Having run a team of engineers for 12 years working in an environment where they were exposed to cusomer's valuble personal bits and bobs on a daily basis and never having had any complaint of pilfering, I think that it comes down to who you employ, ie are they decent honest sorts or not!

Honesty? The taking of and odd pen or other stationery consumables, whislt is theft it is still very petty theft, whereas the lined is seriously crossed (imo) is when people start to eat colleagues lunches or other meals from the shared staff fridge.

Or the guy who wonders into an office 'looking for a job' but more likely 'looking to do a job' - I've seem them all.

Thankfully I cannot recall anything ever going astray whilst the car was in for service, although with all the doors open and people hanging around I have sometimes wondered whether that was due to good luck!

I've probably broken even over the years - had a couple of things take but found a couple of decent spanners in the engine compartment!

"Any bag of sweets or pound coins found lying under seats were considered fair game."

Sorry but I was brought us to respect other peoples property, I would consider anything found in their vehicle to be their property and leave it alone. If the person working on the vehicle resorted to stealing something from that vehicle, what's to stop them just going through the service tick sheet without doing the work.

I would be at best having a word with the service manager and at worst looking for the servicing to be done somewhere else. And yes, I put my car in for service without removing things such as CDs, PPE etc, it's all down to trust.

I'm talking about money found under a seat and an odd sweet or two.

I call that stealing, whichever way you look at it.

When I was an auto electrical apprentice one of the more senior engineers helped himself to a sweet from a large open bag in the centre console of a customer's car, the customer collected his car and then came back 5 minutes later to exclaim that one of his sweets were missing and he now only had 34 sweets left in the bag!

The foreman apologised for the alleged theft and then checked with the engineer who confessed whilst laughing about it, the engineer came to the counter and confessed to the customer, the customer was quite satisfied with this and as he was leaving the foreman asked why he had taken the trouble to count the sweets before leaving them in such a tempting position, the customer replied "I wanted to see how honest the engineers were here"

A test of faith or entrapment?

If all they did was nick a sweet I'd be content enough with that. So long as they leave important bits like the steering wheel.

Seriously though a certain level of theft probably is deemed 'acceptable' or at least 'your own fault, what do you expect?' Take the example of insurers not paying out if your car is 'stolen' because you left the keys in it.

It is not (in the eyes of the law) "your fault" if someone steal from your car if you leave it unlocked (or steal the car entirely if you leave the keys in the ignition whilst you pop to the shop quickly, its the fault of the person stealing the item or car. The person was negilgent in leaving th car unlocked, which is a different kettle of fish entirely.

Its a bit like saying women dressing in sexy clothes on a night out "deserve" to be fondled or worse because of what she's wearing. For both issues, is there any reason why people can't be brought up to be honest and keep their hands to themselves? As someone else said, it might be only petty pilfering, but its the thin end of the wedge - how do you know that the mechanic (please, not an "engineer" - very few mechanics have that level of professional training, knowledge or experience) has performed the service/repair etc as they are supposed to - its all a matter of trust, which should start with honesty.

In the case of keys left in car, there is a degree of negligence because theft is predictably likely.

I don't hold with extending that principle to ladies.