Why do people steal the tip of the air compressors?

jcat@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 102 points –

Maybe the state I live in is just ghetto as shit. It seems like every air pump at the gas station has the top part that attaches to your tire to fill it with air stolen.

I don’t understand the value of this specific part. Why do people steal them?

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This is honestly the most likely answer.

It's not. Nobody's smoking crack out of the tip of a compressor hose. If people are stealing them for drug reasons the most likely answer is that they're made of solid brass and have a decent scrap value. They're selling them to the same guy they're selling stolen catalytic converters and the copper wire they've stripped out of newly constructed homes to.

No, someone was actually doing it in a case I was in (case was unrelated). But it feels like you’re doing exactly what your irritated for me doing.

Why can't it be a coincidental culmination of all of these reasons equating into a lack of compressor nozzle heads? Some people are shitty and will find easy ways to be shitty regardless of what shitty reason they're doing the shitty thing for. It equals an mass annoyance for everyday people

It could be all, and I never meant to imply it’s only one. Just in my situation they’ve always been addicts, worked at a gas station in my mid-teens, and have relatives with the problem. But I’ll concede the odds could be 50/50. Like most answers you’ll get here, it’s going to be from personal experience.

People juryrig anything they can for drugs. Plus they’d barely get 5 for the tip and while every buck counts to them it’s not a great source of cash.