I don't know what the general environment is like there in SF, but in London, UK there is no way I would ever leave an expensive shiny laptop unattended in a public place like that. At the very least I would always ask someone else to keep an eye on it. Sorry, I know that's not very productive - good luck in your attempts to salvage whatever you can.
I happen to live in SF, but I don't care if you're in SF, London, Podunk or Peoria, the protocol for going to the bathroom in a coffee shop or other public space is to pack up your stuff and take it with you. You may lose your seat but it's much better to keep your stuff.
Asking someone to watch it - if it's not someone you know well and trust then what good does that do? What if this woman had asked the one in the striped shirt to watch her stuff?
I share my time over Singapore and Japan, and no one ever touches your stuff in both places; not during a bathroom break, not even during a lunch break when people leave their shiny macbooks to keep their seats warm.
This immediately invalidates all the other comments saying that uniformity of behaviour/lack of entrepreneurship is a consequence of this in Japan, since it also works in Singapore where (perceived) entrepreneurship is much higher.
Theft is a problem. It doesn't bring about good things, nor does the lack of it bring about bad things.
> This immediately invalidates all the other comments saying that uniformity of behaviour/lack of entrepreneurship is a consequence of this in Japan, since it also works in Singapore where (perceived) entrepreneurship is much higher.
No, it doesn't. In Japan, that safety is a product of a culture of uniformity, which invariably results in a lack of entrepreneurship/innovation.
In Singapore, that "safety" is the product of an authoritarian government that severely curtails civil liberties and human rights. Free speech and political freedoms are restricted, chewing gum is banned for non-medical purposes, and the punishment for possessing 500+ grams of pot is a mandatory death sentence. Archaic and barbaric punishments such as caning continue to be practiced. Such an oppressive government is not something we want in the West, regardless of the "benefits."
As Benjamin Franklin said:
> They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
> I guess all those famous Japanese brands just some how happened without any entrepreneurship and their products happened without any innovation.
The Japanese are very skilled at taking what others have done and incrementally improving it. By reverse engineering American cars, they were able to beat the Americans at their own game, producing more reliable, efficient, and defect-free cars. Thanks to the cooperative nature of their society, they avoided the antagonistic relationship between the UAW and the Big 3 American automakers that led to many of the financial problems faced by the Big 3. Similar success was seen in electronics by companies like Sony, allowing them to produce high quality TVs and other high-tech consumer products.
This sort of societal cohesiveness (along with cozy government-industry relations) removed a lot of barriers to the sorts of large and capital-intensive undertakings that are common in manufacturing. But it rarely produces the sorts of game-changing innovations that Silicon Valley, and America in general, is known for. The nature of Japanese society also prevented companies from restructuring and outsourcing their manufacturing to China, which allowed South Korean (and increasingly Chinese) rivals to largely displace them in consumer electronics. There's a reason why Sony's products are so unpopular these days - they're expensive as hell. Even in the automotive industry, Toyota/Honda are starting to get overtaken by the likes of Hyundai and Kia.
> Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be snarky but seriously... Your excuses are BS and don't live up to any scrutiny. It's not an either/or thing.
Actually, the problem is that you have a very shallow understanding of the situation. This isn't the sort of thing you can really comprehend with some weekend blog-reading. The Japanese should be credited for exploiting their post-WW2 alliance with the US to rapidly transform their economy while much of the world dicked around with communism and most of the West was in no better shape than Japan itself after the destruction of WW2. But transient effects stemming from quirks of history, although intriguing, don't disprove the bigger theory.
Except my old mailman who grew up in San Francisco in the late 40s told me that nobody in his multistory apartment building when he was a kid ever locked their doors even if they went out of town. I'm not sure what the difference is but it's not authoritarianism.
In my experience (Australia) the protocol has been to leave your stuff at the table. I've seen people leave their stuff for an hour or more sometimes (though it seems a bit rude to use up an otherwise unused table for so long).
