No
Besides, I often do things where I’m at a risk for a loss, but over time it’s not worth the hassle.
I always leave my wallet on my desk at work. I leave things on my front porch. I leave my car unlocked (and sometimes running when I go places). I KNOW the consequences and have weighed them against the risks and the inconvenience. I don’t need to be taught a lesson.
Even saying to the girl, “you shouldn’t leave that unattended. It could be stolen” is obnoxious.
Ooh, that’s a good question. Your motives were positive - you wanted her to stop doing something that is going to hurt her eventually (most schools I know of, she would have lost her laptop the first she left it - it’s a fact of campus life), but on the other hand, it really isn’t your business how many laptops she loses. On another hand, making it easy for thieves to steal stuff probably hurts you in the long run, too, because they get encouraged by easy pickings. On yet another hand, doing a fellow human being a favour should be considered a good thing. There are those who would say that it is everyone’s place to look out for everyone else when you can.
So, in summary, I’d try just telling her it’s not a good idea next time, and if she blows you off, let it go - if she needs to learn her lessons the hard way, that’s her problem.
I don’t think giving a single courteous verbal warning is out of line – she may well have come from a place where she could walk off and leave valuables unattended without difficulty, and has yet to get used to living in a less safe environment. She might very well appreciate a friendly reminder like that.
I should say, if you’re ever in that situation again, Surbey. I doubt you’ll run into that particular girl doing that particular thing again.
Trunk, of course you’re free to do whatever you choose, but what you’re choosing to do doesn’t make a lot of rational sense. The risk of having your wallet and car stolen is about 100%, unless Baltimore is some kind of crime-free haven. I wouldn’t do either of those things in Calgary without expecting to be ripped off, and it is a huge hassle to replace wallet contents and cars.
The risk of having my wallet/car stolen is nowhere near 100%.
The question is whether the “inconvenience” of me putting my wallet in my pocket when I go to the bathroom at work is worth the risk of having it stolen. Obviously, no one except me is in a position to analyze that.
It’s quite possible that the girl felt safe enough (right or wrong) with leaving her laptop in the cafeteria based on her familiarity with the area, how long she was stepping out for, and how much she valued the laptop. She made her decision about those things. Surbey applied his own set of assumptions and decided for her. That’s why what he did is presumptuous. He’s presuming to know all those things better than her.
There was a very, very sly thief in an office I worked in a few years ago. A friend left her desk unlocked for perhaps 3 minutes, and in that time, in spite of her desk being at a busy corner, the thief snuck into her wallet and took one credit card out. That’s all, just one card. It took her a couple of days to notice, and by that time thousands of dollars had been charged on it. Others had similar things happen. My personal rule is: Always keep things locked up/on my person, even if it feels 100% safe. It’s a habit that’s easy to get into, and once it becomes habit, you don’t break it.
And perhaps this girl still isn’t in that habit yet. What’s wrong with being helpful and pointing out possible dangers to her? It may be unneeded or unwanted help, but it’s not like it’s a major imposition on her time other than a one-word reply, “Thanks.” Or a two word reply, “Fuck off.” But in neither case is is going to cause the world to stop spinning to at least make an effort to be helpful. Help politely offered but refused is still a good thing in my book.
Yeah, and people in Baltimore have had their houses broken into and their inhabitants murdered. It doesn’t mean I’m going to put bars on the window.
I HATE going through life trying to protect myself from things that may happen. I think that’s a bad habitual mindset.
Keep in mind another part of the equation: losing your wallet isn’t the end of the world – AFAIC, going through life with a fretful mind is.
People make a lot of assumptions about their own safety and the safety of their belongings that are, to those who observe them, plain old stupid. Maybe it’s presumptious to alert someone to a danger you assume they don’t know about, but it’s a presumption borne from a positive motive, and so I’m inclined to go easy on it.
