If the thread is not representative, then you have no basis to call people liars.
:sigh:
I never used the word “liar” to refer to a poster, nor did I use the word “lie” to refer to their post. I said that I did not believe that every one who said they would, would. If you believe it, that’s great. Your faith in your fellow man is better than mine.
You are the only one using the word “liar”.
Fuck that shit.
People make mistakes. If the store is convinced that it’s a genuine mistake and is unlikely to be repeated, then that should be the end of it. If the store is convinced that it’s a product of incompetence, then the person should be moved to another position or let go. And if the store is convinced that it is the product of actual dishonesty, then the person should be fired immediately.
But keeping the person on and just taking the money out of their paycheck is, IMnsHO, the coward’s way out. It says “Hey, we know it was just an accident, but we’re going to sting your minimum-wage ass for it anyway. That’ll learn ya.”
I’d give it back, no question.
While I’m ashamed to admit that it took me a (relatively) long time in life to reach this position (probably age 25 or so, I think that’s pretty late, for someone who’s been given a lot of instruction and examples of honesty along the road), it’s so crystal clear that not a moment’s hesitation is needed to reach that conclusion.
It doesn’t have anything to do with religion, what my own financial situation may be at the moment, or what anyone else would do if the situation were reversed. It’s purely and simply the only thing to do.
Shrug. I think we all evolve. I think mine was just the result of age and maturity and realizing that an immediate bonus really doesn’t count for shit in life; one’s character does. I’m no paragon of virtue, but every day I try to get a little bit better at this character thing. While in some situations it’s extraordinarily difficult to make the decision with the most integrity, in this particular hypothetical in this thread it’s a slam dunk. Easy peasy.
Mistakes have consequences. That’s why we strive to avoid them.
That’s why people rarely get fired for first offenses.
They are.
Oh, I see what you’re saying. Still, I believe that this is an easily avoidable ‘accident.’ No one would be that careless with their own money, why should it be any different with their employer’s?
Well, first of all, myriad stories of lost money attest that people often are, in fact, exactly that careless with their own money. But that’s beside the point.
I’m just saying that, in my opinion, the bond of employment should also be a bond of trust, and that penalizing someone like this if you fully believe it to be an honest mistake that is unlikely to be repeated will only contribute further to the breakdown of trust, rather than maintaining it. It is likely to cause resentment and, by creating disgruntled employees, might even lead to more instances of the very problem it was designed to prevent.
I don’t have a story about getting too much change from a cashier, but i did have the opportunity last year to do the right thing.
A friend from Australia was visiting me, and i took her to DC for a day of rubbernecking and general tourist stuff. We were wandering around the Mall, just in front of the Smithsinian Castle, when i looked down and saw some money on the ground. I picked it up and it was $40, wrapped around a driver’s license and an ATM card. The owner of the license was an 18 year old girl from Kentucky, and i was just imagining her distress, probably in DC for some sort of vacation, without her cash, her ATM card, and her license.
My friend and i hung out in the area for about 15 minutes trying to see if we could spot anyone who looked like they might be searching for something on the ground, but had no luck. When we got home, i put the money, license and ATM card in an envelope and sent it certified mail to the owner.
A few weeks later i got a card that said:
That, and a small measure of self-satisfaction, is worth 40 bucks to me any day. 
As mentioned in my previous post, I have worked as a cashier before. I have never made a mistake of that magnitude and IMO there should be consequences for carelessness, regardless of whether your cash is over, under or the customer feels sorry for the cashier and goes out of their way to fix their mistake.
Sure, everyone makes the occasional mistake, but in my experience, it would be pocket change, not bills. The severity of the error should have some bearing on the consequences.
Every business I have worked for has had an established routine for accepting payment and providing change. It’s highly unlikely one could make such a significant error without having been unduly careless with their (employer’s / clients) cash and / or their attention.
/Ms Cyros
This is not a story about returning excess change, but reflects what I would do in such a situation.
While on a vacation and driving a rented car, I stopped for gas in Ely, Nevada. Unlike most pumps where I fill up back home, this one did on require paying before pumping. While the tank was filling, I busied myself with washing the windows and being distracted by other thoughts. When the tank was full, I thoughtlessly put the nozzle back, hopped into the car, and drove off.
A few hours down the road, I realized that I hadn’t paid for the gas. I didn’t intentionally try to steal the gas. It was just that by the time the tank was full, I’d forgotten that I hadn’t paid in advance. Since I needed to be somewhere that night, I decided to return the money when I passed through Ely on my way home a few days later.
When I returned to the scene of the crime, I asked for the manager because I wasn’t sure the cashier wouldn’t just pocket the money. The guy finally comes out. The whole time I was there he was chewing his lunch with is mouth half open. I explained what had happened and gave paid him for my best guess of how much gas I’d taken. He didn’t even thank me for not keeping the money, which I certainly could have gotten away with. In fact, he acted like I was imposing on him by being honest.
