A bit of background to the topic... My wife works for a very large international bank in Canada. Recently, her team was moving to another floor and looked like the moving company has lost a small value personal item in the process. My first reaction was: "No big deal, just send a group email to see if anyone got it by mistake", which seemed pretty normal within mid-size tech companies I am used to work for. Her immediate reaction was that she felt super embarassed to even think about sending such sort of email and bother her colleagues about pretty much a personal matter. To be honest, the item doesn't matter as much but I felt that she doesn't feel comfortable with her workplace culture or maybe she is just too shy. To cut story short, this has escalated into arguing and now I feel I might be missing something and owe her an apology.
So would the sort of email I've suggested be appropriate withing larger companies or not?