On 6 February 1958 in the home-improvement aisle of Eaton’s department store, Oskar Serti was summoned by the security service, after having discretely torn open a cardboard box containing a panoramic peep-hole for an apartment door.
Far from denying the facts, Serti justified his gesture at length: A few months before, a perfidious observer asked him at a cocktail party why his attitude seemed so awkward as soon as he greeted anyone of importance. Almost half-jokingly, he responded that he thought the responsibility was to be attributed to the office door of a prestigious grandfather whose every visit left him, when a child, deeply impressed. Going through this door had such an impact on him that it had definitively conditioned his behavior when it came to any other meeting charged with a similar emotion. It was thus the narrowness of the door panels which had provoked the adoption of this way of walking aslant when he would introduce himself. It was the particularly high position of the doorbell which had brought him to reach his hand to shoulder level and the creaks of the poorly-greased hinges which had pushed him to say hello in a high-pitched voice.
One point remained obscure to him however: why did his eye become veiled upon such occassions? Serti confessed to Eaton’s investigators of having only discovered its origins while in front of the box which he just tore open. It reminded him when, as a child, upon entering his grandfather’s office, he would amuse himself watching, by closing the door behind himself, the service staircase become deformed through the 180 degrees of the tiny security peep-hole which, oddly enough, was always blurred preventing any clear perception of things. Serti then understood why this door meant so much in his life : the vapour on the peep-hole certainly came from the impatient breath of his grandfather who, the minutes preceding his coming, would lurk behind the door for his grandson, to go surreptitiously back to his desk as soon as he saw him in the stair case.
Oskar Serti told his story with such conviction that the inspectors decided not to press charges.
But when the following days they saw him open other boxes in thoroughly diverse aisles, they were unable to establish any direct link with the famous door and wondered if this man was involved in a game whose sole goal was to enjoy the pleasure of feeling observed by their security cameras.

Above : one of the fake cameras used by Eaton’s in the 50’s and 60’s to deter potential shop-lifters.