What happened to name labels in clothes?

I shall set the scene as it is a mystery and perhaps you could help. I work to my knowledge at a professional and respectable place where we are housed in a very pretty Georgina building.

As I stroll out for lunch I notice out the corner of my eye something pink which is screwed up slightly on the floor of the car park. On closer inspection it is a pair of knickers. Now to give you all the facts we do have gates at work so unless someone knew the number, in theory they couldn’t have been in the car park. The company I work for has about 120 employees so not a tiny company but not a huge place of work so people do know each others names.

As I had a conversation with a friend at work about her children’s scarf purchase in the sale which she is clearly not a child but was wearing she showed me the cute name tag where you write who the item belongs too. Why as you grow up do we no longer have name tags?

One thought perhaps we are suppose to be grown up enough that we know where we leave things, not in the case of the car park knickers I hasten to add. Perhaps there is no need for labels as we no longer get changed into matching uniforms like we did in the PE rooms at school.

I met a guy at university who had just that his name on everything and I mean everything, from scarf to pants! I think his mum thought he would get his stuff taken so this way he would always know what was his. I of course found this highly entertaining at the age of 23 he had names on everything he owned so I proceeded to take the Mickey, I know not glamorous. It did however come in useful when we split up three years later and had to move out going our separate ways. Then I thanked his mum as everything was nice and labelled. Anything however he brought in the three years we were together was a different story but not one to expand on now.

It seems to me labels although I did at first think they were crazy now seem perhaps in some ways useful. Would we take more care if we clearly knew what was out stuff and that it could be traced back? Like for example there is a story with the car park knickers and I bet if they had a label which we could trace back that person could tell us exactly what really happened. Alas since there is no label we may never know and perhaps that is why not having labels are also good this gives you freedom to leave or throw off items where it can become another mystery.