The cops caught him trying to sneak through her kitchen window last night with 2 twenties and an anonymous apology letter. Some of you guys should have been a little clearer with your advice. 
Have faith in Otto… and keep scanning the news for a report of an apartment fire with one inexplicable fatality which has the medical examiner baffled.
What kind of friends do you have that would end a relationship over $20.00? The answer is obvious; like posted many times already. Fess up, and offer to make up for it somehow. I like the lunch idea, except don’t pay for it with the $20.00. However, you have to fess up ASAP, or it will look like you were trying to steal it, but your conscience wouldn’t let you.
It isn’t the amount, it’s the breech of trust. Who wants a friend that you have to hide your money jar from?
Oh and I want to add: Fess up means giving the $20 back at that time. Also, I’m of the opinion that you do the honest, right thing regardless if she believes you or not. Of course it’s not helped by the fact that Otto followed the theft with another deception.
Regarding the comment about the friend above… I’m of the opinion that you’d be crazy to try to pull a joke like that on someone who wasn’t a pretty good friend to begin with (i.e. the kind that could take a joke like that in stride).
I was going to say, “The kind that don’t steal from me,” but yours is good, too.
On the other hand you could visit my Creative ways to pay back $20 thread to come up with some really clever ideas to return the money.
If you take the OP at face value, Otto made a poor decision. I think the distinction needs to be made that he isn’t the “type of person who steals from me”. He isn’t a thief. He made a dumbass choice, and now seems freaked out about how to set it right.
If on the other hand, Otto is known as the type of person who does things like this all the time, or is generally untrustworthy, or this wasn’t a pretty good friend to begin with… well… he gets what he gets. Then I’d give the money back if he’s so inclined, apologize, and be prepared to lose a friend. But I think if he were that type of person, he wouldn’t be worried one bit about how to return the $20.
This is why I mentioned that I would have a lot of trouble getting over the “you stole $20 from me” part. Even if he had never done anything like it before, and did it completely as a stupid joke, I would have trouble completely believing him.
I just can’t imagine any of my friends, seriously or in jest, drunk or sober, coming to my house, opening my petty cash jar, and removing money from the premises.
I for one believe Otto. Alcohol can make some people, in some situations, do incredibly stupid things. I’ll buy stupid far easier than I’ll buy greedy.
“I had what I thought was a really funny idea when I was drunk the other night. I was going to (blah blah blah), which occurred to me when I was sober was not so much funny as a dick move on my part. I lied when you called me on it because I was at a loss as to how to keep our friendship. I’ll understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore, but I hope that won’t be the case. I’m so sorry, of course I’ll return the money and I’ll make it up to you however you want.”
Actually, that’s not that good. Anyone care to improve on it?
I’m not sure it’s very legitimate for us to help Otto “punch up” a heartfelt confession.
I’ve read the OP several times now and I still don’t see how Otto thought this was going to be funny. I know he was drunk, but the funniness depended on her noticing that the money in the jar kept changing and somehow thinking it was clever or mysterious. Otherwise the punch line would have been, “HA! I’ve been messing with the money in your jar for six months and you never noticed,” and that would only be funny for Otto. Anyway, she noticed. So that part went well. But she apparently didn’t think it was funny, clever, or mysterious. So that part didn’t go as well.
Don’t fuck with someone’s money. $20 might be nothing to Otto, but maybe it’s everything to this woman. Maybe that jar is her savings account. Give it back. Explain why you took it in as few words as possible and then leave. Don’t stand there hoping she’ll say everything’s okay. She doesn’t owe you a damn thing and she has no responsibility for making you feel good about yourself. If she thinks you’re a dick, you’re a dick. Accept that fact and go away.
I don’t know. That one could be a little more heartfelt.
So it’s been a week and Otto has purposely avoided coming back and commenting on this thread. Hey, maybe the OP was just a practical joke he wanted to play on us. Every week he’d come back and add something to the story or take something away and see if we noticed and thought it mysterious and clever.
I don’t think it has anything to do with how much money it is. Even if someone stole a small amount of money that wouldn’t mean anything to me in terms of monetary loss, in terms of friendship, I would consider that pretty disturbed behavior. I just don’t get why anyone would steal from me and expect us to still be friends. I guess I was just raised to think that stealing any amount from someone when you’re a guest in their house is unacceptable and inexcusable behavior.
There are 20 posts missing from this thread.
Maybe he could tell her it was an evil $20 bill and that he wasn’t stealing it; he was removing it from her house to protect her from its malign influence. He should wait a few months, then show up at her house with the excuse that he didn’t explain for so long because he had to bear the $20 bill to a remote volcano and throw it in. As the One True Bill Bearer, he had to act, not talk.
Fess up? Are you guys crazy? No frickin way would I fess up, not if you want her to never trust you again and think you stole that shit, because no matter what you say, she’s gonna think you stole it and using the practical joke excuse as a cover. I’d simply put the 20 dollars in one of her drawers one night when all of you are over there again. That way, she’ll get her dough back and you’ll never have to deal with the whole trust thing again.
There’s fourteen kinds of practicaljokes in a fiscal grab deception.
I’ve never put that much money in a lady’s drawers. I’m not sure Otto will have unsupervised access to the young woman’s house in the future.