I still remember when I was a kid and corrected the change I got back by a dime, and they looked at me like I was annoying. My honesty meant I didn’t have enough change to take the bus home so I had to walk a few miles. But that’s OK.
Good for you for pointing this out, ivylass.
Once when I was showing some friends around Nashville I found $320 right near the doorway of a local tourist gift shop. I went in and gave the store owner the money, along with my address should the owner not reclaim it. I seriously put it from my mind, thinking if it wasn’t claim, someone at the store would probably “claim” it. Much to my surprise, a month later I got an envelope in the mail with all the cash. It was unfortunate the owner lost it, but I had the good feeling from having done the right thing, and got the money too!
StG
Well that’s a quite interesting situations. Was the $320 in several bills (well duh? lol). Since that is the case, the person who lost it probably didn’t even know how much she lost so it would prove difficult for she to reclaim it. I think it’d seem quite suspicious if a person just went into a store and said she thinks she lost some money there. She probably didn’t even know where she lost it anyways so it wouldn’t matter but I guess I just felt like pointing that out. Alas, I didn’t really say much and you still did a good thing, and with a happy ending too :).
gigi, I’m slightly confused with the honesty costing you the bus ride. Do you normally carry enough money around but it just so happened that you didn’t have enough that day? If that were the case, especially when the difference is so small, I empathize for you and how karma did not repay you (that day at least). It would’ve gotten me in a pretty bad mood but it’s good to see that people still enjoy the honesty and overlook their inconveniences.
ivylass, no harm done either way :).
I once worked for a national corporation. When I got laid off due to office closure (after being lied to by the Regional VP, who came to my office to ensure me that they were not closing my office, he came back a month later to give me the bad news.
I sold all remaining vacation time back to the company (within policy), cleaned out my desk, got a semi-nice layoff payment and left without much undue drama. 
All in all, a pretty clean break.
Two weeks later, I get my last paycheck and layoff bonus via direct deposit. Quite happy. Off looking for a new job.
Two weeks after that, I get another two week’s worth of salary. Now I’m worried. I called HR and explained the story. Geoff (HR dude who I was friends with) tells me he’ll look into it, but politely advises me not to spend the money…just in case, you know.
I sweat it out for a few days. Then Geoff calls back and says that Payroll never received my layoff notice. (It sat in the VP’s office waiting for his signature for too long. The severance package and termination notice were two different documents. He made a mistake and signed one but not the other until a week later. Not enough time for HR to process.) Although they know what they’re doing - why they would process one form without the other is a gaping plot hole I never bothered to investigate.
Bottom line: Geoff tells me that they cannot legally recoup the salary due to paperwork, so the money is mine.
That Friday, I took Geoff out for dinner and drinks. Not a man date, but thanks for not being a paperwork backdating dick. It was the VP’s fault, after all.
KARMA NOTE: On the downside, I did spend the next year and a half working bullshit part time jobs until I found something that actually paid well. And this job is a ball-crushing soul-stealing one.
I was a kid and had just my allowance for whatever I was buying, plus two bus fares. The bus was 35 cents I think and I ended up with a quarter only, or something to that effect. So yeah, I guess it was a case of me estimating wrong but I could have gotten over on their mistake.
Sometimes I think they didn’t make a mistake and I totally shot myself in the foot. :smack: