Nah, they’re a bunch of thieving bastards (I’m English). This would explain the cop/donut theft.
BTW, did they really steal your donuts?!? That’s outrageous.
That should have been : Its called stealing by finding.
My curiosity is piqued. How did cops go about stealing your donuts?
Did they slam you up against the wall, grab your bag of donuts and run?
Did they confiscate them and threaten to report you for truency if you didn’t haul your little ass of to school ASAP?
Or did they just happen to order the last couple of French crullers at Dunkin Donuts right before you could?
Well, I was out after curfew with a friend (also 14 or 15). We were sleeping over at my house and got donut cravings. So we snuck out and walked to the Dunkin’ Donuts. On our way back, a car pulled up next to us (we were walking on the sidewalk, of course.) and the lights started flashing. After interrogating us for several minutes (each question interrupted by a consulatation in the car between the two officers, making us more and more terrified each time) one of the cops asked me what was in the bag. “Donuts,” I said, nearly in tears. “Yeah, right. Lemme see,” he said, clearly hoping to find drugs or weapons or something. He snatched the bag out of my hand and looked in it, only to find two apple fritters and a suspicius looking kruller. “Go home,” he said. And got back in the car. With my donuts. As they drove off, I saw him digging into the bag and handing his partner the kruller.
We were too scared to go back to the store and get more.
band name.
When I was a kid (16 years old), I found someone’s high school class ring in the street. Solid 14K gold. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I asked my mom.
Here were my options:
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I could have knocked on the door of the house it was “next to in the street” and see if anyone lost anything.
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I could have turned it into the police.
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I could have sold it to a jeweler.
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I could have tried to track down the person who lost it because the ring included the school they graduated from (a local school, across town), the year they graduated, and their initials.
What do you think I did?
My mom had had a similar experience when she was a kid. She found something, and went to some effort to give it back to the person. Her mom (my grandmother) told her to keep it and not bother. The person came, took the object, didn’t offer any reward, and left. My grandmother told me mom, “See? I told ya so.”
So, my mom told me to take it to the jewelers, who weighed it, and offered me 75 bucks for it. Since I was 16, and my mom was my moral compass at that time, I did it.
I have felt lousy about it ever since. I realized later that I could have just called up the school and had them check their old yearbooks for this guy. How tough would that have been?
To C.S.M., Calhoun class of '68, I am still sorry.
I can imagine how much it still hurts.
But on the bright side…
You’ll give your kids better advice.
IANAL, but I am sure it would be stealing unless you intended to return the money to the bank. As long as the money is in the slot, it clearly belongs to the woman or the bank, and is not free for the taking.
I once got an extra $20 when withdrawing from an ATM. Rather than keep the money (I was tempted after many years of grousing about ATM fees), I returned it to the campus police. I stayed at the police office while the officer filled out a report; this was also witnessed by a secretary so I felt pretty confident that the money would be returned to its rightful. Sadly, the officer half-jokingly suggested I keep the money as reward for my honesty :dubious:
I was shopping for beer in Pavilions (a high-end grocery) about 10 years ago, and looked down to discover an envelope at my feet. A fat one.
I picked it up and discovered it was stuffed with twenties. About $1400 in twenties. I looked about, and there was no one in the aisle.
At the time, I could have really used an infusion of cash. I was hurting, and had to move. I needed a first/last/deposit for a new apartment, and didn’t know where I was going to get it from.
So, you can guess, I was really torn.
I put it in my jacket pocket, to think about it. I wandered the store to see if there was a little old blue hair searching frantically for her mattress money. I looked to see if there were “Candid Camera” blinds anywhere on the aisle. I saw nothing.
In the end, I realized that I’d be miserable with guilt if I kept the money, even though it would have made my life easier for a while. So I found the store manager, explained where I found the money, and offered it to him.
And I had to talk him into taking it. He didn’t want the responsibility of reporting the find, or dealing with the situation at all. He wanted me to keep it. And when I left it with him, I got the sneaky suspicion that he was just going to pocket it himself.
Two months later, I lost my wallet in the parking lot of the store, the night before I was scheduled to fly out of state for two weeks. I went back to the store and asked if anyone had turned in a wallet, but no luck. When I returned from travelling, my roommate Mitch had retrieved my wallet from the police and informed me that they had called and reported that someone had turned my wallet in to them. Mitch went and got it for me. All my ID and credit cards and even my cash were still in the wallet. Everything.
Karma, baby. Karma.
The Universe remembers.
I once found a fat wad o’ cash in the aisle of a hardware store once. I always thought that the store handled it very well–they slipped the wad into a paper bag, stapled it shut to prevent tampering, and locked it in the store safe. Then they thanked me.
And so did the quintessential little old lady who ran back in, five minutes later, in an absolute frenzy.
Actually the question is carefully worded. 
The point is that, in the first example, some pupils say it’s obviously their money now. (As you did.)
Once you get them thinking about whose money it is, they learn some ethics.
(I leave the option to return the money off the later examples so they can think of it themselves.)
I’m sorry your police are so corrupt. I have handed money in and got a receipt. Later I got a pleasant letter from the person who had reclaimed their money.
Just last week I was at a fast food place with my boyfriend, and I spotted a bill on the floor in front of the register. “Ooh, look, a ten!” I said, pointing at it, and then I went to pick it up.
It was a $100, not a $10. I’d missed the extra zero, since I’ve had about three hundreds in my hands in my entire life, and the bill was folded up a bit.
