AIBU to feel uneasy after workmen may have gone through laundry?

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Yesterday I had some work done upstairs in my house by two work men. I closed all of the doors to the rooms that they didn’t need to be in and made sure things were tidied away. When they had gone, I noticed that a pair of my knickers was at the top of the laundry basket. I’m 99% sure they weren’t there when I tided up before they came, and I had worn them earlier this week so they would have been at the bottom of the basket.

I keep thinking about it and feel quite violated. I’m wondering if the workmen went through my dirty clothes 😣.

You can’t think of any reasons why a man might want to do this? I wish I couldn’t!

I’d go with your instincts, they’re usually right.
And for the pp who said that tradies take their shoes off, I’ve just had a load of building/leccy/gas men in the house and not one of them offered to remove them or use shoe covers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DNnM0WaiNiI/?hl=en-gb
A landlord did it to me when I was a student. Its very common

A few years ago I was in hospital and couldn't return home until a minor alteration had been done to the bathroom. it was quite a while until I could move about and one day I opened a drawer in the bedroom and found my vibrator on top of everything else; it had quite clearly been used and put back uncleaned. I was aghast and threw it away. Of course I didn't complain the the council - I was mortified. To those of you who lost knickers; it could have been worse.

God, that’s awful @TheThirteenthFairy, how violating 😔

I’m sorry OP, that’s horribly violating. I have a female plumber and electrician because I don’t want random men in my house for this very reason. The posters thinking YABU surprise me. Everyday we hear horrific stories about how depraved men can be. Rape convictions are shockingly low and misogyny and incel culture is thriving. As a woman you can’t even go on a dating site without getting unsolicited dick pics. Give a man unsupervised access to your home and many of them will absolutely take advantage of that.

A lot of my posts of late have caused people to strongly disagree with me over a recent news story about how I believe that 2 men shouldn't be allowed to do certain things together, believe me, I'm no naive male apologist, however, I think it's unlikely that these workmen did this.

Not saying that it doesn't happen, of course it does, but I can't say it's a certainty.
I wouldn't leap to any conclusions.

If the OP is so sure, why is she even asking?
Stealing underwear for later 'use' " (boak) is one thing.
What are they doing with unstolen underwear?
Can't think their workmate is going to be happy about them taking time out to do certain things.
Are they just looking at female underwear for a laugh? Not good obviously.

I can't help but feel that there is an element of snobbery here.
If they'd been accountants, would the OP be thinking this way?

No way to know so just move on.

The only workmen who currently would have access to the bedroom are the central heating blokes when they service the boiler. They check all the rads are heating up correctly.

As soon as they come in they take off their shoes and they always ask permission before going upstairs.

There are some really horrible men around these days to do something like this in someone's home, it puts me off having any work done anywhere in the house especially if it was upstairs.

How long were you out of the house, OP?
Anybody else around in the house while they were working?
It sounds like you live alone

@QuintadosMalvadosI absolutely believe that men of all trades and professions can have an equal propensity for violating women’s boundaries. In this scenario I can totally imagine a couple of men thinking it’s a ‘bit of a laugh’ to riffle through the laundry and sniff some knickers. As I said in my post, I think there are a proportion of men who given free access to a property will take advantage. In much the same way that men given ‘free access’ to women on a dating platform will send dick pics or (at a much more horrific level) given ‘free access’ to an unconscious woman will assault her. It’s got nothing to do with class or job thank you.

I am amazed by some of these responses. Of course we don’t know if this happened or not and there is little you can do op, but of course you feel violated by the possibility if you’re confident you didn’t leave them like that.

Do we not read in the news every day depraved and violating things men do? Is there one woman on this thread that has not had occasions of feeling unease due to male sexualised behaviour? It’s incredible to me that women can dismiss this possibility out of hand. Less surprising the daft post from the male pp upthread who has mates who wouldn’t do this, so it didn’t happen 🙄

I agree with you but this is one of those instances where I am on the fence.
I simply do not know.

You can put arguments for and against.
Both valid but there's no way of knowing.

It's OK to think not to be certain.

The male poster you refer to always tries to ingratiate himself with the women here but seems to somehow not get it exactly right . Imo of course. 😁

I had an old housemate who looked in my drawers and saw my vibrators. I was like WHY?! Why would look there and do that. And tell me at a later date. Brainless fuckwit he was.

They might’ve done it they might not. We’ll never know and either way there isn’t anything you can do about it- so I’d throw out the knickers and put it out of your mind

Even with cameras around men will still do stuff like this. I think you are being incredibly naive.

Why so? They're well known for it and they proudly document it all over social media. And several of them are from the UK so there might be a possibility when they're not "on duty" that they work as workmen in people's houses and carry on the same behaviour.

I certainly wouldn't want one of them in my house.