<p>(Long) story time…</p>
<p>I live in a small apartment building, with either 5 or 6 people in the building, besides me. There are mail bins for each apartment sitting just inside the front door, where the mail gets sorted (by one of the tenants) when it arrives.</p>
<p>I had to take out a newspaper subscription for a project in one of my classes. The professor is very strict in requiring that we all have the actual original newspaper articles from the paper itself for the project, not online printouts or photocopies of the article. If we have one missing for any reason, we need to order a back copy of it, which would cost $5. </p>
<p>Usually, the newspaper is left on the doorstep every day, and I usually grab it in the morning and put it in my mail slot just inside the door, so I don’t have to carry it around all day or go all the way back to my 3rd floor apartment and then back down again. Then I grab it along with the rest of my mail when I come home. I figured this would be safer than leaving it outside all day, where one of the many people walking by might just take it.</p>
<p>So one day, I left my apartment in the morning and put it in my mail slot as usual, and when I came back it was gone. I checked my apartment and my bag to make sure I didn’t space out and actually take it with me, but nope, not there. I checked outside and all over the hallway area as well, but no luck. Well, we get a lot of mail for tenants that moved out years ago, so I thought maybe someone took it by mistake. I made a sign and taped it to the wall above the mail slots, asking for whoever took my newspaper to please give back as I needed it for class.</p>
<p>I got the next day’s newspaper with no problems, and the day after that I saw it sitting in the slot, directly beneath my sign, as I was heading to the store. I came back from the store less than an hour later and it was gone again. I replaced the old sign with a new, slightly less friendly one. I never actually saw it this morning…I assume whoever takes them has graduated to taking them right off the front steps. I guess I’ll be fighting whoever it is to get up earliest and grab it first for the next two days, and then my subscription switches over to going to my parents’ house. Whatever this person’s reason for taking the first one was, it’s out of pure spite at this point.</p>
<p>Now, I do not have a money tree growing in my apartment, and obviously I don’t want to have to pay an extra $20 because someone thinks it’s funny to take my stuff. But is there anything I can actually do about it? The police would probably laugh at me and even though all the tenants are students, we’re off campus so I don’t think the university would do anything. Could the landlord intervene somehow, perhaps? If I replace my sign asking for the paper back with one that says, “You’re an a**hole, hope you’re proud of yourself,” would I get into some sort of trouble for that? I really don’t understand how some people’s minds work. I just want my newspapers back. 
I hope this isn’t the sort of thing I have to put up with for the rest of my life…</p>