An important question

I'd probably go so far as to verbally restrain the guy, possibly enlisting other patrons around me in the shop, until the owner who'd given me the task came back. But I probably wouldn't get physical.

OK, this actually happened to me once, sort of. This woman asked me to watch her things while she ran down to 7-11, and her things included a laptop and an iPod. This jerky looking kid came by and sort of lazily dragged his hand across her table in an effort to deftly pick up the iPod. I yelled at him, "Hey, that's not yours!" really loud so everyone looked, and he just walked away and out of the store, leaving the iPod there.

If he had gone ahead and taken everything, I think the most I'd be willing to do is call the police. I doubt I would have gotten up and grabbed some guy's arm to prevent the theft.

I meant what i said and i said what i meant...

Once, while working at a record store, I sprinted (I use that term loosely) after a guy who had stolen a near-worthless (used) CD. So I'm confident I'd go to physical lengths to protect a laptop.

My boss had my co-worker Jeff and I split $50 (why he got half, I don't know.)

As Mitt's new employee said, "I wouldn't hesitate to stick a knife in someone's thigh."

Someone did a study of this--of how often people intervene when directly asked to watch someone else's stuff, versus when the person just walked off. I, uh, am too lazy to look for details.

Did this happen to you?

Not exactly. I left my stuff on a table without asking anybody to do anything. Everybody around me was deeply immersed in the things they were doing (reading, working, talking) and I figured (correctly) that if something did happen, nobody would actually do anything anyhow.

Then I'd have no computer, and a grudge against somebody totally innocent simply because they didn't want to put themselves on the line for me.

So did you lose anything. Or just your faith in humanity?

BTW how 'bout leaving a booby trapped iPod?

Didn't lose anything, fortunately.