The blue bike is mine, the black lock isnt.
byu/carolina_favor98 inlondoncycling
 Ever had this happen to you? After a long day at work this is the last thing you’d want to find at the bike rack… well, except no bike at all, of course. One London cyclist clocked off their shift and was about to make their way home when they found their bike had rather bizarrely been locked by someone else, apparently by the person who’d parked theirs next door.
We’d like to think this is an honest mistake, although some in the comments have suggested it could be the work of a thief hoping to come back for it later. Either way, it puts our unlucky commuter in a bit of a pickle. Wait for the other person or catch a bus?
The ever helpful people of Reddit had some ideas, most amusingly: “Assert your dominance. Add more locks.”
Another user said something similar had happened to them three times. “One time it was one of those stretchy coiled cable locks, so I unlocked my bike, pulled it over to the next stand and locked it up again,” they explained. “Meaning that the cable lock was now fully stretched and spanning across two stands. My intention was that they would be able to see their mistake, rather than just coming along and unlocking without realising.”
As we mentioned earlier, we’d like to think this was an honest mistake, although some aren’t so sure… “This can be a common trick by thieves. They will lock your bike, hope you leave it overnight or so, and then come back later to steal it/parts from it.
“Of course it could also be a genuine mistake, but with these kinds of scenarios it’s unfortunately more often the former than the latter. You need to source an angle grinder and cut it off asap, otherwise you risk your bike/large parts of it being stolen imminently.”
Thoughts?