"Excuse me..."

"Excuse me," people will say to you, perhaps giving you a soft tap on the shoulder to draw your attention, "will you watch this for a moment." Often they also give you some motivation to assist, "I need to use the bathroom," they often follow up, or "I'll only be a minute," they frequently qualify. Sometimes it is a piece of luggage at the airport or a laptop computer at the library, but invariably, people ask.

The puzzling component to this exchange is not only the ubiquitous nature of such requests, but also the psychology that underlies them. People ask you to do them this favor without any knowledge of your character whatsoever. This is not problematic for the person asked, for the favor is small and generally unburdensome, but rather for the person making the request. What about some stranger in the library for example, makes them not only trustworthy enough to not steal the item in question themselves, but trustworthy and caring enough to stop others from doing so.

Working from the example of a student asking me to keep an eye on his laptop while he used the loo, what made this person ask me. I was in full view of the computer, but had he been monitoring me for my trustworthiness. Had he seen that over the past few minutes I had not stolen anything else or committed any antisocial behavior. Who does he expect to steal his computer? How does picking a person at random secure one's belongings any better than simply leaving them there.

I guess if the computer got stolen on my watch, he would have some sort of recourse, but not even that. He could assign blame but what measure of liability, nay responsibility, is conferred on the unwitting recipient of the near useless request?

I watched his computer until he came back. No one tried to take it. He gave me the thumbs up sign when he returned.

Actually I kind of need to use the bathroom, who should I ask to watch my things?