To think this really is the lowest of the low

[LoopyLou1981]

Just found out that someone has stolen one of the portable DVD players from the children’s ward at our local hospital.
What sort of a scumbag do you have to be to do that?! 😡

At hospital in a day unit recently with my ds, waiting for an operation. He had his own room with a bed but no pillows, I asked the nurse if he could have a pillow (because it was a long wait till his op) and she had to go and get one from a locked room. She said they don't leave them lying around because people take them Who the hell would steal a pillow????

On paeds ward some years ago and thinking that the nurses station looked somehow different but couldn't put my finger on it ........ until I tried to make a phone call and realised that some thieving bastard had stolen the phone. This was in the days before plug ins when phones were wired in so they had had to cut it loose.

A community local to me fundraised for a defibrillator. A few months later it was smashed to bits.

Ffs

I’ve spent a lot of time in hospital with my daughter, the little DVD players get stolen CONSTANTLY.

People are really disgusting.

Ours had Christmas presents which had been donated by members of the public for children in hospital over Christmas stolen.

Although we do have a giggle with my Mum about the night she missed her dinner and went three hours later due to a patient being poorly. Finally stuck her meal in the microwave and in the ten minutes inbetween someone nicked the microwave and her dinner. It was a laugh or you will cry moment.

Hospitals make good targets sadly. I collapsed in hospital and had to be moved and whilst my original bed was unattended, my phone card with £5 on was taken. This was in the days where you didn’t have mobiles in hospitals and I then couldn’t phone my family. Fucking grim.

All the remote controls for the TVs on the local Gynae ward had been stolen so there were no remotes for any of the TVs except for the one kept on the Nurse station. So you had to ask if you wanted the TV station changed, which obviously we didn't want to keep doing as the nurses are busy enough. My mum was in there for 3 weeks suffering from terminal cancer - I suppose we were lucky that the battery operated radio I took in for her wasn't nicked too. The stupid thing is that those remotes wouldn't have worked with other TVs and are cheap as chips. I think the only way to stop this is for cameras everywhere and if you are caught you should be denied medical care for the foreseeable future and named and shamed.

YANBU Sadly this happens all the time in hospitals, iPads, chargers etc if it's not nailed down it'll go.

well, if someone can steal an ipad playing the gruffalo to a small boy in a coma i have to say nothing would suprise me.

Years ago I worked at King's College Hospital in Camberwell, south London. One of the paediatric units had had an enormous - really vast - Easter egg donated and it was being raffled to raise money for the ward. A visitor to the ward was captured on CCTV nicking the egg! The head of security showed her the footage when she returned to visit again, and she persisted in denying it. Alas, the management didn't want to get the police involved and press charges for theft, so the lowlife caah got away with it. Yes, some people really are scummy. (And I don't want any 'whataboutery' from anyone, thanks - 'Oh, what about her stress levels with a sick child, etc" - I've had a kid and a husband in intensive care, it didn't incline me to stealing from sick children!)

Babyplaymat

Our town has 3 defibrillators installed, in quite a small area, after the tragic death of a young man inspired the community to fundraise. One is very close to my house and it’s presence brings my great comfort.

I can’t imagine what sort of idiot would deliberately destroy one .

Some people are so immensely stupid and self-centred and have such poor impulse control and so little in the way of morals that they will steal things on the off chance that they can sell them or otherwise make use of them.

This. In spades. I despair, sometimes, I really do.

There was a company donated cinema equipment to the cancer ward of a Leeds hospital. It was all taken out whilst they painted it and hey presto, the whole lot was taken.
It was worth thousands. And apparently it wasn't properly insured. All stolen from children with cancer.
And what's more it was probably staff that did it as they were the only people who knew it was there.
Absolutely disgusting.

I’m quite shocked this is so common. A friend once told me when she went to give birth, her husband’s camera was stolen from her bed with all the birth photos on it. I was convinced they must’ve misplaced it but I’m now realising it was probably true.

Lots of pillows get stolen from hospital. Don't know why someone would want one of those they are hardly luxurious and I know they are clean but they've had so many peoples faces on them! After giving birth I had one pillow for my head but wanted one for between my knees... Took a really long time to get one!

Oh that's really low.

Our local hospital's children's oncology wing had their X-box stolen. And just before Christmas a couple of years ago someone smashed the windows to where the Salvation Army were storing present to be distributed to low income families with children. Didn't even take anything, just broke glass over thousands of gifts that then couldn't be used.

It's of no use to anyone except that person, it's expensive but doesn't have monetary value for the thief because they can't sell it or use it.

The equipment you use to program/test/analyse a pacemaker started to look similar to lap tops in the 1990s. They were redesigned as people were buying what they thought was a second hand laptop and phoning the pacemaker companies.

It's not just the NHS, a well dressed woman spent a few days wandering in to patient rooms in a private hospital I worked at. If the patient was asleep or unconscious she'd take things, if they were awake she would appologise and say she had the wrong room.

Someone in my Grandmother’s care home stole (or accepted from a woman with advanced dementia) a diamond lapel pin with an half carat diamond. My grandmother was in a supported apartment, so access to her jewellery box wasn’t simply by opening a door, plus the box was in a drawer in her dressing table.

As a family, we aren’t really into diamonds, or shows of wealth, so nobody was bothered about inheriting it... but that’s not the point.

mayhew

I think smashing defibrillators is sadly pretty common. I've seen the police make several appeals in our area where they have CCTV footage of people doing it.

My late SiL went into hospital last year after a fall out shopping and her handbag "went missing". It was never found so we can only surmise that it was taken.

People who do that are the scum of the earth.

My step mum was a nurse. She told me to remove all jewellery before I ever go into hospital as she has known patients to have their wedding ring etc stolen off them while they sleep.

More trivial but I've worked in a school where all the loo rolls were taken every single parents evening.

I've worked in a hospital where there were crack pipes in the ceiling, prostitutes kept working from their beds with the curtains drawn, drug addicts took their meal supplements (fortified milk etc) and nipped out and sold them on the street for a few pence for their next fix.

When I used to work in retail they told us the following statistic during training:

10% of people will never steal. No matter what.

10% of people will always steal if they can get away with it.

80% of people are more opportunists who may steal if all of the factors that day align (you're skint, you know you can get away with it, you persuade yourself nobody will notice etc).

As someone in the 10% that would never, that absolutely shocked me.

But, if I was on the bones of my arse, had ran out of food bank vouchers, managed to convince myself that the NHS just have a big stock of the item anyway and can absorb the cost/factor thefts into their budget, knew I couldn't afford a birthday gift for my kid, or felt so horrifically unwell from heroin withdrawal my morals were so far out of sight I forgot I had them, who knows? Maybe I'd fall into the 80%.

It makes me enraged of course but I always tend to think although it's no excuse, I doubt anyone with enough money and a nice life with much to lose would steal those things.

I've endured opiate withdrawal (exactly the same as heroin, only mine was because my prescribed meds from the pain clinic got stolen out of my car and it took days to sort) and I remember at the time thinking I'd give anything to make it stop. Anything. I'd have sold my bed, had a finger amputated, given them every last penny in my bank account. Yes, nobody takes drugs unless they choose to, and they could make the decision to get help (though relapse is a largely inevitable and expected part of recovery from addiction, not a weakness of character), and I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for someone in withdrawal from a habit, but unless you've experienced it it's impossible to even guess how it feels.

So i try have a little empathy instead of jumping straight to 'how disgusting', we all know it's disgusting. Few people can look a little beyond that and at least contemplate why some people might do this.