Government waste...
The government building that I work out of was having about $150,000 worth of renovations done. Not really necessary but they 'needed' to spend it all before the end of the financial year.
They were throwing out some lovely tables, chairs, doors, monitors, cupboards, - a lot of the stuff would be ideal for someone renovating their home on a budget...like me.

Doing the right thing I contacted the project supervisors' secretary who told me to fill in forms XYZ to submit an offer to buy wanted items.
Fair enough I thought and submitted several fair bids - which got knocked back. I hadn't been outbid, in fact no other bids at all - the project supervisor just decided in his jobsworth wisdom that if he didn't notify each of several thousand employees of the chance to bid then he would be subject to "official grievances". He then also rejected my idea of donating the goods to a local charity shop (where of course I would suddenly appear and buy them for even less!) due to "liability concerns".

We were then instructed to ensure that all the goods were put in several industrial skips left out the front of the building. No surprise when all the decent bits had been scavenged by the public overnite - fair enough since it was taxpayers’ money in the first place.
I was then instructed to advice the local police of the "theft". On the police report I filled in "Stolen items details:" as "Miscellaneous rubbish from a skip". The police didn’t even bat an eyelid as they go through this sort of shit all the time.

On return to my workplace I spied an item that was too big to have gone in the skip being loaded onto a waste removal truck.
It was the main item I wanted and in near mint condition.
“Straight to the dump eh boys?” I asked the waste removal technicians. “Bollocks to that – I’m taking this home” came the reply.
He then informed me that the same jobsworth project supervisor who had knocked me back had okayed the waste guy to do what he wanted with any items he collected as he wasn’t subject to our Code Of Conduct or Grievance Procedure.

For fucks sake…
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Mon 16 May 2005, 2:48, Reply)