When you’ve dealt with theft before, it’s hard not to see potential risks everywhere.

This photographer found himself questioning his own judgment after buying an expensive camera lens and carrying it through the city in a bag that practically advertised what was inside.

As he returned to his car, a stranger approached and asked for spare change.

And though the interaction seemed harmless at first, the man watched him put the bag in his vehicle. That made the photographer uneasy, so he decided to move his car before heading to dinner.

Later that evening, he ran into the same man again. And that’s when everything went downhill.

Keep reading to learn what happened next.

AITA for pre-emptively moving my car because an unhoused guy asked me for change?

I am a professional photographer, and I bought a new camera lens at a store in the city centre because it was on sale.

This lens still costs almost $2,000 so it’s quite a valuable item. When I picked up the lens, I didn’t have a bag so the store unfortunately gave me one with “SONY” very visibly printed on the side so it is obvious something valuable is inside it.

I planned to also get dinner in the city centre but as it was getting dark I didn’t want to be walking around at night by myself with a big “SONY” bag, so I decided to walk back to the car park and put it in the boot of my car and go eat.

The man needed spare change.

As I was walking back to the car park, a man enters at the same time as me but slightly behind me. He looks a little disheveled but I think nothing of it and don’t assume he’s unhoused.

He follows behind me all the way to my car and right as I open the boot on my car to put the bag inside, he stops to asks me if I have any spare change. I genuinely don’t carry cash on me these days, so I tell him, “Sorry, no.” and he walks away and quickly disappears around a corner.

It immediately occurs to me that this guy saw me put that bag in my car and if I walk away and lock my car he could in-theory come back, see that I’m gone and break into my car to steal my new camera lens.

In his mind, it’s happened once and can happen again.

I feel bad for assuming this about him, but last year, I had my car get broken into so that thought is ever-present whenever I park my car.

Chances are that nothing will happen but out of an abundance of caution, I decided to just pay for my parking and leave this particular car park and go down the street to park in a different one and go get dinner.

After dinner, as I’m returning to the new car park I coincidentally see the same guy standing right outside the entrance to the car park. I am wearing a distinctive blue jacket so he immediately recognizes me and starts to talk to me which quickly turns into him confronting me.

At this point, he didn’t even know what to say.

“Thought I was going to break into your car, did you bro?”

I’m at a loss for words and when I don’t say anything and try to walk away, he starts to get really angry and starts accusing me of racism and saying that me (I’m Asian) and white people are always racially stereotyping him and he’s sick of it.

He hurls more abuse at me, ironically some of it racial, and pulls out his phone to record me as I try to use the terminal to pay for my parking.

Thankfully, a security guard helped.

I try to tune him out, but other people are starting to notice and poke their heads around the corner to see what the commotion is and I’m getting more and more stressed. The terminal finally lets me pay with my card and I rush back to my car.

I get in and lock the doors, but he is standing directly behind my car, so I can’t back out and leave. His yelling goes on for another 2 minutes and I contemplate calling the police but I worry that will just make the situation worse.

Mercifully, a security officer who had heard the commotion showed up and rousted the angry man and I could finally leave.

AITA?

Yikes! That definitely sounds like a form of harassment.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a student who was threatened after refusing an elective exam, so they took the case to the district.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit view it.

For this reader, it’s all about safety.

This person would’ve moved their car too.

Here’s someone who would’ve done the same.

He sure did.

This photographer made the right call.

Nobody knows what the man’s intentions were, but protecting a two-thousand-dollar piece of equipment after a previous break-in seems like common sense.

But the strange part is how personally the man took a decision that didn’t affect him at all.

If anything, those actions probably validated the photographer’s concerns more than anything else.