to think "Get your own fecking swim toys"

[mawbroon]

I feel like a right misery guts, but every time ds1 wanted to use one of the toys that we had brought to the pool today, I had to go and fetch them off somebody else.

Fair enough in a family fun session where the pool provides floats etc and it may not be clear which belong to the pool and which belong to individuals, but when there is one noodle, one diving ring and one ball lying on the poolside AIBU to expect people to leave them alone? Or are other peoples swim toys fair game??

It's bit off that people take them without asking especially if they are marked. We use a black marker and write our last name on everything. Dd lets everyone play with her stuff, usually they ask first, occasionally not. Dd being who she is will occasionally get a strop on and say hey thats mine you didn't ask. They either toss it back or ask. She's not shy about going and collecting her stuff either.
Our pool supplies nothing so everyone knows all toys have an owner and the manager is good at collecting and dropping all the toys left in the lost and found box.
We've had a few splash bombs and dive sticks go walkies and never seen them again, I know it happens every summer, so in the autumn when it's all getting cleared out at the shops I buy more for the next summer.

If the pool is providing floats and toys as part of the swim session, then how the heck are people supposed to know which is private stuff and which isn't?!
Unless your toys have got 'property of Mawbroon Junior, keep your mitts off' scrawled all over them in big writing, then I'd probably be one of those who didn't realise it wasn't the pool's property!
Even then I'm not the most observant of people and probably wouldn't notice

I think writing your name on is a good idea but I don't think actually your kids should have to share their own toys that they took specially to the pool to play with. We do this and other kids use them and then I have to ask for them back and spoil that kid's fun - sometimes the other kid really doesn't want to give it up and is upset so I let them keep it a bit longer but then mine miss out and are upset. I don't let mine play with random stuff - pool owned toys ARE always clearly marked as being the property of the council so unmarked stuff is usually someone else's.

My girls took noodles to an inflatable play session as one of them couldn't swim and her swim ring had broken. We bought them on the way so not named. After a while she decided she didn't need it as she was using a float provided by the pool so i put them under a chair at the side and we saw a woman across the pool talking about us/ bitching. Then she went to get our noodles from under the chair as she had obviously decided they belonged to the pool and we were hogging them. :o We let her get on with it, but then at the end asked for them back to take home.