Generally if someone leaves their laptop to go pick up their order / bathroom I try to keep an eye on it. I assume they'd do the same for me.
Tangentially, when I visited Melbourne a few years ago, I left my backpack, with my laptop, phone, and accessories on the tram on a Saturday morning. When the lost & found office opened Monday morning, the bag had been turned in, complete and intact.
I wish I knew who turned it in, so I could've shouted them a pint or whatever.
I figure chances that a random person who you ask is going to be much less likely to have bad intentions than a person who offers to you to watch your stuff.
The second best alternative is to leave non important stuff (your coat or some cloth for instance, depending how you value it) and take away the valuable stuff.
This is what I do. I've personally witnessed a laptop being stolen from a cafe in SF, but only from the very front very close to the door, and the guy had walked to the back to go to the bathroom.
I didn't actually see the guy run out. I'm usually buried in the back heads-down focused, as Bezos would say. But I heard some screaming, turned around, and a woman actually ran after the guy (not her computer!) for four blocks. Finally the guy dropped the computer and she picked it up and showed up 5 minutes later miraculously with his computer. The guy whose computer it was only then came out of the bathroom not knowing his MacBook Air had been stolen!
Is a stranger's laptop worth getting your face smashed for? Or stabbed? It doesn't sound like anybody's physical well being was threatened, so why risk your own?
Because violent street thieves are unable to walk into a coffee shop?
If you live in a city where violent crime is not uncommon, don't assume that a thief is a nice person just because you've caught them in the act in a coffee shop.
Have you been to San Francisco? I don't know the rate of stabbings, but I have seen plenty of violently unstable people here that I wouldn't want to provoke.
I agree that it's quite inexplicable why a woman who didn't know the owner of the laptop ran after the thief who was at least a third bigger than she was.
I didn't actually see him, but he was a grown man by all accounts, and the woman was on the smaller side. So she was something like 120 lbs. max and he was at least 180 lbs.+
If you saw a sign that said "4k surveillance video on premises" would you feel secure? At some point the fuzzy video quality will be good enough that people are really going to have to find another line of crime.
I've been in places in NYC where I run to the restroom and have left my laptop.
Obviously, you're going to have a lower risk of theft if you take everything with you to the restroom. But there are places I've lived where I am fairly confident I could leave my laptop unprotected in a coffee shop once a day for my entire life without it ever being stolen.
If the coffee shop isn't busy I sometimes take my laptop with me and leave all the other stuff. This is in a place kinda like Peoria though. If I was in SF I'd probably pack up everything.
The protocol in Japan is to leave your stuff at the table and go take your dump. In fact, it's protocol that when you enter a coffeeshop (starbucks, mc donalds, etc.), first find out if there is a free seat. It could be on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd floor. Leave your stuff there to claim the seat. Then go back to the 1st floor counter, order and get your drinks/food, wait to receive them, walk back to your stuff.
The point you should get from this is that PEOPLE IN YOUR COUNTRY SUCK AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED YOU LIVE IN SUCH A SHITTY CULTURE AND THAT YOU TAKE IT FOR GRANTED THAT YOU HAVE TO PROTECT YOUR STUFF BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL STEAL IT.
After living in a country with very little violence, a country where you don't have to pull your car radio out of your car, where you don't have worry about what alleys you walk down, a country where if you leave your bags or wallet on a train you'll get them back, I was very ashamed of my own country, the USA, where I used to think I was safe but in reality I'd just learned to avoid the ever present danger rather than do something to fix it.
Now comes all the replies telling me how much Japan sucks in other ways. That's not the point.
Your comment has plenty of interesting content, but telling people that they should be ashamed to live somewhere where other people commit crimes is completely senseless. Those people have done nothing wrong, they have nothing to be ashamed of.
> Your comment has plenty of interesting content, but telling people that they should be ashamed to live somewhere where other people commit crimes is completely senseless.
Arguably, the attitude that this is senseless -- that, IOW, people have no responsibility for the qualities of the broader society -- is part of the problem.
