Why did I rush, I thought, when I actually wasn\u2019t in all that much of a hurry?<\/p>\n
Strange, isn\u2019t it, how some of us get into such a habit of being under pressure that when daily life slows down and loosens out a bit ( which it must inevitably do at some stage) we needlessly continue to scurry around. But anyway.<\/p>\n
\u2019Twas a small thing to get annoyed about, but there you go. We\u2019re all only human after all, and it was a bloody good hat.<\/p>\n
Heavy and warm, it was an off-white Aran knit with a big bobble and a cosy fleece lining.<\/p>\n
It never rode up on my head above the ears in that frustrating habit beloved by so many hats. It was also, for reasons I won\u2019t go into here, of sentimental value.<\/p>\n
I dropped it on a wet, mucky street without noticing.<\/p>\n
However, my hat was rescued by an honest person, a member of what statistics will tell you is the large percentage of people who would never steal anything.<\/p>\n
This Good Samaritan, I learned later, picked it up from the muddy pavement just outside the door of the pharmacy and brought it into the shop, where it was decided that the best option was to place it on the windowsill outside so that the owner might see it.<\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s a common enough thing in this country to put lost hats or gloves or a forgotten child\u2019s jacket on a wall or a windowsill or even over a gate close to where they\u2019ve been found.\n <\/p>\n
My hat was placed on a windowsill adjacent to where it had been dropped.<\/p>\n
And from there, alas, it disappeared.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t even realised it was missing \u2019til the next morning, at which point I retraced my walk of the previous day, and called into any shops that lined my route.<\/p>\n
I eventually learned that a hat matching my description had been found and placed on the pharmacy windowsill, but like I said, when I checked, the windowsill was empty.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the interesting bit.<\/p>\n
Annoyed with myself for being so careless with it, and a bit taken aback that somebody would actually take a hat that (a) very clearly belonged to somebody else (b) had been lost, and (c) had been found and placed on a windowsill for its owner to find, I decided to do a bit of research into the psychology of stealing.<\/p>\n
What I learned is that around 90% of people would never steal.<\/p>\n
It seems that my hat was initially lucky in that it was picked up by someone in this category, a person who went to the trouble of placing it on the pharmacy windowsill for me to find.<\/p>\n
However, the research also shows that around 10% of people will steal at some point if the opportunity arises. Which is where, I suspect, my hat\u2019s luck ran out.<\/p>\n
Somebody in that category possibly happened along after my hat went on view on the windowsill. <\/p>\n
\u2018Ah,\u2019 they thought, \u2018there\u2019s a nice, warm-looking hat. I\u2019ll have that.\u2019<\/p>\n
Of course, my hat could also have fallen victim to the behaviour of the group of people who steal to sell something on, or to pay for some kind of addiction.<\/p>\n
Although, in fairness, one would have to ask, what would you get for a well-worn, second-hand and somewhat muddy hat?<\/p>\n
Perhaps my hat was picked up by someone who has kleptomania, snatched, perhaps, by one of those people who, the studies say, get a kind of \u2018high\u2019 from the simple act of stealing, in much the same way that, say, drug addicts, get a high from their substance of choice?<\/p>\n
Women, if you\u2019re interested, are as likely to steal as men, while around a quarter of shoplifting incidents involve children or teenagers.<\/p>\n
The thing is, stealing in this country generally seems to be getting worse.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been a cascade of warnings about a \u2018pandemic\u2019 of shoplifting in the last couple of years, which some retailers attribute to a perceived lack of any consequences to getting caught.<\/p>\n
No such thing here in Ireland as getting your hand chopped off by an axe for taking something that doesn\u2019t belong to you.<\/p>\n
\n Shoplifters are reportedly getting more brazen, are increasingly aggressive, and don\u2019t seem to care about getting caught, which makes sad sense if they don\u2019t think there are any consequences to being caught thieving.\n <\/p>\n
So there you go. <\/p>\n
This is the society we live in today.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s it all down to, then?<\/p>\n
Well, the decline of religion is probably a factor.<\/p>\n
Parenting likely comes in here too. Do all parents place the same strong emphasis on children never taking what doesn\u2019t belong to them?<\/p>\n
Thirdly, is there any real societal emphasis on the sheer wrongness of stealing in day-to-day life?<\/p>\n
The lack of consequences or deterrents is certainly a factor.<\/p>\n
And, of course, that mean-spirited sense of entitlement that has infested almost every aspect of today\u2019s society has to be somewhere in the mix.<\/p>\n
But at the end of the day, my friend, it\u2019s really a matter of personal choice.<\/p>\n
As is stealing someone else\u2019s hat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I felt like kicking myself. Why did I rush, I thought, when I actually wasn\u2019t in all that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[38718,72,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-281624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-ailin-quinlan","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}