"Did you get your safety

vest back Cat?" the guild treasurer asked me  yesterday. She is one of those "utterly reliable" people. She is also extremely honest. If she is a cent out with the books it worries her  until she has found the problem. When she borrows something you know it will be returned. She is that sort of person. 
Recently the knitting guild did a display at a much larger event and, when setting up, people had to wear those bright coloured safety vests. The treasurer had borrowed it and, with me knowing about it, had passed it on to another guild member to wear.
I have one. It was cheap. I bought it some years ago at the local "cheap/reject" shop. I use it for setting up when I help my friend at a craft fair and for my annual stewarding duties at the showgrounds. I will need it again next week for that purpose. 
And no, I didn't get it back. The person who had borrowed it was supposed to give it to me, had been given strict instructions to return it to me. She didn't.
It was apparently left on the table after a committee meeting. She did get it that far but taking a little extra time to give it to me or even give it back to the treasurer to give to me was apparently too much. 
It annoys me. I am the sort of person who returns things. If someone loans me something then I am not happy until they have it back. The Senior Cat is the same. He is currently worried because he was given a book to read. He read it. He cannot get to the person who loaned it to him but he let her know he had finished it. She has not been to pick it up as she said she would. He is worried that she will think he has forgotten to return it. 
And that safety vest is important in more ways than one. It not only belongs to me but I need it in order to enter a building to do a job. The safety regulations require me to wear it. I have given an undertaking that I will be there to do a job at a certain time and I don't want to let people down.
I had an e-mail late yesterday afternoon. It came from the treasurer. The man who opens the building and sees to it that everything is in order before it is locked again had found the vest "lying around". He had, quite rightly, put it away. 
It means that the treasurer will now have to make a detour on her way home one day this week and drop it in to me. She shouldn't need to do that.
It seems like a little thing, something that "doesn't really matter" but it does matter. 
It has reminded me all over again of the importance of returning things when I borrow them. After all, those things are not my property.