Realistically, somebody who is the victim of petty theft is not responsible for the circumstances that led somebody to become a thief. Expecting people who were robbed to feel ashamed that they were robbed is absurd. They are a victim. Not to mention that most people do not have the resources to relocate themselves to a country with less crime. Greggman expecting these people to feel ashamed that they have been unable to flee their country is worse than absurd; it is patently offensive.
If the thief can be said to be a victim of circumstance and therefore not responsible for their actions, then the same can be said even more strongly of their victims.
My response wasn't to the victim. It was to the commenter that basically suggested it should be common sense the victim shouldn't have left his stuff out.
That shouldn't be common sense. It's shameful that we think it is.
There are actually two similar but distinct interpretations of "ashamed" and "embarrassed." One implies that there is direct personal responsibility involved, as in "you deliberately lied to me, so you should be ashamed of yourself." The other is essentially the opposite of feeling pride, and doesn't imply any personal responsibility, as in "I'm ashamed that my school would make such bad decisions."
You're assuming the first interpretation, but one could, through application of the principle of charity, assume the second interpretation.
Gosh I hate when this happens. An American goes overseas, and suddenly thinks they've discovered nirvana and that everyone back home is now inferior. There's gotta be a name for this syndrome.
Every culture has good stuff and bad stuff. There's no need to scream in all caps about the USA because people in a major city center recommend one doesn't leave $3k worth of gear unattended in a busy coffee shop.
IMO there is. Because we put up with it. We take for granted that "of course leaving $3k of stuff at a busy coffee shop it's going to get stolen". That's the problem. That we accept it. There's a whole set of rules we've learned to work around these problems. We think they're common sense. That is until we experience places that point out they aren't common sense. Rather they're just a way of letting us not actually deal with the problem.
The response to "I left my stuff out and it got stolen" shouldn't be "Oh, you shouldn't have left your stuff out". It should be "we should catch that criminal and find a way to make it so it's safe to leave your stuff out".
And I didn't say Japan or Singapore were nirvana. Only that one part of them points out things we take for granted shouldn't be taken for granted.
In some cases, going to the bathroom with your stuff is almost like leaving your place vacant for any one else to take. In crowded cafés, this may not be optimal. I wonder if cafés provide customers with pamphlets to put on the table saying `Occupied` while they are gone to the bathroom with their stuff would be helpful.
It's like leaving your place vacant because you ARE leaving your place vacant. That's a good thing.
If a coffee shop is so busy that you won't have a place when you get back then take a break and come back when things are quieter. Or pay for a coworking space.
(I remember trying to get a table with friends at Blue Bottle years ago... each one was occupied by a loner staring at a laptop, nursing a coffee, and ignoring everything else. It was sad.)
At least in US bars, you can leave your glass on the bar with a napkin over the top to indicate that the seat is taken and the drink should not be tossed. I don't know if cafe patrons might honor this convention?
These warnings should be given with some care, because they can create a false sense of security.
Most studies have found that most of the time that people believe a drug was added to their drink, the only drug they actually consumed was alcohol. Alcohol is by a long run the most common date rape drug; it is far more likely that your attacker will trick you into drinking more than you realize.
So if somebody is buying you unfamiliar cocktails, merely guarding your drink against adulterants can leave you vulnerable to the cocktails containing far more alcohol than you are aware.
I do this with coasters. However I have been told that in some areas, a coaster on top of your glass means the opposite, signalling to the bartender that you are done with your drink.
In a way, it also helps turnover of tables - it's a soft way of ensuring new customers can get seats and the people who got there first don't stay all day (short of an explicit X hour limit)
I grew up in the SF Bay Area and feel the same way. I thought that this is how the whole world worked. You have to be constantly concerned about having your possessions stolen if you leave them briefly exposed in a public place.
Then, I lived in Tokyo for a few years. People leave belongings unattended in coffee shops and restaurants all the time. It's a common occurrence to see someone put down their belongings at a table, leave them there, then go order food or drinks where their belongings are out of sight.
