Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan • The Register

synopsis from /.

Thirty-six flights were cancelled at Japan's New Chitose airport on Saturday after a pair of scissors went missing. Japanese media report that retail outlets at the airport -- which serves the regional city of Chitose on Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido -- are required to store scissors in a locker. When staff need to cut something, they withdraw the scissors and then replace them after they're done snipping. But last Saturday, an unnamed retailer at the airport was unable to find a pair of scissors. A lengthy search ensued, during which security checks for incoming passengers were paused for at least two hours.

Chaos ensued as queues expanded, passengers were denied entry, and airport authorities scrambled to determine whether the scissors had been swiped by somebody with malicious intent. The incident saw over 200 flights delayed, and 36 cancelled altogether. The mess meant some artists didn't appear at a music festival. Happily, the scissors were eventually found -- in the very same shop from which they had gone missing, and not in the hands of someone nefarious. But it took time for authorities to verify the scissors were the missing cutters and not another misplaced pair.

I've never shut down any of the psych wards I've worked that hard for that long and I'm basically the psych version of an ICU nurse so I keep a highly specialized controlled environment designed for people sick enough that they genuinely can't control themselves why the fuck are they doing that to random everyday people who haven't done anything to evidence that kind of behavior? I guess we also just wouldn't have lost scissors in an area large enough to lose them like that but that just further highlights why that level of control is inappropriate for this environment.

Holy shit this is insanity.

That thumbnail combined with the "security wasn't sure if it was their lost pair, or another one someone else lost" is quite the combo

And of course they were found in the same location they went missing.