It had been abandoned in the bike racks at work by someone who left.. so I cut the lock and chucked it in my boot.
Rather it was used than left to rust!
I’ve done EXACTLY that too!
It was at uni. We were the last residents of a hall that was going to be knocked down. One particularly weird guy had a fairly old but reasonable road bike in the shed, probably an entry level decent bike from 10 years previous (this was in 1995). Still had downtube shifters.
The guy apparently went mental and trashed his room in the first term; his dad came to get him and was never seen again. At the very end of the year, knowing the hall was going to be knocked down, we decided to liberate the bike.
Incidentally, in the days before mobile phones I was going up to Bangor to visit my mate one time. He was going to meet me but my train was late and he had to go and do something else. So to get a message to me he locked that bike up at the front of the bike stands with a message tied to it. He knew full well I’d check out the bikes as I stood around, recognise the bike and then see the message 🙂