Caught a stranger IN my house this morning. Joys of living in a previous commercial premises.

[Joel_BC]

The salon have since moved about 4 doors down from me, but twice now people have walked in, looking for them. He was horrified and very apologetic, but we had a good laugh about it afterwards and I pointed him to where the salon now is.

Sumi, I can definitely understand that you'd have felt shocked and scared. Glad the fellow wasn't any sort of scoundrel.

How situations are interpreted and dealt with depends a lot on where they happen, I think. The region where I live is probably quite a bit like where you are, in a way. We don't tend to lock our house doors here unless we're going to be gone for a few days.

Why? Because burglaries, home invasions, and vandalism are things that only happen very rarely here. So rare that when something like that does happen, the story makes the local newspaper and people write in to the "letters" column to discuss it.

Drive to certain communities 200 miles to the east or west and vandalism or a burglary (usually when the residents are not home) can be more common there. But you'd have to get into a big-city area for it to be what I'd call "common".

Sounds like you've had a couple of bumblers, sumi, not villains

 

[Hinotori]

wow. just wow.

I'd freak out a bit

 

[sumi]

Crime, break-ins, etc is so rare here. I did slip into the habit of being very relaxed about leaving doors unlocked, valuables outside, my car unlocked in the car park down the road. I've walked out the door a few times here to find someone's car idling away with the owner in the supermarket! In the bigger towns and cities you have to be more careful though, but here in the rural areas we're mostly o.k.

Yesterday's incident did shock and scare me a bit, though we laughed about it afterwards. I decided to start locking my street door from now on, rather.

 

[Britesea]

same here, @sumi but one summer I heard there was a woman living out in the woods here and people started discovering little things going missing like food from the pantry and extra firewood and one person come home from a fairly long vacation to find evidence that someone had been living in their empty house (left it a mess, too!) She eventually left when winter weather got too cold, but ever since, I've been a little bit warier.

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

I accidentally walked into someones home. I had no idea they had taken a store front building and turned it into living quarters. No sign on the front. The door was unlocked. It was confusing!!
A sign of some sort may have helped. As it was, I was new to the town, and exploring the downtown main street stores.

 

[Denim Deb]

same here, @sumi but one summer I heard there was a woman living out in the woods here and people started discovering little things going missing like food from the pantry and extra firewood and one person come home from a fairly long vacation to find evidence that someone had been living in their empty house (left it a mess, too!) She eventually left when winter weather got too cold, but ever since, I've been a little bit warier.

Sounds similar to the North Pond Hermit. https://firsttoknow.com/north-pond-hermit/