It did occur to me that they could have called the highway patrol on my drive-off. Perhaps one of the reasons they didn’t is that the pump I used wasn’t visible from the interior of the gas station.
Not quite the same situation, just the other day I went into the dépanneur and bought something with my Interac card, and asked for a $10 advance. I forgot to take the money on my way out. The next day, I stopped by and asked if I had forgotten it. The clerk said he’d been $10 over, and would check with the manager. The day after that, I returned and he gave me the $10.
The situation you describe has never (IIRC) happened to me with amounts over $1, since as thewombat said, it’s very difficult to confuse one Canadian denomination with another. (Once or twice, I have caught mistakes, not in my favour, at the register and immediately mentioned them.)
However, if the situation were to arise, I would return the money immediately. Enough of my friends have worked clerk jobs that we don’t need the bad karma from profiting from a clerk’s fireable mistake.
I once found $60 lying in the street, just in loose bills, nothing near them. I kept it, since there was no way to tell who had lost it. Had there been a way to tell who lost it - ID or whatever - I would have returned it immediately. I don’t think that’s an incoherent point of view.
I do love when that happens, and it always seems to happen to me when I *really * need the money.
As it was in this case.
Return it, as soon as I notice, for anything over $1. And that’s just because I don’t usually count my coins. Even if it means I have to turn around on my way home. That’s just how it is. Then again, I count cash for a living, so I suppose being endlessly honest about money is an important part of my life.
I am utterly shocked at the number of y’all who said they’d keep it. I’m usually impressed by the honesty of us Dopers, and I’m kinda disappointed.
I have kept money before that didn’t belong to me. That’s how I know it’s not worth it.
I have seen this a couple of times in this thread. And, while I’d like to think it’s true, in my experience it isn’t necessarily so.
I would return the money. That’s what I was taught as a child, and what I will teach my children.
Like Bricker, I have at times been in a money crunch. Instead of my last $100, though, I’ve been down to my last $20, and in that situation, I would certainly keep it. Morals are a second order concern; survival is first order.
Assuming I’m in good financial shape, I would likely be a dick about it. I’d return it to the manager, not the cashier, and recommend he find alternate help. Giving an accidental $50 as change is (or at least should be) an immediately firable offense.
How many responsibilities, exactly, does a cashier have? How many possible ways can they fuck their job up worse? A FIFTY? That would be, IMO, incompetence so extreme that I would point to it as evidence that the cashier in question should never handle money again for the rest of her* life. But hey, return the money to the cashier, screw the business. As long as you’re only hurting the owner, you can sleep easy in your moral superiority.
If it were a normal mistake, like giving me change for a $20 when I had given them a $10, I’d probably return it to the cashier and not give it a second thought.
(* I’m really trying with the whole “undefined gender is now written as female instead of male” thing, but so often the undefined gender is being painted in a negative light that I wonder at the wisdom of this change.)
No argument here.
Are you kidding me? What’s with this " hey, lookee me, fuck the other guy " attitude? An employee made an honest mistake and people are buying lottery tickets and dinner on it?
What do I do? Turn around and march back in there and not wait in line, but step up, show the receipt and cash and say, you overpaid me on my change, you gave me a $ 50.00
Since when is there even a question? Do the right thing isn’t just the title of a Spike Lee movie, for crissakes. 
I found my toddler clutching something I’d put in the cart- but hadn’t seen him holding and therefore hadn’t paid for- when we got to the car, and I walked back into the supermarket, and paid for it.
What the fuck am I missing in this thread?
Cartooniverse
I don’t agree with you, Ellis Dee, but in your defense, I would say giving out a fifty is a pretty hard thing to do by accident. Any job I had that involved a register, we had to put twenties under the drawer and bigger bills toward the back, if we kept them at all. It’s a pretty heinous mistake.
And, give the money back.
So what if it’s the manager that gave out the extra change?
At the grocery store, I asked for $20 cash back on an ATM transaction. The floor manager was running the till, and he swiped a bill out from under the drawer and gave it to me. I didn’t check it, knowing that $20s live under the drawer.
The next day, I was buying a pizza and opened my wallet to find a mysterious $100. This completely freaked me out; I don’t think I’ve ever had a $100 before. I figured out what had happened and drove to the store, and the manager guy was out in front with an employee. I had a fun time building up to the moment when I waved a $100 bill at him. The look on his face–and the grin on the employee’s–was pretty priceless.
We fixed the problem, I got my $20, and he insisted I take a 24-pack of soda (from a sale pile, of course) with me too. I never thought that he should be fired. Mistakes happen.