Laptops Are Easy To Steal

If you think cafes are safe environments, you’re right. They’re amazing safe spaces in which you can feed off the buzz of energy that’s around you, take inspiration from all the other customers, and immerse yourself in creative work, and beautiful collaborative dialogue.

You can get very comfortable in such an environment, and when you’re so immersed in your work, without that awareness of what’s going on around you, thieves have a wonderful opportunity to operate.

This afternoon, I was sitting at Starbucks in Angel with a friend for a hot drink. As we were about to leave, he went to get his laptop bag and couldn’t find it. In it’s place was a scruffy empty black satchel, and on the table next to it a half opened sandwich.

The thief had stolen a sandwich (as none of the staff recognised that sandwich being paid for), sat at a potential hotspot where he / she wouldn’t be recognised, swiftly swapped bags (like you see in the films when they swap briefcases) and had taken the opportunity to run off with my friend’s bag, which contained his laptop and some important documents.

I don’t remember who sat in the seat behind my friend, and nobody I questioned in the cafe could remember what that person looked like. We were all so immersed in our own conversations, that weren’t aware of what else was going on.

This incident prompted me to take a look at additional security measures myself, and on the Microsoft, you’ll find an article about “How to protect your laptop from thieves

I’m still going to keep going to cafes to immerse in creative work – it’s an environment in which I thrive in! Only now, my eyes and ears will be more open than they have ever been before.

2 responses to “Laptops Are Easy To Steal”

  1. Arvind Devalia avatar

    Hi Sol,

    Sorry to hear your friend losing his laptop.

    The same thing happened to me a year ago in a central London pub. My friend and I were engrossed in a conversation for two hours and as we were about to leave, she discovered that her laptop had disappeared from between her legs!

    Earlier in the evening, I recalled seeing a couple about six feet away who seemed totally engrossed in each other. When I first saw them, my sixth sense told me that they were not all that they were making out to be. Something didn’t quite resonate about them, but I thought no more of it at the time.

    Anyway, my friend’s laptop was never found. She didn’t even end up with a scruffy bag!

    But she looked at the positive side of this – overnight the universe had taken away her old life and its baggage / clutter and she started fresh a couple of weeks later, after getting over the shock and the inconvenience.

    So the message is – yes, continue to frequent cafes and enjoying that space, but just watch out!

    And of course make sure all your work is always backed up.

    Arvind

    http://www.arvinddevalia.com/blog

  2. Amit avatar

    Hi Sol,

    I kind of know how your friend felt at the time as I had a mobile stolen a couple of years ago right from under my nose.

    I know about you mean about the ambience of cafe’s giving rise to creative energies. I’m totally the same and frequent cafes often also.

    I’m a bit more observent than I used to be but even the most observent of us still will fall prey to something of this nature at some point or another, it’s the nature of big cities.

    Amit

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *