Managers of a family-owned business in operation for nearly fifty years have to have low time-preference and future orientation enough to realize that scamming an expensive item would be foolish when they have an entire warehouse of legitimately acquired merchandise. Moreover, the goodwill from a story about reuniting a sentimental memento or a hard-to-replace valuable (“That laptop had the only copy of my dissertation!”) is most certainly in their business interest.
I don't think paging through paper notebook is that far removed from going into the user's (probably only one) documents folder and looking for something like "hist301 final paper.doc" to find someone's name. If the paper notebook starts to look like a personal diary, you stop, in the same way you don't click on "company secrets.doc"
Given the timeframes, suspended laptops will have flat batteries. Timeframe is now several minutes just to find the charger, plug in and power on.
One of these can occur simply by accident depending on how you pick it up. The other requires wilful actions.
Levels of effort / concern for privacy are exponentially different.