Sure, there is still theft in Japan. But it was a really eye opening and nice experience to see that there are places where distrust of others in this context isn't the default state.
I know that I'm the weird one, because everybody I know never lets me forget it, particularly on this issue. But I've always thought the opposite: I always thought it was weird that everybody thought somebody would steal their stuff. What are the odds of that? I've always left everything unlocked and left my stuff wherever if I needed to walk away. In all my 35 years, I've only ever had one item stolen: a cheap bicycle. Granted, it wouldn't have been stolen if I'd locked it up :)
i started getting paranoid when it actually happened to me. Think about this girl who got her laptop stolen. Do you think she'll ever not be paranoid about leaving a laptop in a cafe? She'll be packing that up before she goes to the bathroom for the rest of her life.
It's not weird at all, in my opinion, because it's just so TRUE. There ARE weird people out there that simply want everything that you have and will take it all when they get the opportunity. Not to mention the people who are stealing because they really need the money, and people with Alzheimer's who can't help stealing things.
I've never had a flat tire in my life, but I'm still driving with a spare tire in the trunk.
The odds are probably not high, just high enough. It's more of a statistics game, and even with a relatively low rate of theft, occurrences will happen.
And when they do happen, they'll be very loud and publicized. That's probably what we see more often than first-person cases.
I still leave my bicycle unlocked even though I've had one stolen.
The bike cost $30. If I get one stolen every 10 years, I figure I'm paying $3 / year for the convenience of not having to bother with locking or carrying a key.
In a sense, it's the replacement that someone who has their bike stolen is paying for, not the original. If it gets stolen, you'd need to get a ride home, find a new bike without transportation for a bit, and put in a decent amount of time and money to fix a bicycle at that price.
The odds of getting your stuff stolen are very low. But having your stuff stolen is so bad, that it is worth doing stuff to avoid it, like taking it with you to the bathroom.
That's not necessarily true. There is a cost to lowering the risk of theft. In this case, it's mostly the time it takes to pack up the stuff, and potentially losing your seat in the coffee shop. There must be point where it's not worth lowering the risk of theft. It would be highly dependent on the cost of your possessions, the likelihood of theft, and the cost of risk-lowering activity over one's lifetime.
This is true in China even if that doesn't seem intuitive: go to the bathroom, just leave your stuff at your table and you'll probably be fine. Depends on the traffic though.
You'll also hardly have a problem in the states barring some high crime areas.
Sure, Japan's culture is great when it comes to personal safety. But many would say that that same culture is responsible for its economic malaise of the last 25 years.
> Yes, but those two aspects of their culture are totally orthogonal.
No, they're not. The social uniformity and equality in Japan that makes Tokyo surprisingly safe for its size is also responsible for the lack of entrepreneurship and innovation in Japan.
> Why can't we build a society where we have the former and not the latter?
If you want some young people to succeed spectacularly, then you also have to allow some (a lot) of young people to fail spectacularly. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
If you want some young people to succeed spectacularly, then you also have to allow some (a lot) of young people to fail spectacularly.
How does the second statement follow logically from the first? How does putting a floor under the bottom of humanity automatically put a ceiling over the top?
I think of it as two normal distributions. One is tight in the centre with few outliers at either end, the other is flatter. More excellence and more rubbish.
The former is Japan, while the latter is your baseline - I believe we were using USA.
It is common to see normal distributions, but rarer to see them skewed in the way you are proposing.
Note, I don't believe this is deterministic at the individual level. People choose to do crime or to think differently. Nevertheless, at the level of society, the law of large numbers applies.
People choose to do crime or to think differently.
One of the interesting conclusions one can draw from studies of physics and biology is that it's highly likely that "choice" is really a very complex chemical process, rather than some independent act that a unified person entity performs in complete isolation from their brain and body.
