It’s not your job, **norinew **to supervise the staff at the business you shop at. You pointed out the item in question, and you made no effort to conceal your action. I would consider that reasonable steps taken to ensure you were properly charged. I would see nothing wrong with either keeping the items, or returning them.
IMO this isn’t stealing, as she made an honest attempt to buy it, even pointing out, with the cashier acknowledging, the goods. At the time she left, she reasonably assumed it WAS paid for.
That said, I think you should make an attempt to return/pay for the goods. (and the manager should thank you for making this effort, for goods that were lost to the store without payment due to HIS employee’s mistake.) You did this.
This is kind of like finding a wallet in the street that has ID in it. You didn’t STEAL the wallet. You found something due to someone’s error (he dropped it). Here you came into possession of something due to someone’s error (wasn’t rung up). Either case, I think you are morally (if not legally) obligated to make a good faith effort to fix it.
It’s not stealing. Since it was an honest mistake, it’s actually posessionslaughter.
Telemark, I can’t add anything to Daniel’s post to improve on it.
I was not addressing the specific example of the OP. I was addressing the specific conclusion which I quoted, that acquiring property that doesn’t belong to you unintentionally is not stealing. In my reverse example, it was someone else who made a mistake (and I will posit that the pants in both examples were taken by the offending party in error).
Just to slay this particular red herring, had the OP decided to keep the soda without paying for it, then the OP would have stolen the soda. “Finders keepers, losers weepers” pretty much doesn’t work as a code of ethics or conduct. Moving on from the OP to my specific example, it remains unanswered.
Contradict yourself much? If the store overcharged one or more customers such that the store is enriched by $100, then the store has made one or more errors and by your code is obligated to find out who was overcharged and return the funds. If this entails detailed checking and cross-referencing, so be it; their mistake, their obligation to get it corrected.
Reviewing Otto’s post, I realize that I misread Daniel’s post. I was thinking that it meant the party who was damaged by the error needs to take action to correct it. I believe that was his intent, even if his words didn’t say that exactly
If I was overcharged, I go back and request money back. If the bank put extra money in my account, their accounting software should find it and take it back. In the $1M example, I’d not spend the money because I expect the bank would find it and take it back, as they have the right to do. I might decide to inform them, so as to make sure they get their money back promptly and keep my butt out of trouble.
I think its not stealing because of this scenario:
You travel to your local tavern to watch the game and have a cold one. You place a $5 bill on the bar and order a draft. The bartender places your beer on top of your money and walks away. You made the attempt to pay, the clerk/bartender chose to forgive and/or forget the payment. You made every possible attempt to pay. Not stealing.
In the world of law, there’s a concept that may be helpful to this discussion: conversion.
When you interfere with the ownership of another person’s personal property without authorization or justification, or deprive the owner of the use and possession of his property, you are committing the civil wrong of conversion.
In nobrainer’s scenario, the question becomes – is the bartender authorized to pass out free beer? If you believe he is, then you’ve done nothing wrong. But the OP knew, or should have known, that the clerk was not acting within her authority to award free cases of soda.
- Rick
Keeping something that someone accidentally gave you without your knowledge is not stealing. That’s not what the word “steal” means. By keeping the soda, you are profiting from another’s mistake. Big difference. Still ethically wrong, and maybe just as wrong as stealing to some people, but not the same thing.
In my opinion, absolute ethics must be balanced with practicality. If a store undercharges me $0.10 in spite of my attempts to inform them of a correct price in advance, I should not have to spend my time (which is worth more than $0.10) to correct their error. If I do, then I’m the one being wronged over their mistake. For two cases of soda, I’d probably do what the OP did – call the store and set things right next time I’m there. For $1000, I’d probably drive down there right away. In theory, I should respond the exact same way if it was $0.01 or a million dollars, but in reality I think that’s silly.
As someone who has worked as a cashier, I would say it is not stealing.
