AITA for making a big deal that someone stole my socks?
I teach high school English. As part of my extracurricular involvement I help supervise the school gym one lunch hour a fortnight, as I get to use the gym myself free of charge before school (and often do).
Yesterday was my turn. I never use the gym at the same time as the students, but I do use the staff changing room to swap from outside shoes to indoor trainers to avoid getting the place dirty.
I was supervising with a male colleague who I didn’t know very well. He sat beside me at a desk in the corner and did some marking. I did the same, and occasionally walked around to stretch my legs. Due to the netball session there were only a couple of girls there at the time. There were plenty of boys, and the janitor and other phys ed teachers were in the building.
After the hour was up I went to fetch my shoes and head to my final class of the day. When I saw my ankle boots they were 100% in a different position than I’d left them. I had balled up my socks and put them inside each boot, and changed into gym socks. When I picked up the boots my socks were gone.
I checked all over the place in case they’d fallen out somehow, but couldn’t find them. I ended up wearing my gym socks to the next class.
I raised it with the colleague who helped me supervise, and he seemed completely uninterested - did you check around the place, are you sure they didn’t fall further into the shoe, like I wouldn’t have considered that.
I asked the gym teachers if we had CCTV coverage outside the changing rooms. They asked me why. I told them someone had stolen my socks, and they just laughed. Eventually they checked for me but found that the CCTV in that part of the building had been non functional for weeks.
I took it to my head of department (male). He also seemed to find the whole thing funny, and seemed more concerned about the CCTV being broken without anyone realising.
I have no idea why anyone would want to take them, unless as a prank, or as a weird fetish thing. Either way it feels like a much bigger violation than everyone’s treating it. It was the women’s staff changing room, and potentially a male student or students went in there.
Word’s got out and multiple colleagues are asking ‘any luck with those socks yet?’ Or ‘have we solved the mystery of the missing socks?!’
I’m considering escalating things further, even though people think I’m being crazy. I probably won’t ever know who the hell took my socks, or why, but the reaction has irritated me more than the actual theft. Is my reaction unjustified?