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is completely true, I think we can make significant progress in improving people's ability to "choose" by approaching the problem of detrimental or criminal choices from a biological and physical perspective -- that is, to use a rational, scientific approach to influencing brains and bodies as highly complex, sentient physical objects, rather than a moral, philosophical approach to distributing punishment and reward.
>> it's highly likely that "choice" is really a very complex chemical process, rather than some independent act that a unified person entity performs in complete isolation from their brain and body
I see this as a false dichotomy. It's the old mind/body duality again. Your assertion about chemicals is not wrong, but you'll run into trouble if you act as if it negates the subjective perspective.
If the subjective perspective is an illusion, an emergent behavior of a complex reality, then wouldn't we do better by trying to alter the reality (biochemistry and environment) directly than by abstractly influencing the illusion with notions of reward and punishment?
There is absolutely no reason it has to be a normal distribution. But let's say you started with one for the sake of simplicity. You could shift the peak a very small amount left (with taxes) and use that money to bring the entire left edge up to the same standard of living. This would have next to no effect on the right edge, the ones succeeding spectacularly.
This comment may be suggesting that the hidden cost of trust in Japan is uniformity of behaviour. Which can have economic consequences when individuals and organisations are unable or unwilling to embrace disruptive change.
If so, I tend to agree with the comment.
My argument was that uniformity of behaviour can have different consequences simultaneously.
A positive one can be trust (lack of street crime). A negative consequence of uniformity of behaviour can be lack of disruption.
Uniformity of behavior may not be inherently anti-theft in all circumstances. What I see this happening in japan though is that, to a larger extent than I have seen elsewhere, people are consistently, almost uniformly, pro-social. Group consideration tends to trump individual opportunity. Consider the different value of cost/benefit to society and to the criminal of a criminal act. I am arguing that Japanese will tend to see the social cost more than the individual benefit, even when they themselves may be the beneficiary.
And on the other side of this coin, as we have been discussing; the same social consideration tends to make people more reluctant to force unwanted (disruptive) changes on others who might be hurt in the short term.
Interesting bit relatively early in the video: the thief asks someone to watch her bag. I'm assuming the idea is that the person would then ask back, "and boom".
That's clever. Whenever I get asked to watch another person's stuff in a cafe, I wonder to myself why they think I'm so worthy of their trust. Recent laptops which suspend quickly and lack delicate hard drives are easier than ever to move with you at all times, so the problem is easy to obviate.
In college a thief used the tactic you describe, establishing trust by asking to watch his stuff, to a girl in finals week at Starbucks. I think she flunked that semester.
I was pretty shocked when a co-working survey asked if you felt you could leave a smartphone or laptop alone. Where I'm at, you can leave these alone without fear—it hadn't occurred to me that it is a serious problem (which obviously it is and always has been)
In my area, you can leave a Retina MacBook Pro out and not expect it gone. (If you work for a company where your laptop has serious data, then of course that stuff should be on lockdown. Most people I know with stuff like that have it locked away in secure cabinets, etc and don't leave it out.)
Anyhoo, yeah students can leave a MacBook Pro Retina, walk away for coffee or to use the restroom and then come back to it. The probability of it being stolen exists, but it is tiny. (Also the culture is such that if someone took something, it wouldn't be a surprise for others to be like, "Hey! What are you doing?!" )
There was this thing on TV where a black male actor was cutting a bike chain with a saw or something like that. Many people confronted him. He said "The bike has been here for a long time." And they told him: "It's not your bike. You can't just take it."
Then they showed a white female actress doing the same exact thing. A couple people asked her what she was doing. She said to one person "I'm stealing the bike." They offered to help her.
I don't trust those things on TV. They seem so easy to slant in a direction that suits the producers. That's not to say that a bias wouldn't exist in that scenario. However, it's not like you can conclude that most people would stop a black man from stealing a bike, but help a white woman do the same, from the sample set that they CHOSE to show.
Among many issues:
* contrary to the narrator's statement, the two males are not dressed similarly
* they speak differently
* there is no black female control
And of course, being a TV show, there is no systematic statistical analysis.