That said, I don’t see the point in scaring the girl by hiding her stuff. You could have just mentioned to her, “Hey, I saw you left your laptop out; you probably didn’t know that stuff gets stolen here all the time so that’s not really a good idea.” If she responded, “I only left for a minute” or some other rationalization, you could walk away – it’s not like it’s on you to have a fight with her if she wants to excuse her own stupidity. While scaring her might be more effective, it’s also mean, and out of line – you had no business touching her stuff. It also was potentially dangerous to you – if campus security had caught you folding up her laptop, I highly doubt they would believe your explanation that you were just going to tuck it under her coat.
Presumptuous? Maybe, but so what? No harm done, might have even taught her something, but it’s not like the two minutes of frantically looking for the laptop (or no frantic looking at all if she truly doesn’t value it) is any big deal.
I’d have done it just because it’s fun to mess with dumb people. 
While in college, if we found a computer left alone or logged onto but unattended (we had a floating hard drive so a student could access their “desktop” anywhere on campus), it was SOP to replace thier background with something from rotten.com, the worse the better. Image logging back into your computer only to find the background a huge picture of a maggot crawling out an eye (that was a tame one). Hardcore porn was another fav to place on their desktop. Nothing like logging in to your account prior to giving a presentation only to have a picture involving a girl, a horse, a speculum, a midget, fruit, and some jumper cables, to be displayed on the huge screen in the front of the lecture hall. We were mean, but we never deleted anything…
TRUNK, there is a world of difference between wrapping yourself in bubblewrap and living a life of fear to make sure nothing bad ever happens to you, and exercising a small amount of common sense to avoid losing things that are expensive or important.
It’s not like if we lock our doors, the terrorists have won.
Like I said, developing a few automatic habits save a lot of needless aggravation. I keep my doors locked, I don’t leave my purse unattended, even in an office, and I don’t leave valuables sitting in plain sight in pmy car. When it reaches the level of habit, it’s not an aggravation at all – it’s so automatic I don’t even notice it. Walk in the house, shut the door, flip the lock. It’s a lot easier than turning off the lights before going to bed and then wondering if the door’s unlocked and turning lights back on and waking up/tripping over the dogs to go back and check it.
Trying to be helpful to someone really isn’t the worst thing in the world; trying to scare that same person is far more questionable, in my mind.
One issue I se is by hiding the laptop you may have exposed it to damage, or longer times of being unintended.
After seeing the laptop gone, she could have quickly grabbed her coat, which could have pulled the laptop onto the floor.
Or
She could have forgotten or ignored her coat and went to seak the theif or help.
In Texas, the consequences could be a ticket from the police, and I don’t blame them. If your car is stolen, not only do you lose, but the police department has to investigate the crime, and your insurance company is out money as well, unless you have an uninsured beater.
I don’t touch other people’s shit because I don’t 1) Want to even be remotely pegged as being suspected of stealing it should something go wrong between my touching and its disappearance 2) Do not want to be pegged as having contributed to any damage.
I mean in all honesty you sound like a nice person to watch out for other people’s stuff (though some might think you wandered into the realm of busybodyish) but people learn their lessons on their own and you should be happy you didn’t learn a pretty lesson in good samaritanism…blame-shifting.
How so?
Read the thread that Mama Tiger linked to.
You’re welcome, Hal. 
I can see your point in trying to teach the girl a lesson, but it probably didn’t work.
She probably leaves her iPod on the towel at the beach for hours on end, unattended; leaves her cellphone on the table at the restaurant when she goes to the restroom; leaves her wallet in the gym locker unlocked.
Some people don’t take care of their things, or don’t give a damn - who knows, maybe daddy will buy her a better one if this on gets lost or stolen.
I can remember a friend from NYC walking on the street with me in West Hollywood, CA and just flabbergasted that someone left a convertable Mercedes, with the top down, a stack of CD’s and expensive sunglasses on the seat, and unattended. “In New York, they wouldn’t even have tires on the car by the time they got back from lunch!”
I guess some people are more trusting than others.
It was definitely a malicious thing to do to a stranger. I’ve seen stuff under coats go flying across the room or onto the floor when a coat has been picked up. Had her computer done that, you would have been liable for a replacement, think about that. A comment about thievery would have been all right, but you had no right to move and hide it. It would have been funny had she walked in while you had it, and she then called the cops.