I'm a teacher in a Secondary shcool and I don't have my own room..... I move from classroom to classroom all day. Some of the other staff who teach my subject are allocated rooms in which they spend most of the day, but because i work part time I don't merit a room of my own.
These days we use overhead projectors with the computer at the teacher's desk as a matter of course;... and we use USB sticks for our documents.
Knowing that I am likely to forget to remove my USB stick and leave it in "someone else's" classroom all the ones I use at school are clearly labelled with my name.
On Monday I forgot a USB with all my schoolwork on it in someone else's classroom. The school was closed before I realised.
I don't go in on Tuesdays or Wednesdays - part time, as I said.
So today I went in expecting either to find the USB in my pigeonhole - this is what colleagues usualy do with it when they find one whose owner they can identify - or still in the computer where i'd left it.
It wasn't in either place and when I asked the colleague whose room it was she said "oh, yes, I took it out of the machine to put my USB stick in - and left it on the table there". Of course it is nowhere to be found. The pupils wouldn't help themselves to something that was attached to the computer, but anything else that's not glued or screwed down will "walk".
My POV is that she became responsible for the USB stick when she moved it - and should therefore have taken care of it until she could put it in my pigeonhole or give it back to me. I work on a "do as you would be done by" attitude - and regularly go out of my way to make sure that colleagues (and even pupils, on occasion) are reunited with their stuff if I happen upon it when I arrive in a classroom.
AIBU to think that she should either have left it exactly where she found it (i.e. in the computer, even if that meant putting it back there when she removed her own) or have taken care of it by putting it in her own pencil case until such time as she could return it to me?
There was a lot of stuff on that USB - of course I have a back up, but I don't like the thought of pupils going through it all - especially as it has my name on it!