Colleague insists visiting employee leave their car unlocked because there's ‘no crime’ down South, employee refuses: ‘I couldn't take the chance’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Feb 3, 2026 7:00 AM EST

Even in the safest of cities, it's common sense to lock your vehicle. If you're not careful, you just might become part of the 1% of crime that does exist there.

It's important not to bend a knee to fear-mongering tactics. You want to believe that crime rates are inflated for whatever rhyme or reason, and hope that every experience you have in your respective city or town proves that number wrong. At the end of the day, however, you must always look after yourself, too. Your parents probably always told you to leave one headphone out when you're traveling somewhere alone, and to never walk down a deserted street if you could help it. These are the tactics that aren't necessarily born out of paranoia, but rather rooted in a reality in which all of us experience.

So, that means taking proper precautions wherever and whenever you see fit. Are you traveling to a new environment? Lock your car, because there is literally no reason for you not to. Even if a local proclaims proudly that nothing bad ever happens in the big city, protest politely. Taking a risk is a part of life, but not when your profession is on the line.

Below, you'll read about an applications engineer who is traveling for work and meeting with the company admin and clients. One of the admins urges the engineer to leave his vehicle unlocked, boasting about the crime-free environment of the city they're in, Dallas. Sure, but they're still going to lock their car. That's just common sense… Scroll below to read the entire story.

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  • man exits a car in front of a building
    via Ramy Mamdouh for Unsplash

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "Apparently it was r**e of me to lock my car doors."

    I worked at an EDA company (Electronic Design Automation) where I specialized in the application tools that did place and route for printed circuit boards.
    via bwade913
  • As a headquarters applications engineer my day to day job was handling tech support cases for both customers and field applications engineers.
    via bwade913
  • I rarely did customer visits, but if a case became critical, I would sometimes get sent out as a smokejumper to fight a fire.
    via bwade913
  • This only happened a handful of times per year and they were usually stressful. In one such case, I caught an early flight to Dallas to deliver a software patch to a defence contractor that was one of our major customers.
    via bwade913
  • This was pre- internet so I was hand carrying a floppy disk to deliver the patch and of course I was very protective of the floppy.
    via bwade913
  • If anything happened to it, the only option would be to FedEx a new one overnight, delaying the patch resolution by one day.
    via bwade913
  • I arrived at our Dallas office which was on the small side, just two FAEs and admin and some number of salesmen that I didn't meet.
    via bwade913
  • I'd talked to both FAES on the phone a number of times, but was meeting the admin for the first time.
    via bwade913
  • They were all very nice and welcoming and suggested that we all go out to lunch at their favorite BBQ place and we all went in my rental car.
    via bwade913
  • We arrived at the BBQ place, and at first I thought of bringing my briefcase in with me to keep an eye on it, but instead I just decided to lock it in the car.
    via bwade913
  • The admin then said rather sharply, "You don't need to lock your car here"! I explained that I was carrying a floppy with a critical sw patch on it for our most demanding customer and if I lost it, my trip would be a failure.
    via bwade913
  • black floppy disk on blue background
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+
  • She replied, "There's no crime here. There might be crime where you come from up North, but you don't need to lock your doors here"!
    via bwade913
  • That seemed unlikely, but I didn't argue, and just replied that I couldn't take the chance, and went ahead and locked my doors.
    via bwade913

  • This engineer's conflict avoidance is a 10/10. They know that it'll be nearly impossible to protest against a rather pushy colleague's crime-free sentiment, especially since the engineer hasn't been in Dallas very long. So, they acknowledge their sentiment, then give a quick one-liner to justify locking their car door anyway.

    One must ask the question, however: “Why is this colleague so adamant about leaving the vehicle unlocked?”

    Whether the colleague is full of that good old Dallas pride, or they know a guy who knows a guy that might want that floppy disk, it doesn't matter. They could have been less abrasive…

  • We had lunch, no one broke into the car, and the customer visit went well. Years later, I looked into it and discovered that Dallas has a higher crime rate than any place I've ever lived.
    via bwade913
  • Does anyone live somewhere where its considered rude to lock your car doors?
    via bwade913
  • ChanFry "There's no crime here" is almost never true, no matter where you are. (I only included the "almost" because someone will think of some wild exception, like "I was on the 1972 lunar module, and there was zero crime!")
    via ChanFry
  • OP bwade913 The BBQ place was on the outskirts of Dallas and was local to the admin, so local I think local pride was a factor more than big city pride.
    via bwade913
  • hiphoptomato I lived in Dallas for 12 years and had my car broken into probably 6 times. That coworker is an absolute idiot.
    via hiphoptomato
  • Anxious_Pickle5271 Always lock your doors. There is always a first time for everything every where
    via Anxious_Pickle5271
  • AbruptMango I lock my car more than I lock my house. It's not rude, it's just part of getting out of the car.
    via AbruptMango
  • COSurfing Criminals are always looking for the easy opportunity. Leaving your car doors unlocked is that opportunity.
    via COSurfing

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terrible coworkers workplace-stories workplace entitled coworker
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