The Conumerist links to this video at Gizmodo which shows an AT&T tech stealing somebody’s oranges… allegedly. Being a phone tech is not necessarily a high-paying gig, but one can’t help but wonder at the motive for theft here.

The Consumerist post posits a theory: “Brian spotted an AT&T tech ‘fixing’ something in his back alley for the past three days. Turns out, the tech was fixing himself lunch, using his truck’s ladder to steal oranges from a customer’s tree.”

(If the tech really was “fixing himself lunch” then I hope the victim’s neighbor has a Rolaids tree.)

In spite of the delicious word-play, hinging as it does on the multiple meanings of the word “fixed”, it’s just possible that there was another motive at work. Recall the recent freezing that so adversely affected California’s citrus crop. Why, the morning the losses were first reported, I saw a woman at the local supermarket with a whole bag of oranges, surely the vanguard of a horde of vitamin C crazed shoppers, desperate to stock their orange supplies.

It’s madness out there, I imagine. (I didn’t stick around to witness the presumed carnage. I had a lunch thing to get to.) Before you know it, the citrus black market will soon eclipse legitimate industries, like shoelace crafts, or button polishing machinery.

Perhaps instead of stealing oranges to eat, this enterprising fellow was snatching the “orange gold” to sell to desperate citrus junkies on eBay. That’s our (alleged) theory, anyway.