I'll just relay something that happened to me years ago. Just randomly popped in my head.
Was at a trade show where I was working. Don't really do that any more, but it was something I was asked to do at the time. I was helping to set up our booth that morning, and I had gotten lunch ahead of time. Had it in a bag along with a fairly pricey reusable water bottle. And I had my name and phone number on the bottle using a labeling machine. I didn't quite catch it immediately, but my supervisor there saw a couple there looking my stuff and picking it up. I looked back and saw them standing there after they'd apparently put it back down. They were support staff at the event center with badges, and it was before the event was open to anyone other than exhibitors and event staff. I got back to my stuff when he asked what they were doing, and they said they thought it was just one of the schwag/freebies that were being handed out at the event.
The first thing would be that it would have been rather inappropriate for support staff to get any of the schwag there. The whole point was to solicit potential customers, although we generally weren't too particular about who got what as long as they asked nicely. The other was that it was pretty clear they were looking commit some petty theft but came up with a lame excuse. Not sure they could have necessarily been charged with anything, but we could have just found their names and reported them to the event management. Maybe take a photo of them. I'm guessing they'd probably tried doing that before.
I've heard of weird stuff before, like a teacher who talked about someone going right up to her front yard and attempting to take a plant. Don't recall if it was a potted plant of if maybe they even dug up something. But apparently they were acting as if they had done nothing wrong. That might be a bit bolder than trying to steal my lunch and water bottle.
Was at a trade show where I was working. Don't really do that any more, but it was something I was asked to do at the time. I was helping to set up our booth that morning, and I had gotten lunch ahead of time. Had it in a bag along with a fairly pricey reusable water bottle. And I had my name and phone number on the bottle using a labeling machine. I didn't quite catch it immediately, but my supervisor there saw a couple there looking my stuff and picking it up. I looked back and saw them standing there after they'd apparently put it back down. They were support staff at the event center with badges, and it was before the event was open to anyone other than exhibitors and event staff. I got back to my stuff when he asked what they were doing, and they said they thought it was just one of the schwag/freebies that were being handed out at the event.
The first thing would be that it would have been rather inappropriate for support staff to get any of the schwag there. The whole point was to solicit potential customers, although we generally weren't too particular about who got what as long as they asked nicely. The other was that it was pretty clear they were looking commit some petty theft but came up with a lame excuse. Not sure they could have necessarily been charged with anything, but we could have just found their names and reported them to the event management. Maybe take a photo of them. I'm guessing they'd probably tried doing that before.
I've heard of weird stuff before, like a teacher who talked about someone going right up to her front yard and attempting to take a plant. Don't recall if it was a potted plant of if maybe they even dug up something. But apparently they were acting as if they had done nothing wrong. That might be a bit bolder than trying to steal my lunch and water bottle.