In reply to captain paranoia:
> I only lost my skis once. Turned out some bloke took them by mistake, and brought them back when he realised they weren't his (didn't fit his boots).
Obviously not as practically-minded as the idiot who skied off with a pal of mine's pair of rental skis from the top of the Rothorn a few years back. I'd met up with said pal, along with the instructor he'd had an afternoon lesson with, for a beer in the restaurant before skiing down. It was late in the day and we were the last customers to leave, by which time the cablecar and the gondola had stopped running. No problem...until my pal discovered that his skis were gone.
The instructor spotted a single other pair of skis - rented from the same shop as my pal's as it turned out - still in the rack and, after checking with the restaurant staff that they didn't belong to any of them, he guessed what had happened and advised my pal to use those skis to get back down, and sort it out with the rental shop once safely off the hill. It turned out that the bindings were set too far apart for my pal's boots but the instructor whipped out a screwdriver and soon got that sorted, and we had a jolly run back down to town.
On arriving back at our accommodation we got a call from the rental shop advising that they had a customer in their shop who thought we might have his skis. My pal trotted off to the shop with the pair of skis that he'd used to ski down, to be confronted by a very rude and angry man ranting that my pal had "stolen" his skis and he was going to miss his flight home because of that. My pal explained to the shop folks the situation we had found ourselves in at the top of the Rothorn, and they agreed that the other guy was an idiot who had clearly failed to look hard enough for his skis and simply headed off on another pair, having obviously had to spend time adjusting the bindings since those on my pal's skis wouldn't have fitted his boots. Time that he might perhaps have put to more productive use by looking a bit harder for his skis.
Despite this, the idiot was still ranting about my pal being a thief and ruining his holiday as the staff ushered him firmly out of the shop. A less mild-mannered person then my pal is might have felt inclined to give him a short but robust lesson in sensible and polite behaviour with the toe of his ski boot to help him on his way...