Simply because the measures it’d take to correct the situation are more of a pain in the ass for the store than simply eating the loss.
Bricker, if you don’t mind my asking, it would appear that many of these situations would be considered conversion. What is the remedy or punishment for committing conversion? You indicated it is a civil wrong, so I would assume the remedy is to give back whatever was taken, perhaps with a fine to go with it?
Actually, I’m with Giraffe, absolutist ethicists be damned. A case of soda isn’t worth my time to correct, especially if the store manager is being a twit about it: my peace of mind is worth more than $3.99, and my time is certainly worth more than that.
You’re correct that the store is the one that made the mistake in this instance; again, however, I think the store is not responsible for correcting the error in this case. If I want the error corrected, I need to take the initiative to get it corrected. If it’s not worth my while to do so, then the store isn’t acting unethically by not going out of their way to track me down.
Daniel
I don’t think the OP went to Ike’s Groceries and Sara Beth is just going to put the 10 spot in the till. The cashier would most likely not be able to reconcile it that simply.
No contest at all, really. I reached the conclusion that it was wrong to keep the sodas without paying, so I called the store to ask what I should do. My only real hesitation was that I didn’t want to get the cashier in trouble over something I believed to be an honest mistake. Then I realized that if she’s not messed up like this in the past, most likely she won’t get in trouble. And if she has a history of this, maybe she’s just not cut out for cashiering. And I don’t consider myself a hero of any kind.
I don’t doubt that you are honest, and therefore have the right to expect people to be honest with you. Stores, OTOH, send out all kinds of signals that they expect dishonesty; signs like: shoplifting is stealing and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law", cameras everywhere, not allowing shopping carts in the rest room, alarms around the doors; no, they don’t “expect” me to be honest; It would have been nice if he had thanked me.
quote]Originally posted by Bricker
But the OP knew, or should have known, that the clerk was not acting within her authority to award free cases of soda.
[/quote]
I never really thought of it in those terms. All I knew was that I wouldn’t be comfortable just keeping them and saying nothing.
The OP called the staore and was asked to take care of it next time s/he was in. That will take, what, three minutes?
Ah, so the person who made the mistake is ethically responsible for correcting it, if the person victimized by the mistake requests it. What if the person doesn’t discover the mistake? Let’s take that a step further. I work for a company that does recurring billing. We sometimes make coding errors. As long as a customer never complains about their bill, are we entitled to continue overcharging them month after month until they no longer use our service? Or do we bear some responsibility for correcting our errors even when the customer doesn’t complain? Is it OK for us to overcharge them as long as it isn’t that much, say $3.99 or less? What is the exact dollar figure on a per customer basis that we would need to be in error before it became our ethical duty to correct it?
And since no one has yet answered, would you consider the man who accidentally took your $1000 to be a thief? Why or why not?
Otto, absolutist ethicists be damned, remember. By twisting and changing the parameters of the discussion, you come across as trying to trap me. I’m not interested in that.
Daniel
Actually, Otto, that’s a lot snarkier than I intended. I’m wiped out from a weekend of moving and getting semi-ripped off by the sellers of a house, and am not coherent enough to argue this point right now; I apologize for being snarky and am gonna scoot out of the argument.
Daniel
Well, gee, I’m just gonna come right out and admit it…I’m not nearly as nice as you guys. If I’d done what I could, and still reached home with free soda, I’d feel a bit down about it. Then I’d have a Coke and a smile.
norinew, just be sure they charge you the sale price when you pay for them.
If they don’t, accuse the store of attempting to steal from you. Who knows you might get a few cases of soda out of them as a settlement. 
FTR, you did not steal.
This is definitely a responsibility of the mistake maker.
I think there is a continuum here, no specific cutoffs. If I’m travelling cross country and notice the Quickie Mart 100 miles back undercharged me by $1 on my foot long hotdog, there’s no way in hell I’m going back to fix it. There is a point at which it would be reasonable to correct the mistake.