AIBU to confront workmen about stealing my engagement ring?

[Marooney]

TLDR- workmen are only people who could have taken my engagement ring, do I confront them?

Need some urgent advice please-

We’ve had 2 workmen here for several days repairing the patio. They don’t need access to the house and come in and out the side passage which leads directly to the garden from outside. One of the men has done several jobs with/for DP over the years, let’s call him Bob, the other guy is an assistant DP doesn’t know.

On Monday night DP left my new engagement ring in its box on a table near the front door as he was going to take it to have a small adjustment done, however on Tuesday morning he forgot and on Wednesday noticed it wasn’t there. He assumed I’d taken it but I hadn’t and there’s no one else in the house, no cleaner or visitors, no one. We live in a rural area and I haven’t always been locking the front door when I pop out on errands as the builders are around - I never thought they themselves might be a risk- and it’s a cul-de-sac so no one passes by except one middle aged neighbour who we’re friendly with, walking her dog. Our Ring doorbell has not recorded any stranger entering our front gate.

We don’t know what to do. Obviously we can’t accuse with no proof, but it seems clear that one of them has taken it. My only idea so far is to have a word with Bob, ask him a bit about the other guy and how long he’s known him etc then say a ring has gone missing and we’d rather sort it out now than look through days of Ring camera footage (we have cameras but unfortunately not in that area, but he doesn’t need to know that). That way at least we’d be implying to Bob that we don’t think it’s him. Incidentally, DP hasn’t categorically said that it couldn’t be Bob.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

"Taking" the neighbours' washing, or "Taking IN" the neighbours' washing?

There's a difference and I'd be interested in contacting that cat if it's the latter.

Ha ha ha

Taking as in stealing and taking it home. The owner of the cat posts what the cat has come home with to get it back to them.

That would make you very careful about what underwear you hung out, wouldn't it?

Innocent before being proven guilty is one thing (although refusing to accept even the remote possibility the workmen could have taken it is as irrational as insisting they must have).

Suggesting that perhaps OPs DH changed his mind about marrying her, decided to take the ring back and then immediately tell her it had gone missing (presumably hoping she just wouldnt notice if they didn't get married in the next 30 years) is, quite frankly, batshit, as were the posters debating OPs honesty about the country she lived in based on the way her ring doorbell recorded the date and stats about vaping!

You never know. My late MIL’d cleaner stole her engagement ring. The house has been emptied now as she died last year. Cleaner also stole clothes - she was caught in the act.

Are you still reading op. ? It’s a tricky situation mainly because the sliding door being left open and therefore anyone having access to the house in theory. (Assuming you have continuous footage of the ring doorbell for the front and can show no one accessed the house from the front ).

Just because there was no forced entry doesn’t mean there was no offence committed. In the U.K. you could walk in a door which is wide open and steal items and it would still be an offence. No idea of the legislation where you are. if they wanted to the police could check for fingerprints but in reality probably won’t. It may still be worth reporting it on the off chance that the thief or handler is caught down the line. My house was burgled and I was just about to claim
on the insurance when the police contacted me to say they’d recovered my jewellery. Any photos you have of the ring could be stored with the crime report to aid its return.

edited for typo

Bah. I am sure insurance will replace it.

Possibly not if it was carelessness.

I mean: it’s not really OK, no (not that you’ll care about my opinion, of course).

You went in and spoke to a tradesperson with whom I understand you have a good, long standing relationship, without being absolutely as sure as you could be that it was him or his mate (and for me, I could only be sure of that was based on actual evidence of either one of them taking it) and you pretty unethically strongly implied you were basing that suspicion on internal camera footage that never existed.

Seems to me with the house being unsecured during the course of the works, a total stranger might have entered and swiped it. Because it was left in a more public area of the house, right by the front door, for anyone to steal.

Please think about that for a moment- how could we strongly imply that we suspected him based on footage, if (as Bob knows) the footage hasn’t been seen? The footage would either show him taking it or not show him taking it- from Bob’s point of view if we had footage of his mate taking it then we’d have the evidence not just a suspicion, and if we didn’t then the footage doesn’t figure in the reasons for our suspicions. Whether the footage exists or not is secondary to all this- it simply couldn’t form the basis of a suspicion if it hasn’t been looked at!

I agree that it would be terrible if we’d said or implied to Bob that we’d seen the guy stealing on camera, but we would never do that! Also presumably Bob would want to see it.

Thanks, no unfortunately there are chunks of the afternoon where the main camera didn’t record so it’s completely useless. No one would have access to the rear sliding doors without being seen by the builders who were working right there. It might just stay a mystery :(

To anyone still receiving notifications about this thread and who thinks we have treated Bob badly, I can only say that while he was shocked about the ring, he doesn’t believe at all that his friend did it, and I really don’t think we’ve cast seeds of doubt in his mind. I messaged him later to thank him for his work and say we felt bad about the awkward situation and that as DP trusts him we accept his vouching for the friend, and that I hoped he hadn’t mentioned it. He sent a very sweet reply saying it was a pleasure to work for us, so I really don’t think any damage has been done.

