Last summer I wrote a short blog post about borrowing things like umbrellas or sweaters from the Lost & Found. I lamented that due to our socialization we feel reluctant to do this but instead we inventory these things for our own personal use.
I was not suggesting that people should borrow things from the Lost & Found, especially not given what appear to be the extant morality systems under which most of us operate. Doing so would at the very least seem bad form to most people.
And I certainly was not recommending that people just take things from the Lost & Found. But apparently at Heathrow Airport, nine employees decided that some of the items in the Lost & Found were sufficiently valuable or attractive that they should just take the items rather than let the loot go to auction for charity or [horrors!] be retrieved by the original owners [ht MA].
Nine members of staff at Heathrow Airport have been arrested on suspicion of stealing items from lost property, police have confirmed.
The suspects, six men and three women, are accused of being involved in 43 separate thefts, between May and September this year.
Apparently all nine of the suspects made bail the next day, but I have not been able to learn what has happened in any of the cases.
This news item leads me to think of a couple of things
- Envy is an important force in directing human action. I can readily imagine some employees at Heathrow justifying their actions with, "Well, it was just going to go to charity anyway, so I might as well have it." In fact, I can recall several incidents from my past when people took things from me that I had been planning to give away, using precisely that justification: "You were planning to give it away anyway...."
- If it were acceptable to borrow things from the Lost & Found (e.g. umbrellas or sweaters), how many "borrowed" items would be returned for others to use? One of the major problems with common-property goods (which, I guess, is what they would be) is that people try to possess them for their own use or over-exploit them. And do you think borrowers would be as careful with them or devote much to the maintenance of them? Examples abound showing that we tend not to.
Imagine: you lose an unlocked smartphone. I don't know about you, but even if I knew I wouldn't get it back, I would much rather it was sold at auction with the proceeds going to charity than that some airport employee take it.