'AITA for causing drama on my math team for reporting my graphic calculator stolen?'
"AITA for reporting my graphic calculator stolen when a teammate borrowed it during math team practice?"
Mochicat4 writes:
I am on my math team. I own a graphing calculator (TI-84 style) that I bought last year and use for contests and homework. It was not cheap and I’ve customized some programs and settings on it over months, so it is legitimately useful for my competitions.
During practice last week, a teammate asked to borrow it to check something quickly for a problem set. I am usually fine lending things when it’s just for a short while, so I handed it to him while the rest of us worked on a different set of problems.
After a few minutes I realized he had stepped outside to take a call and had not brought the calculator back. I waited 10 to 15 minutes, messaged him, and assumed he was just distracted. Practice ended and people left.
I reached out twice that night asking when I could get it back, but got no reply. The next morning I asked in the team chat and he replied vaguely, saying he would bring it tomorrow. By the end of the day it still had not shown up.
I went to check lost and found and talked to the coach, who told me to give it a little more time but to let him know if it was actually missing. I waited two more days and still nothing. His responses were slow and evasive, and one teammate privately told me he had a history of forgetting borrowed items.
At that point I told the coach the calculator was missing and asked him to check the practice room and security cameras (our school hall cameras cover the area). The coach escalated it to the school office as a stolen or missing item so they could review footage and make a formal note.
My teammate seemed upset when he found out I had reported it. He accused me of making a big deal out of nothing and implied I was calling him a thief. The school later found footage showing him leaving practice carrying something that looked like my calculator, but the footage was grainy and the administration has not made a final determination yet.
I feel like I did the right thing protecting my property. I am not happy about involving the school, but I felt I had exhausted polite options and I cannot afford to replace it easily. AITA for reporting my graphing calculator as stolen?
OP responded to some of the comments on the math drama.
Constant_Host_3212 says:
NTA. "Did you return my borrowed graphing calculator to me after checking something quickly, or did you leave school with it and fail to give it back to me since? I can't afford to replace it, so it's a Big Deal to me. If you aren't a thief, give it back right now."
OP responded:
I only reported it because it wasn’t returned, and I can’t afford to lose it. If they didn’t mean to steal it, then giving it back immediately should’ve been no problem.
MaySeemelater says:
NTA. You gave them lots of opportunities to return it, and they were being distinctly unhelpful and evasive. Getting an appropriate authority figure via the school to manage the situation going forward with trying to get the calculator returned peacefully was the next reasonable step.
If you had called the police on them, or attacked them, or started going through their stuff to try and find the calculator to take it back, then that would have been an overreaction and then you both would have been awful. As it is, you did the best and most reasonable thing you could.
OP responded:
Yeah. I only went to an authority because they weren’t giving it back and kept dodging me. I didn’t overreact, I just handled it in the most reasonable way I could.