyramid looked completely untouched.

Inside the box, however, there were no cookies.

There were 24 pieces of bubble wrap worth of deception—and 24 chocolate chip cookies missing.

David and Ryan enjoyed their midnight feast and apparently decided they had gotten away with it.

But once was not enough.

Over the next three weeks, their hunger—or perhaps their growing confidence—got the better of them. They repeated the operation five more times.

Each time, they selected a box from the bottom row, carefully opened it, removed the cookies, replaced them with bubble wrap, resealed the package, and returned it to the display.

They were careful not to disturb the pyramid.

They were careful not to leave evidence.

And most importantly, they were careful to make each box look as though it had never been opened.

Eventually, however, the cookie supply was getting rather low.

By the time they finished their series of late-night raids, there was only one box left on the bottom row.

If anyone eventually noticed that something was wrong, David and Ryan already had their explanation ready.

It must have been a packaging error at the cookie company.

After all, how else could several boxes of chocolate chip cookies mysteriously contain bubble wrap instead?

David and Ryan never confessed.

But for three weeks, while everyone else saw a giant pyramid of cookies in the lobby, two hungry night-shift radio guys saw something entirely different:

Dinner.