When I was at the mall, I spotted a huge bundle of 20s on the floor, bound by a paperclip. I counted a little over $300. I assumed that the guy walking down the hall in front of me had dropped it, so I ran after him and his female companion. When I finally caught up to them, they continued to ignore me and my attempts to talk to them. So I said, “excuse me, did you drop something?” and I made the mistake of waving the money in front of them to get their attention, because they were ready to walk away. They took the money from me and had a surprised look on their faces. The girl said something like, “that would have been really bad, if we’d lost that.” They didn’t even thank me.
While I am proud of myself for following the golden rule, I wish I’d been a little smarter about it, and quizzed him about it first. That money really would have saved me in a time when I was in a huge financial crisis in grad school.
I don’t think he’s lying. I think he’s saying he “fined” the owner of the wallet. Not that he’s a cop and physically wrote the person a ticket, he’s just justifying his theft. The owner had a pot leaf therefore was “fined” the $40 that was in the wallet. If the wallet had had just ten dollars, the owner would have been “fined” $10 for the pot leaf.
At least, that’s how I read it. I could be wrong.
And I’m with you on the “no reward for humanity” thing. I was actually forced to take money from someone simply because I stopped on the side of the road, asked if they needed assistance (I had a cellphone) and then offered to follow them into town (where I was going anyway) when they declined my offer to give them a ride. The man offered me $10 and would not take no for an answer.
$20 on the floor by some vending machines. No one anywhere around. I figured it was a refund for all the change those machines had eaten from me over the years…
I found two $20 bills in a busy parking lot last December on my day off. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it could have been saved specifically to buy someone a Christmas present and now it was just gone, so I donated it to charity. I felt okay after that.
Like the OP, at a Chinese restaurant. I looked down and noticed a $50 bill and several others under it, all folded in half. My heart about skipped a beat. Only turned our to be $77 total, but Yippee!
$200, but it fell out of one of my text books that had been sitting on a shelf for at least a year - so I guess that doesn’t count because it was mine to begin with.
Found at an unattended death scene in an old briefcase in a ratty, rundown mobile home. I had kicked it out of the way twice when trying to load the body onto the cot. Went back later to secure the scene, found the money. Yes, i turned it in.
Oh those are the best kind - no guilt! Whenever I’m broke, I go digging through what I call “the lighter pocket” of all my jeans. Usually I only manage to find guitar picks though.
I told my mother recently that the best income generating habit I had when I was a kid was to dig through the pockets of her old winter coats. The woman can not keep track of money to save her life. I found 28 dollars in a coat I knew she hadn’t worn for years. If I hadn’t found it I would have ended up borrowing 30 bucks from her later that day anyway, so as far as she was concerned she was ahead of the game (And yes, I actually did tell her that I had found it).
I have found more money than this before but I think it was the weirdest place to find money.
I was at a lake swimming underwater and was wearing goggles and spotted a 10 dollar bill and a 1. I was with my friend and I couldn’t get both bills so I naturally went for the ten. We were there with my friend’s dad who had brought a $300 metal detector and told us he found a nickel. I guess I won that day
Three days ago I found a crisp new $50 bill folded in half, on the floor of a local restaurant.
I quickly scooped it up and pocketed it, and my fiancee noted that it was April Fool’s Day, so I ought to check the bill again to see if it was fake. I’ve seen fake bills like that before, where you unfold it, and there’s an advertisement in in there.
The most I’ve found at one go was £20. When I worked in a nightclub, the first thing we did after closing was check the floor. We would usually get at least £2 a night.
My personal record still stands at a paltry $5, which has happened twice, and in both cases it was a roll of dimes. The first one I found on the ground while walking home after getting off the school bus. This happened when I was about 12 or 13. The second time was in a casino several years ago. Someone had just left behind a roll of dimes near one of the slot machines. For some reason I decided not to break the roll and just hold onto it instead of playing it.
I was one of the last folks to leave the bar one rainy night, and there was no one else parked by my car at that point. I got in and looked at the ground as I was closing my door, and there was a wet $100 bill held to the pavement by the water.
I was a street cleaner at Six Flags when I was 15. I used to find money all the time, but usually just a dollar here or there. Finding money was like my incentive to sweep the ground really well.
Once, I spied a bill from a distance. A novice would have thought it was a just piece of paper, but my dead-presidents-radar was pretty fine tuned. I made a beeline for it ever-so-stealthily and swept it up without even checking the denomination right away. Then, when I felt like no one was watching me, I took a peek into my collection pan. Oh my! Fifty bucks!
Doesn’t sound like a lot, but to a fifteen-year-old making less than minimum wage it was like winning the lottery. The whole day I daydreamed about all the stuff I was going to buy with my “prize”. I was such a nerd that all I could think about was buying a nice bookbag so that I wouldn’t have to lug around the ugly army-surplus thing that had become my trademark at school.
(I was also a nerd because I bribed my sister so she wouldn’t my mother about the money. I was afraid she would make me return it, even though there was no way of knowing who it belonged to.)
The following week, I found a $20 bill. And then once, a coworker with found a purse full of hundreds of dollars. The managers contemplated splitting the money, but then chickened out.
I once found $240 outside a touristy store here in Nashville. I took it into the store and they took my name and address and said they’d send it to me if no one claimed it. Yeah, right. But in a month in the mail I get this envelope full of the money.
I found two crisp $20 bills at a casino bar tucked underneath a curtain. It was about 3 a.m. and nobody else was in the bar (except the people in my group). It was the most I’d ever walked away from a casino with without spending a dime!
My best friend as a young child had a Defender arcade game in his basement. When we were - oh - ten years old, we found about $5,000 in twenties and fifties stuffed inside where the change box opens. I was young, but I was old enough to put together some interesting facts: that his father was always away on “business”, that my friend had no idea what his father did for a living, and that something decidedly fishy was going on.
His parents said that his father kept the money around for his mother, when the father was away. Uh, sure. A housewife/travel agent needs that much readily available petty cash for a three week period. I know these people’d heard of banks. My friend got a few new toys and it was never mentioned again.
The biggest amount of money I found out in public was twenty bucks, at work. No one came back before we closed that night, so I kept it. I figured there was no reason for that craptastic discount party store to be twenty bucks richer.
Forgot about this one:
I went with my father to the Mopar Nationals (big antique car show) in Indianapolis. We settled into our motel and he went to see some of his car club buddies. I stayed in the room and, bored, checked out the brochures and ads they often have in chain motel rooms. Opening one, $500 in various demoninations fell into my lap! I danced a little joy jig and waited for my old man to come back to gloat.
Telling him of my good fortune a few hours later, he sheepishly told me that HE had in fact hidden the money there. I didn’t believe him but he correctly identified each of the demoninations without having seen them since my find. I offered to split the money with him and he offered to leave me in Indy. Thanks, Pop!
(And yes, I actually did tell her that I had found it).