Oh I was really hoping you'd updated to say you had your ring back. 😔

But the builders were working. They werevpresumably focused on what they were doing, notvwatching your door all the time

They were working on the patio i.e. what the sliding doors open onto.

My mistake: you implied you had internal camera footage you were yet to watch, which would clear up the matter one way or another…It’s still poor form.

And you had to embarrassingly have a subsequent conversation with that tradesperson after you created a really awkward situation, when there were several other options about what could have happened to the ring, given your fiancé foolishly left in a prominent place.

How old are you both?

Nobody was embarrassed at all, I messaged Bob mainly to thank him for the work as I wasn’t there when he left, and I did want to make sure he knew we accepted what he had said. This is so common on Mumsnet, people think they know the entire situation, how everyone felt etc. just from the limited info in posts of a few sentences. The ring wasn’t in a particularly prominent place, which is what makes it so puzzling. An opportunistic thief would be much more likely not to see it and go straight to other rooms where there’d likely be something more valuable.

I actually strongly disagree about the camera footage. Why does it matter? If they’re innocent the fact that I have footage of my own home is completely irrelevant to them. Say Bob confessed based on his fear of being seen in the footage would you be saying the same?
What is unethical about saying we have recordings of our own house? Which incidentally we do, and have Ring stickers everywhere. It’s an unfortunate oversight on our part that we don’t have a camera covering the mud room where we enter. To be rectified asap.

@Marooneyyou can strongly disagree all you like: it’s unethical because what you implied was dishonest.

It’s an interesting subject but you’re not really delving into it. Deception isn’t inherently unethical, there are many many circumstances in which we all deceive others to some extent. What is unethical is when someone innocent is harmed in some way, which wasn’t and wasn’t ever going to be the case here.

If all dishonesty were unethical, then surprise parties, undercover investigations, bluffing in games, and misleading someone to prevent harm would all be unethical. Most people don’t believe that so there has to be more to the ethics question than simply asking whether a statement was deceptive. If you think this specific case is an example of unethical dishonesty then you should be able to pinpoint why but as yet you haven’t been able to.

Thank you for the updates - please please come back if the ring ever turns up! I think you handled the builders perfectly and have parted on good terms 👏

“As yet, you haven’t been able to”.

The distinguishing feature between the examples you give and how you deceived Bob is that, in the former situation there are no stakes, but in the latter, someone (Bob’s assistant) could have been harmed by your deception. You had no idea how Bob would react. Bob might have decided to confront or even dismiss his assistant without further evidence, thinking you might have been able to prove it through footage you said you had, but didn’t. There are economic stakes at play in your example where there aren’t in games.

All the philosophical debates in the world won’t bring the ring back, though. And, as I’ve been saying all along, your fiance was really silly to leave it on the hall table when plenty of people could have swiped it.

So, maybe YOU just think about that for a second, before patronising me. The reason I asked your ages was that you come across as clever but immature. Never in a month of Sundays would I have asked Mumsnet whether I should “confront” my builders about such a situation: here in the South east of England, one just doesn’t leave items of significant sentimental and financial value about when people are doing work on one’s house - to protect everyone in the relationship against exactly the awkward situation in which you’ve found yourselves.

Even the implicit accusation in your thread title “…to confront workmen about stealing my engagement ring”.

Not “about the disappearance of my engagement ring”.

You have it all sewn up without any evidence whatsoever, and some other plausible possibilities about its disappearance, given the property was unsecured during the works.

Conclusion-jumping and immature.

I got all excited as lots of replies and hopes ring had been found

alas not

“You had no idea how Bob would react”. Not correct considering DP has known him for some time, he did have some idea. I actually talked to DP about this first and Bob reacted in exactly the way DP thought which was generally chilled, apart from the surprise.

“Bob might have decided to confront or even dismiss his assistant without further evidence”. I’m afraid to say that would be entirely on Bob and utterly unethical of him. But the point was that we actually thought the assistant was likely a casual labourer which is the first thing we asked. Once Bob said he’d known him 25 years we absolutely adjusted our stance- we still told Bob about the ring of course but from the angle of ‘Ah it’s just that the ring has gone and we thought maybe you’d picked up the guy for a one-off job but since not then blah blah’, we had a laugh about the drink stuffed under the shirt and then we moved on to talking about the job. It really wasn’t the dramatic accusation you’ve invented. Where I agree with you is that unfounded accusations can sow seeds of doubt about an innocent person but lying about having unseen footage doesn’t make that accusation any stronger, that’s the flaw in your argument. If anything Bob was keen to see it to clear his friend’s name. If he’d been keen to see it because he thought it was true, then that raises some questions wouldn’t you say..

“here in the South east of England, one just doesn’t leave items of significant sentimental and financial value about”
This gave me a good laugh. Do you have a pearl-white slimline telephone with automatic redial, perchance? What does the south east of England have to do with anything? Also, and I believe I’ve mentioned this many times, he didn’t “leave it lying about”. The builders were working on the patio - if they had access to the house that’s on me not DP - and I didn’t know he’d put it there or I would have moved it/locked the doors.