Strangers Took My Beach Chairs and Cooler, Then Told Me “Finders Keepers
I'm staying with friends at the beach and since it's technically the off season, the beach we are at is barren, if you look up and down this 10 mile street of beach, there is maybe a dozen people at most on the beach.
That combined with the fact that the house we are at is only a 5-10 minute walk from the beach means we've been setting up our chairs and umbrellas in the mid morning and often leaving them unattended as we go for lunch, then coming back to our stuff after lunch.
Today, we came back from lunch at the house and found a family sitting in our chairs and even drinking the sodas that were in the cooler we left. My friends were dumbfounded but I was not having it so I went straight down and asked them what they thought they were doing. They were acting all coy and saying that they thought the chairs were abandoned. I told them no, it wasn't and to get out. That's when they dropped the coy routine and got snarly, telling me if we didn't want it taken, we shouldn't have left it and if we don't like it, we can call the cops. I told them alright, if that's what they wanted and walked off.
My friends were telling me to just drop it as I was calling the cops back at the house and I could tell the dispatcher was rolling their eyes and I was on the phone with her, but sure enough after 20-40 minutes, the police rolled up and I pointed the family out to them. At first they told the cop the stuff was theirs but then I pointed out my name was written on the back of my chair. I would have been content with the cop just having them give us our stuff back, but since they lied to the cop, that pissed him off and he ended up writing them all tickets. Now they are all mean mugging us from the balcony of their house two down from ours and my friends are still saying I shouldn't have made a scene. I didn't have any intention of the cop giving them citations, I'm not pressed about the cost of the stuff, for me it was just the principle of someone stealing something and then actually going "finders keepers" when the owner tries to get it back.
