Just because you’d shrug it off doesn’t mean the owner would. If they went to the trouble of putting their name on it, they probably want to keep it.
This is correct. In fact, B is convinced that the iPod belonged to a former guest rather than the owner because the iPod was loaded with “fundamentalist” religious music (his word choice), whereas the DVDs and books in the house were mainstream, popular works directed to an adult audience. So, in B’s mind, there was a difference between the iPod and the other items in the house. (I disagree)
IMO even if we knew for certain that the iPod belonged to a prior guest and not the owner, B didn’t meet his duty to try to return the iPod to its rightful owner prior to taking the item. He should have taken the iPod to the rental office.
I was thinking along the lines of this dude. I wouldn’t take it, I would probably send it to the landlord and have them deal with it, but most rental lease agreements state in so many words “when the lease is over, you must remove all of your personal items, and any remaning items will become the property of the landlord”. So technically I would assume that it now belongs to the landlord of the property, not to the John Smith, since John Smith iPod dude lost said iPod by not following proceedures on the lease agreement.
This right here is what I’d call “mitigating circumstances.” No iPod should have to suffer such indignity.
The property owner may have already contacted the owner of the iPod and was just waiting to return it or have the owner pick it up. Whatever. It’s wrong.
At which point the homeowner then left the iPod in a house that was soon to be occupied by a group of unknown renters? Right.
I tend to doubt it, though I still wouldn’t have taken the iPod.
$50 is a pen or a pair of sunglasses to you? Must be nice.
I’m confused as to how the value of an item has anything to do with the ethics of this question.
If I ever get seriously into swing jazz, I’d want another iPod (probably a mini) so I could put the tracks expressly devoted to learning improv and whatnot on it. That way I wouldn’t have to scroll through everything on my main iPod to find the right tracks, and I wouldn’t have to distract myself from whatever it was I’m doing if I have my main iPod on in the background and a lesson track comes up.
That having been said, B is completely in the wrong here. He should have dropped it off at the rental office and left it at that.
Yeah, I agree. I just don’t get the mentality of “Well, I don’t know whose it belonged to and there were books/DVDs for me to peruse so why not an iPod?” It just screams of entitlement.
Years ago I was at my father’s beach house for the weekend with him, his current wife, and my then-husband. My father rents the beach house during the times either he or his investment partners do not want the house.
While stripping the beds, I discovered a jewelry box between the mattress and boxsprings. My mind immediately went to the possibility that a previous renter had left it.
My father’s wife STARTED TRYING JEWELRY ON, to see what would fit her and what she could give away or sell! The thought of calling the management company and seeing if any previous renters had reported it missing never even crossed her mind until I mentioned it (the disappointed and pissed-off look on her face was priceless, not in a good way).
One phone call to the management company located the owners of the missing jewelry. That’s all it took to return property that wasn’t ours.
How does this story (meandering as it is) relate to the OP? The iPod was not B’s, was possibly the landlord’s and possibly not, and was therefore not B’s to take. If it belongs to anybody, it belongs to the landlord (if not the original owner), and it is the height of unethical behavior to not attempt to locate the owner. One phone call is not sufficient, regardless of the fact that it was a $50 iPod and not thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.
I guess so. But that’s what playlists are for! Everything I have in there is in playlists. Why not just make a playlist called “Improv Playlist”?
My iPod is a 30GB model. 30GB is about 10,000 songs. When I turned 33 I had lived 12,045 days. If I downloaded a new song every day of my life I would have just barely filled it up when I turned 31. 31 years of new music every day! It isn’t going to run out of space.
Now, upgrading it to an iPod Touch or something I can see. But I really don’t understand multiple concurrent iPods.
And $50 is definitely not a “pen”, or “sunglasses” to me. Wow - my cellphone cost me $50! A pen costs me less than 10 cents, if I buy a big box of them. Even my fancy V-ball pens cost me only $3.00 or so.
This.
After I objected to B’s taking of the iPod, one of his first defenses was that an iPod shuffle only costs $50. This surprised me. B comes from a modest background and would not normally suggest that $50 is a trivial amount of money. Knowing B I suspect that the value of the iPod seems less significant to him because someone else already made the decision to spend that $50 on that item. I suspect that he would not have taken $50 cash under the same cirumstances.
B told me that, in his mind, the ethics of taking a found item definitely change depending on the value of the item. I tend to think that the value of the item should be irrelevant to the ethics on this one.
I called the management company and left a message. I haven’t heard back yet.
FWIW I have two iPods. One is an older nano that I use for working out. The other is an older 30-ish GB that I use for watching video and listening to music.
Because, as I said, I don’t want those tracks coming up when I’m on the treadmill and fiddling with the dial would be distracting, or I’m driving the car and can’t fiddle with the controls. My current iPod is almost always on Shuffle and having those tracks in the mix would complicate things, from my perspective.
Clearly the value of the item affects the ethics. No one tries to hunt down the true owner of a quarter found on the street, whereas most would agree that contacting the authorities about a bag containing $100,000 is the ethical thing to do.
In the situation of an item from a rented room, I don’t think anyone would balk about taking home a cheap ballpoint pen.
An iPod, however, cannot be justified as disposable. B is a thief.
You can put all the rest of your music in a different playlist.
…
You make several playlist for whatever circumstances, and when you select that playlist, it shuffles the songs within that list.
I’m considering getting a second iPod, to keep attached to my car stereo, since I upgraded the stereo to one with an iPod docking cable.
MISSING iPOD
Songs include:
How to Rob
Bad Bad Boy
Beg Borrow and Steal
Thick as Thieves
Run Like a Thief
Thief in the Night
Once a Thief
Stop Being Greedy
Give It Back
As a person who has put down my iPod only to have someone else walk off with it, it is clear what side I would be on in this debate.
What I want to know is why doesn’t Apple have some anti-theft built into the device. When someone plugs my registered ipod into their computer, I should get a freaking email. Or I should be able to send an email saying iPod lost, don’t let anyone use it.