Now, TBH even with more rigorous protocol I suspect the conclusions drawn would be similar, but as it stands, this "experiment" is not altogether useful.
It sounds like he's saying "people are more likely to intervene if they think they could take the other person in a fight". If you're afraid because of a size differential, you're more likely to stay silent (not "you" specifically, but the societal "you")
I am in the bay area (east bay, not SF) and frequent a couple of local coffee shops to do some work. Thankfully, the places I go don't have quite the turnover a busy area like SF does, and there are a lot of regulars. People kind of keep an eye out for each other and their stuff when they leave to use the restroom. In 2 years I haven't seen or heard of anyone having anything other than a bicycle stolen.
Of course I know that doesn't mean someone won't drop in, swipe something and run out, so I still occasionally will take my laptop with me and leave my (otherwise worthless) backpack on the chair and coffee on the table. But if I see a few familiar faces nearby I don't feel too bad about leaving the laptop on the table for a couple of minutes. Of course, I'm rocking a 4 year old off-brand PC... not exactly a desirable item. A high-end machine or anything Apple and I might handle it differently just because of the value.
The cell phone is another matter, as I feel like those are a much easier and somewhat more desirable item for thieves. I don't even leave that on the table while I'm sitting there, it stays in my pocket at all times unless I'm talking.
No it's never safe to leave your laptop alone. However, SF is not that big. And the security camera got a good look at that girl. I would not be surprised if she is caught pretty soon.
I checked the video and it get a pretty clear view of her face. I wonder if I would be possible to upload a screenshot to Facebook and see if it can auto tag her (Facebook brought back facial recognition right?)
I'm generally quite careful with my belongings when I'm out in public. I'd never leave my stuff out unattended and never with a stranger.
But when I was in London, I was being constantly nudged by people to move my belongings, secure them better, etc. I remember being in a pub and my bag (which contained my laptop) was just resting right next to my chair on the floor. A woman who where there came up and said, "You'd best move that unless you want it to get nicked." This was in Soho, so it's not like I was out in the boonies, either.
I've lived in SF and Chicago, but I'd never be that careful here.
So, perhaps London has more petty thefts than the typical American is used to? I dunno, but everyone around me — friends and strangers alike — seemed to be orders of magnitude more conscious about it than I was, and I consider myself pretty conscious.
I'm near DC. I'd guess >95% of the time, you're stuff would be fine while you head to the bathroom or get a refill on the coffee. But, that's still a significant risk, especially once you add hassle factor onto any dollar value.
To be honest, I can't imagine taking a laptop with me to the bathroom. It seems both awkward and fearful.
I prefer to not live in an environment of fear, even in NYC. Statistically speaking, it's very unlikely that anything will be stolen, especially since I usually ask someone to keep an eye on it.
Also, my insurance would cover theft——in many cases, renter's insurance or your credit card will.
That's very much true for SF too, though I can understand the temptation. I always feel weird carrying my stuff to the bathroom with me (not to mention if you're trying to save your spot - at Philz coffee getting and keeping a table is a battle).
Yeah, that's why I'd probably ask someone to keep an eye on it, rather than take it with me - I often do that with possessions, although not a laptop, in public situations (cafe, bar, train, etc.) I'd rather live in a society in which we trust each other to keep an eye on our stuff, than one in which we have to take everything with us for a quick pop to the bathroom. Of course, I'd rather one in which the threat of something being stolen didn't exist at all ...
it's gotta be true just about everywhere. in the suburbs, people ask me to watch their laptop all the time (but only when I'm working on my own laptop). And I often see people pack up all their stuff, just to go to the bathroom.
I once packed up my laptop and took it with me when I went to the bathroom at a coffee shop even though at the very next table were four uniformed police officers.
I try to act normal when police officers are around. I never know when I'm going to see the same police officer again. That would extend to packing up my stuff and taking it with me. Also what if the police officers left while I was gone?
