Is there any evidence that it was stolen, or is it possible she just forgot it at the café and an unscrupulous barista picked it up? I mean, sucks to lose your iPad, and at best the barista behaved unethically by not reporting it, but this wasn’t necessarily a premeditated crime.
Yeah, this is extremely classist, self-righteous, and condescending. Especially because she was not actually robbed – as far as I can tell she forgot her iPad at a cafe and then didn’t even notice for several days.
Your identification of corporate policy with actual law is revealing more about you than about the case. We only tell people “be nice and give it back” when they can’t afford lawyers.
I was rooting for Cali Cappa, shame about his girlfriend’s job.
This is a class thing, through and through. The worst thing that could happen to Cappa and the girlfriend is a years or decades long downward spiral through this country’s broken two-tier racist classist legal system. The worst case for Mrs. McDowell is that she’d have to pony up for another iPad, which apparently she seems fully capable of affording, with no problems.
The individuals thieves are wrong but theft is just something that happens to people who have things worth stealing.
Comments in the vein of “Classist scum! How dare you make fun of Cali Cappa!” comments are one of the few things that really annoy me about MeFi. People who feel like the victim is “gloating” and shouldn’t have taken such measures because she is in a position to forget about an iPad for a few days are sending the wrong message. Patronizing and “standing up” for people like Cali only leads to a further breakdown of civility in our society. We live in a country where people have the opportunity to make something of themselves. If a person chooses to take shortcuts and take things that another person worked for because they are unable to afford them, they are going against the principles of self-determination that this nation is based upon. If Cali wants an iPad, he needs to save up his money, make some sacrifices if needed, and get one. And the fact that he may not be able to afford one because he works a minimum wage job is irrelevant. Owning luxury electronics is not a right, it’s a privilege.
In a way, people who are defending Cali Cappa and his girlfriend are the true “classists” because they believe that these two people have no chance of changing the current horrible path his life is on. They don’t believe that he has any capacity to be a better person, so scorn should be heaped upon the victim because she dared make him feel bad about himself. He is an unrepentant scoundrel and deserves every terrible thing that happens to him if he takes things he may feel he “deserves to have.” His significant other is a thief who is bereft of a moral compass. She sees no problem in stealing the property of a patron of the coffee shop she works at. These people deserve scorn and contempt. They deserve to be unmasked as the terrible people they are to their friends and family, as well as the authorities. At this point, only shaming them will deter this type of anti-social conduct.