Instant dilemma. I really could use the money. But that’s a lot. Isn’t somebody going to look for it? (I sure as hell would!) I really could use the money. My boyfriend is watching, wondering what I’m going to do. It’s probably drug money or something (possible, in that neighborhood). I bet the person who dropped it wouldn’t miss it if they just dropped a hundred dollar bill and left, and I have bills to pay. Still…
I just couldn’t have kept it – it was too much money. So I gave it to the manager, and the staff was overly impressed. One of them told me it had been a test from God, and I’d passed, and I’d be blessed for it. (I sure hope so!) I expect one of them took it home… But a bunch of middle-aged people working at a fast food place probably needed the money even more than I did anyway. It’s not like I have kids to feed or anything.
Boyfriend was impressed, though he said he’d have done the same thing.
But oh my, I could have used it! And if it had been out on the street, with no way of finding out whose it was, I would have kept it. But not in a place like that, where whoever dropped it could conceivably have come back looking for it.
If I found money like that, I would not leave it with a cashier or police officer. I really don’t think I could trust them. What I would do is leave my name, telephone number, and email (not a real address–again, paranoia) and say that if someone comes in looking for the money, that’s how they can contact me. Ideally, I’d like the original owner to get the money (hence why I wouldn’t just pocket it), but if they’re not going to show, better I should get the money than some opportunistic policeman or clerk. Finders keepers.
One time someone in a grocery store did give me back two fives instead of one. I didn’t realize it at the time, though I’m not sure I would have said anything if I would have realized it. I guess it makes up for that time some cashier took a twenty from me and only gave me change for a ten (and didn’t believe me when I told her, grrr).
Heck, I rememeber walking into a bank vestibule to use the ATM and getting suspicious looks from the middle-aged lady at the machine. I can understand her concern, it being late at night and me, a stranger, between her and the door. She gathered up her things and stepped away, but as I approached the ATM, I called to her (in French): “Madame, you’ve forgotten $20.” She returned, collected the bill, and left without saying a word.
I found a wallet in a parking lot on Tuesday. My biggest dilemma was whether to take it home with me and try to find the owner myself, or hand it in to the grocery store I was in the parking lot of (I assumed the person had been at the grocery store, and not one of the other stores in the strip based on the location of the specific parking spot). Eventually, because I couldn’t find any immediate full ID in the wallet, I decided to take it home with me, because I figured I could use google-fu to find someone who lived in the area and carried the correct name, while I wasn’t confident that the store would do anything with it other than throw it in a lost and found box.
I went home, fired up Mozilla and tracked down the owner of the wallet, who, as it turns out, lived less than a block from me (even though the grocery store is about 8 blocks away). She was really quite pleased to get it back, though unfortunately, I hadn’t reached her before she cancelled her credit cards.
I looked at the $120 cash in the wallet for awhile, but I’d have been way too guilty to actually take it. Though, really, if it had been me getting my wallet back, I’d have given the person the $20, at least, if not the $100.
I once walked up to an ATM machine to find the screen asking “Do you want another transaction?” There was absolutely no one around and I have to admit to being really tempted. But I pressed the “No” button and when the card came out, I took it inside, asked to speak to the manager and gave her the card. She was absolutely astonished that I had returned the card without milking it for all I could. It made me wonder what her experience with people had been that a little honesty blew her away the way it did.
Why is it stuff like this always happens around the holidays? It never happens around tax refund day. Only at the time of year that pretty much everyone needs extra cash.
If I find cash just laying on the ground, as in whiterabbit’s (or bughunter) situation, I’m keeping it. Give it to the store manager and you’ve just given the store manager free money, the owner will never see it. I would probably leave my name and number with the store, take the money (if it was a significant amount - $20 or less, I’m not bothering) and hang on to it for 2 weeks or so. After that, it’s mine.
If it’s just laying on, say, a sidewalk, though, it’s mine. There’s no way I’d even remotely be able to find the owner.
Now if it’s somebody’s wallet and there’s ID, I’ll take it home, get on the phone and find them. I’d rather take the responsibility of finding them myself rather than hand it over to somebody who may or may not be honest. Sometimes you can trust the cops/lost & found people, but if it were my wallet I’d rather whoever found it call me rather than jeopardize my wallet by giving it to somebody else.
My husband dropped his wallet outside of Blockbuster one night. We turned around when we realized it and some angel had turned it in. I wish I knew who it was because I would have been glad to give them a little something for their effort.
Now see, that’s a good example of a bitch, right there. Yeah, we should all do stuff like this with no expectation of reward, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little positive reinforcement. If I couldn’t afford to reward my Good Samaritan right then and there, I’d at least get their name and number so I could do something later. I’d at least say thank you, sheesh. What a #%#(%*#
Most of the time, even if it asks you if you want another transaction, it will ask for the pin again, for the exact reason that people walk away from the machine and forget.
Maybe where you live this is true, but I’ve been using ATMs since they were invented, and I’ve never had this happen.
The thing is, I’m entirely sure one of the staff walked out with the money. But like I said, I’m fairly sure they needed it as much or more than I did. And I needed it NOW, not in two weeks – I’m managing, obviously, but if I’d taken it, I’d have spent it by now. If it had been the ten dollars I originally thought it was, hey, yay, cash!
I could have walked off with it, but I have this sneaking suspicion I’d feel worse for taking it than for leaving it there.