The diary of almost everything

One of the stranger parts of adulthood is discovering that a perfectly normal workday can suddenly turn into a low budget crime documentary.
Yesterday was fine! The first day back after the holiday, short week ahead, everyone mildly confused about what day it was, but otherwise perfectly normal.

This morning, however, one of my colleagues from administration walked into my office asking for the work bank card to make a payment: “It’s usually in the drawer, right?”

Now, normally I take that card home during holidays because schools during vacation periods basically turn into tiny villages with painters, cleaners, maintenance people, holiday programs, delivery drivers, and approximately forty-seven people walking through the building at any given moment.
But this year, for reasons I still do not fully understand, I had decided to leave it there.
Which in hindsight feels like the kind of decision that would absolutely come back to haunt someone in a crime podcast.

So my colleague opens the drawer….Nothing.
At first I was surprisingly calm about it. Mostly because I know myself, and experience has taught me that there is always at least a forty percent chance that I have simply placed something in a “safe spot” so safe that even I can no longer locate it.
So naturally I started tearing through my bag like a raccoon looking for survival supplies, despite the fact that this was also the exact same bag I had promised myself I would fully clean out before the first workday after the holiday.

A promise I had clearly not fulfilled.
At one point there were receipts, pens, lip balms, loose hair ties and approximately six hundred unrelated objects spread across my desk while I insisted: “No, no, I’m sure it’s somewhere.”.

It was not somewhere.

Then I remembered I had access to the banking app on my phone.
And that was the exact moment the day took a sharp turn into: “Oh, this is actual crime.”
Because there, neatly listed on the screen, was transaction after transaction after transaction.
Money withdrawals, train payment, clothing stores, shoe stores etc.
Apparently somebody had spent the holiday season living a significantly more financially confident life than I was.

And honestly, whoever stole that card truly believed in consistency, because they kept returning to many of the same places over and over again, which is either deeply stupid or wildly optimistic behaviour for a criminal.
There was even a jewellery purchase near the end that felt almost cinematic.
Like they had really decided to finish strong.

At that point my colleague looked at me and said: “You need to block the card right now.”
And I remember still sitting there slightly stunned by the whole thing, because even though you know theft exists, even though you know people do these things, there is still something bizarre about realising that while you were peacefully enjoying your holiday, somebody else had apparently been funding their own.

So instead of spending my second day back making plans and walking through classrooms, I spent the morning on the phone with the bank explaining that no, the foundation did not usually spend money this enthusiastically at random stores.

Then came the deeply uncomfortable part where you have to inform management, which somehow feels mildly embarrassing even when you logically know you did not personally go on a criminal shopping spree during the holiday.

And of course, once we started talking about it more, little details suddenly began making sense.
A colleague mentioned that one of the drawer units in the office had looked strangely moved the day before, but nobody had really thought much of it at the time.
Because that is the thing about theft. Most people are decent, so your brain does not immediately jump to: “Ah yes, clearly somebody has been secretly searching through office drawers.”

Meanwhile the person who stole the card had apparently been happily travelling around, shopping, withdrawing money, and funding what I can only describe as a very committed personal side quest.

The strange part is that somewhere between the bank calls, the police reports, the blocked accounts, and the endless administrative hassle, the whole situation also became slightly absurd.
Because suddenly you find yourself analysing transaction histories like an FBI investigator: “Oh interesting, back to the same ATM again”, “Bold choice to return to that shop” and “There’s a camera there.”.    At one point we were genuinely discussing “digital traces” as if we were starring in our own detective series.

Which would honestly be less embarrassing if I had not spent half the morning digging through my own bag looking for a card that had very clearly been stolen.
And then came the police process.
Apparently nowadays you cannot simply walk into a police station and file a report immediately anymore. Instead you call, explain the situation, attempt to navigate online forms that somehow never fully match the situation you actually have, and are then calmly informed that someone will contact you within three working days.
Three working days!
Which somehow feels like an aggressively relaxed timeline when someone has already completed what appears to have been an entire shopping marathon.

Still, despite everything, the overwhelming feeling today was not even anger. Mostly disbelief. Disbelief that people casually steal from schools.
Disbelief that somebody apparently found this entire plan worthwhile.
And disbelief at how quickly adulthood can shift from “nice short workweek after the holiday” to “hello, I would now like to report a jewellery-funded crime spree.”
Still, the card is blocked.
The police report is coming and the cameras exist.
And somewhere out there is a person who may soon discover that buying luxury items with a stolen work card leaves behind a truly impressive amount of evidence.
Honestly, for someone committing fraud, the organisational skills were questionable at best.

-Sophie Quinn