String cheese is a bit of a problem at Iron Horse. It wasn’t too long ago that Nicole, who handles events for us, had a string cheese go missing from the break room. I can’t say that I know exactly how she discovered who was responsible, but suffice it to say, she did her due diligence and found out it was Nic, who is responsible for shipping all the beer that leaves the building. Upon confrontation, Nic was apologetic for the mishap which was a case of mistaken cheese identity. Nicole was satisfied, more or less, with that explanation.

Fast forward a few weeks and lo and behold, Brooke, our retail operations manager comes to work in the morning to find a wrapper to her string cheese on her desk, string cheese missing. Hmmm. Brooke proceeds to do her due diligence and after considerable quizzing and no conclusions decides to review security video. What she found is when this story gets really interesting. No, it wasn’t Nic. Stop jumping to conclusions. Who was it? This is where the power of crowdsourcing comes in.

We are not going to tell you how the string cheese caper gained entry. Suffice it to say, she exploited a hole in our security and we have since closed that hole. She was also lucky enough to align with a late night cleaning service who disabled the alarm which saved her from setting off the motion sensors. The cards were definitely dealt in her favor.

Here is a chain of events.

Caper gains entry.

Caper lies low for a few hours.

Caper exploits late night cleaning crew disarming the alarm.

Caper tries on some swag. She also rummages through the apparel looking for her favorite item and makes a sizeable mess. Come on. What are you some kind of animal? Do you have no mother who reminded you frequently to pick up after yourself?

Caper decides on an irish death hoodie and a hat. So, it turns out the hoodie is a favorite item whether you are buying it or stealing it. Noted.

Caper needs a snack. Does she head into the kitchen to enjoy any number of pre-made cuisine options such as Oaxaca Quinoa, Curry Chicken Salad, Potato Salad? Oh no. She takes Brooke’s string cheese.

And then she disappears.

Now, many of us have different ideas about what our next steps should be but, me being the chief bosshole, I get the final call.

Should we have called the cops? I suppose. Should we be angry that someone violated our space? Brooke sure was, not to mention super-pissed about the cheese.

“Arrghh, I was really looking forward to eating that string cheese!!” Brooke expressed to me when I said I thought it was mostly funny.

Nor did I follow the suggestion that we act as our own law enforcement agency and post her pictures online to see who it is to crack down. Nope. In usual fashion, I have ignored most of the good advice I have received and have decided to offer this person a sort of unofficial mascot status.

Seriously. The string cheese caper is no average human. There are a range of things that a normal human might do in this situation, first of which would be not breaking and entering but let’s assume that we all find ourselves in that situation and under the assumption that we are not going to get caught. When I imagine that situation I am going to do any number of devious activities. Eat through all the ready made food with my bare hands, maybe throw some into the ceiling fan on high. Yeah, definitely that, and with the Glondo’s hot dogs. I’ve done that once before and what fun it was. (when I was a kid, not at the pub). I’m also going to drink as much of all the different beers as humanly possible lay down an upper decker, tie a t-shirt on my head like a turban and ride a keg. I would probably grab a dollie and race a keg around the building and likely bang into a bunch of stuff. I would probably jack up the tunes and moon the security camera, jump from table to table, spin wildly on the chairs and, well, who know what else.

What did the caper do for the almost 2 hours that she was at-large in the pub in the middle of the night. She stole a hat, a hoodie, a string cheese and just kind of wandered around. Ok, so she did make a mess of the merch too, but that’s it. For me, this begs the question; was that what she had planned? Did she have a plan? If she didn’t have a plan, well, what the hell was she thinking?

Here is the next step. We post this information and photos to see if we can track this person down. While I don’t condone this type of criminal activity I don’t think there is adequate harm to press charges. I am dying to know from you, string cheese caper:

What were you high on?

What were you doing for 2 hours?

Why just the string cheese?

Are you interested in being featured in some way? You know, as the deviant id of iron horse brewery or as the poncho goblin of Ellensburg?