On the official Misdeed Scale, this doesn’t score all that high. But considering that it’s the season of giving and good will, it just pisses me off and once again reinforces my growing feeling that most of humanity is unsalvageable.
My spouse works for a property management firm. Every year they give a box of expensive candies to their clients as a token of appreciation. The managers deliver the boxes personally. She took hers around yesterday. Since she didn’t want it be too impersonal, she left the larger box containing the packages outside the office doors while taking one in to deliver. This worked well until she was down to three boxes left.
She set the package down and took one box into the business, and chatted with them for a few minutes. This is an office that shares a top floor with one other business, and they aren’t the sort of offices that get much foot traffic. She came back outside, and the last two candy boxes had disappeared. So she goes back inside and asks the receptionist if somebody brought them into the office by mistake. Negative.
So she goes down the hall and walks into the other business and immediately spots the two boxes sitting on a woman’s desk. So she walks over and says “Oh, there they are!” The woman (clearly flustered) says “Oh, I found these just sitting out in the hallway, so I picked them up!”
“Okayyyy. So what happened to the name tags that were on them?”
::eyes darting:: “There weren’t any tags on them.”
At this point I would have said “so you’re not only a fucking thief, but a pathetic liar”, but my spouse is a nicer person than I am, and just picked up the boxes and left, while the woman grabbed the phone and pretended to make a call.
Stealing candy? Really? Are you that desperate? You have a job, so I would have to assume you’re not broke. You just saw opportunity and took it. You knew this stuff belonged to somebody, because it had GIFT TAGS attached, for cripes sake, but apparently thought you were more deserving.
As I said, this is small on the asshole scale, but seems symptomatic of our SCORE!!! mentality these days. I know, I know, just get over it.