An FSU Fratter’s Gumby’s Pizza Floor Mat Theft Sparks Trend, School Paper Calls It A “TFM”

Dillon Cheverere12 years ago

Quick note: I’m real proud of that headline. Nailed it.

You wanna know who else nailed it? Chase Anderson nailed it. He’s the illustrator of this badass cartoon right here from the original story on FSUNews.com.

Look at his spot-on depiction of a Florida State frat guy. It’s simply perfect. He starts off with the basics — the standard polo and khaki short combo. The shorts hit right at the knee, which many will argue are a little long, but you can’t argue against this look being a very common one around campuses nationwide. It only gets better from there. The sideways visor over the spiky hair is almost too accurate. Just uncanny. Mix in a scary Skeletor face, one googly eye, a slack-jaw with some possibly missing or chipped teeth, one astray eyebrow that’s just kinda doing its own thing up there, and four fingers on each hand, and you’re looking at the quintessential fraternity gentleman. Plus, he’s in the middle of a minor theft.

Nailed it!

Now to the story: In what has become a trend at this particular Tallahassee Gumby’s Pizza, a popular late night eatery among FSU students, the owner is searching for answers while his now famed Gumby’s mat has become the target of ongoing thievery and shenanigans. Here’s how it went down the first time, back in February:

“Dude just rolled up the mat and walked out with it. Like right out in the middle of the shift in front of people,” said Cameron McCoy, a manager at Gumby’s. “It’s a dirty, dirty mat. We clean it but still it was late at night, it’d been walked all over.

It’s a dirty, dirty mat. I can’t believe the way he just throws the mat under the bus like that. That’s your mat, dude. That mat’s been putting in hard hours for you, just getting walked all over and probably never taking a day off.

The owner of Gumby’s, Scott Fernbach, took to social media to engage the community in an effort to track the mat down. The surveillance video was posted to Facebook, along with a message asking viewers to help identify the tank top-clad perp, and offering a five-day deadline to return the mat.

Watch the video:

And just like that, he was gone — even left behind a target-rich environment such as that one. Just look at all the chicks in there waiting to stuff their faces.

The Facebook post currently has over 1,500 “likes” and over 300 comments, many of which are poking fun at the incident. Fernbach is not all that amused, though. This theft, although a relatively minor one, has kicked off a Steal the Gumby’s Mat campaign among students.

Here’s an attempt from April caught by surveillance:

The mat from the February heist was returned, not by the actual thief, but by a fraternity brother of his. The way the FSU paper describes it was pretty great.

However, the perpetrator’s fatal mistake was putting his stolen local trophy on display at his undisclosed FSU fraternity house susceptible to the eyes of his more honest brother. This total frat move (Greek translation: TFM) improved upon the standard orange traffic cone or stop sign college apartment décor.

Stealing a pizzeria floor mat and setting it on your fraternity house mantle like a trophy. TFM.

Another interesting facet to this story — one that is pretty irrelevant but too good to omit — is this particular Gumby’s reputation of accepting some bare FSU titties as adequate payment for late night pizza.

Gumby’s is still recovering from a sordid past as rumors about girls showing their breasts for free food have haunted the pizza shop as local lure for years. According to employees, there is some truth to the “mature” gossip, or at least there was.

Per manager Cameron McCoy, it doesn’t go on anymore. “We haven’t done that in a year and a half,” he said. “I wish people would stop asking about it.”

This pizza place sounds pretty awesome.

[via FSU News]