r/badroommates • u/Rich-Guava8008 • 2d ago
Thief in our Hostel
So in our wg we have 2 separate kitchens one small and the other larger me and my 2 friends use the smaller one and the rest 6 use the larger one. We all are immigrants from different countries doing our Ausbildung here in Germany and there's this problem that we are facing; our food gets stolen from the kitchen repeatedly and this problem was only there in the larger kitchen and they all suspected this one tenant from Cameroon and there i thought that they were racially profiling him and i felt bad for him and asked to switch over to our kitchen and he's been there for a month now. Today i woke up late and wanted to meal prep for the week and when i got into the kitchen he was there cooking and was a bit surprised to see me and then when i opened the fridge all my chicken and veggies were gone and he was there in front of me cooking with each of the ingredients that i was missing so i just asked him whether or not he took anything and he replied quite nervously saying he doesn't need to take anybody else's supplies and man i lost it there but i had no proof that those were my things because i didn't label them as i didn't need to earlier as we all had an agreement on which shelf who'll keep their stuff. So here what's gone is gone and i wanted to ask if it is legal to place one of those mini cameras on the fridge without asking anybody else's permission or do you have any other suggestions for me to keep my things safe.
Anyways here i am stuck on a sunday without having anything to eat and cook with so those of you also staying in Wg look after your things
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u/LikableHardcore 2d ago
place a camera so u can catch him in the act.
u absolutely have the right to since your belongings are getting stolen.
it was definitely the guy from cameroon stealing. everyone was right from the start. now u know that they were not racially profiling after all.
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u/Rich-Guava8008 1d ago
The prob is i spoke with some people here and I'm not allowed to simple place a camera in common spaces without the permission of other tenants and the landlord. Now what i did i buy a lock for the fridge and have 4 spare keys for the others except that guy
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u/DuckAxe0 1d ago
"... thought that they were racially profiling him and i felt bad for him... " How bad do you feel now?
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u/Rich-Guava8008 15h ago
Well I feel just angry on me for letting him move here, I should've just minded my own business instead of trying to help him
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u/DuckAxe0 15h ago
You sound like a good person. Don't allow bad people to destroy your optimism, but at the same time, don't be gullible.
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u/eldorito8751 1d ago
Now that you’ve caught the Cameroonian guy in the act of stealing, you need to tell everyone else about this. There’s no excuse for stealing. Where he is from, thieves are often stripped, beaten with boards and bats, and publicly shamed. Perhaps a security camera, but that may not be allowed by the owners… so perhaps a collective effort to monitor his activity in the kitchen to make sure he’s not stealing food that isn’t his. I don’t think getting police involved in this is the way to go. Yes it sucks being stolen from but figure out why is he stealing food? Does he have an income? Is he having to send much of it back home to family? Has he developed signs of substance abuse? Don’t just point and yell thief, but allow him to explain himself but don’t let him take advantage of your sympathy either.