The lunch lady gave me an extra $20 one time. I didn’t give it back, because she was notorious for that kind of thing and should have learned. No, the real reason I didn’t give it back is because I was a greedy 15 year old. She WAS notorious for it, though.
What if you saw two guys do a drug transaction, and as they walk away, one of them drops a paper bag which you pick up and find out is full of money. Do you chase the guy down and give him his drug money? Do you give it to the cops and report the situation? Or do you keep it?
What if you’re driving along the wharf one night and hear a gunfight. You sneak in to see what’s goin on, and you see that there is a dozen mobsters lying around dead, and a briefcase full of cash on the table. There’s no chance of getting caught. Do you snatch the cash and then report the situation anonymously, or do you call the cops straight up? Do you take the cash and just not even call the cops?
But what if the guy who bought the other ticket was just some unknown guy in front of you? And you had no way of even knowing who it was?
You get home, realize you have two tickets (though you only paid for one) and the one that technically isn’t yours wins…what do you do?
Go on the news and say “Whoever was in front of me at the 7-11 the other day, I have your winning $15 million dollar ticket!”
Yeah, right. Every weirdo would come crawling out of the woodwork, claiming it was his.
So, would you keep the money for yourself? Could the lottery people figure out whose it was, based on the tickets sold right before yours? (Whoever it belonged to could just show the other tickets?)
Just FTR, I got change for a $20 at McD’s once (I had given her a $10, for a soda purchase) and I returned it. The girl was very grateful. I could only think that she had screwed up before and was perhaps on the verge of being fired for messing up her cash drawer.
This happend to me today. I was on my way down to Atlantic City and stopped at this pizza place in Manahawken that I love. My total came to nine dollars and change. I give the counter guy a 20. He gives me some coins and the 20 back. I could have kept the 20 and been up 10 but I would have felt bad if I did that so I told him right away that I had given him a 20. He took the 20 back and gave me a 10, thanking me for correcting him.
A few years ago my SO drove me and a few boxes of my books to a book store to sell what I could. (I was flat broke, otherwise I wouldn’t have been selling them).
I sold a bunch and noticed that the clerk (who turned out to be the owner) gave me something like thirty dollars too much. I opened my mouth and just as quickly shut it. The money represented a minor windfall at the time.
When we got outside I apprised my SO of the mistake. We got most of the way home when I said," Turn around, I can’t do it". She looked releived and said something like"I was hoping you were going to do that".
I don’t know how much it had to do with the fact that it was a BOOK store, but I felt Much better after I returned the money. The owner,I think, did too.
Good grief; if I’m ever in this situation (Dear Lord God willing, I never will be), I get away from the situation as fast as humanly possible and never look back!
(glee, I think the same holds true in North America, but in reality, I think we assume that if we turn anything in to either cops, mail people, or just a lost and found department, if it can get stuck in a pocket and there’s no way of tracing it, we will never see it again. I would love to turn money I’ve found into a lost and found department, but I have no faith in the person accepting it from me not putting it in their own pocket.)
If I’m given too much change in a store, I probably won’t notice because I usually just shove it into my pocket. Although, if I do notice it while in the store I’ll give it back. If I’m out of the store and its like $5 or more I’d go back to the store and return it.
Keep stuff you didn’t really buy? That all depends what it is and where you got it. We were at McDonalds a while back and ordered 7 or 8 sandwiches. (This place is notorious for forgetting things, they even forgot the hamburger in my brother’s cheeseburger one day.) We checked the bag after we pulled out of the drive-thru and noticed an extra sandwich in there. Heh that we kept.
Drug money? Yeah I’d turn it in, and hope for some reward or something
