04-07-2003, 06:53 AM
Quote:he said that I was probably the most honest person he had ever met
Just keep in mind that there's a high turnover rate for bank tellers. His sample size might not have been very large.
Anyway, that has happened to me.. only it was a $10 bill.
I have, several times, returned money to a cashier because I received too much change. I've seen people unknowingly drop money and I point it out to them rather than wait for them to leave. I have benefitted from calculation errors in contests that put me at the top and would have gotten me a trophy, but both times I informed the organizers of their mistakes. (One of those times they still gave me a trophy at a ceremony and then said I didn't deserve it, how's that to treat someone who pointed out the mistake? I had tried to not get it at all and they made me out like a cheato chump grrr... lesson learned, if you know you don't deserve it, don't let them put it in your hands)
BUT...
the day I found the $10 bill I just SWOOP it's gone. Here are the particulars: I was in my high school gym class and it was in a small gym. In the seconds after I picked up the bill and kept it in my fist (I had no pockets) I figured it probably belonged to the gym teacher, who was a (parent-mating orifice) whom I loathed. It was an easy decision. I guess I also considered the possibility that it belonged to one of the other kids but I figured half the kids would claim they lost it. Years later, I figure that it had to be one of the kids, and they didn't feel safe leaving it in their locker. Somebody probably went hungry that day.
Karma caught up with me... one day a few years later, I was putting money in a machine that dispensed commuting train tickets. It ate $10 of mine. I figured the station guy would never believe "hey i put ten bucks in there and now it's GONE" so I just took the loss.
What would I do NOW, as a fully-grown adult, finding cash? If it's a small amount, and if it's not returnable, meaning theres no way to ever find the owner, I'll pick it up and, yep, keep it. Why? Because it was mine, that's why. Heh. What I mean is, I often just cram bills into my pocket without putting them into my wallet, and sometimes I will pull out my wallet later in the day and most of the crammed bills fall to the floor. You'd think that you'd notice that, but sometimes I've only noticed it because the money made a noise when it hit the floor. I figure there's probably been a few times where I've provided that money that someone found. One time my wallet fell out of my back pocket (very raggedy jeans) and I would not have noticed except for the small yet distinctive plop. I had kept on walking but I felt my pocket-- empty. I turned around, yep, there it was on the floor of the front of the supermarket. There was this kid about 8 years old whose eyes were real big -- it was obvious he was seeing money fall from the sky. If I'd taken two more seconds or if the kid had been a little faster I would have had to go get a new driver's license.
I was a cashier one summer, once, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. (Dinosaur cars, that is.) One time someone gave me a single bill for a $6 charge. I took the bill and put it in the appropriate cash slot. If any of you were cashiers before everything became automated you know what happened next. Had I just put away a ten or a twenty? I couldn't remember. I had just put the bill somewhere but I didn't remember which slot. If you've never been a cashier you think that people can't possibly forget that quickly, but if you're doing transaction after xaction after xaction, your mind can suddenly confuse the current transaction with the last hundred that you've done. So what did I do? I handed them four bucks and from their immediate look of several emotions I knew that they deserved ten more which I got out of the drawer as fast as I could. I told them the truth, that I had forgotten, but they gave me a nasty "yeah, right" before leaving in a huff (as I would have done in their shoes.) So that's why cashiers usually don't put away the bill you give them until after you get your change. I saw someone else have the exact same memory lapse years later-- I was overseeing a cashier who suddenly froze -- fort'ly for him i was there to say "you owe this person (x) dollars change". After the customer left, the cashier told me "yeah i suddenly couldn't remember how much they given me and I had put it away"... yep, been there, done that.
Last item... shoot I forgot what it was... durn memory lapses.
Oh well I can't remember it, but I just remembered another thing -- when I was 6 or 7 I found a diamond outdoors. I turned it in, but being so young, turning it in meant giving it to my grandmother. I have no idea what happened to it, tho my gram was/is a saint. It was probably fake, but to a kid the possibility that it was a real diamond was very high.
Oh ya! now i member... that same cashier job... they had a really cheapo cash box. We were instructed when we got twenties or a lot of tens to stuff them in a drawer under the counter. (Really hidden, eh?) Most nights my end-of-the-night tally was dead-on, but one night I was ten bucks short. (Again with the ten bucks!) I took pride in being dead-on and I had no idea how I could be that far off. Back then, it would take me four hours of work to earn ten bucks (not that I'm that old, but they were that cheap). The manager suggested I go back to the drawer and check it. Yep, there was a ten that had slid all the way to the back of the long drawer. My manager seemed sincere about believing I had missed the ten when I packed up, and so I didn't think anything about it. However, the next time the supervisor showed up, he came to me and told me if that happened again I was outta there. I was flabbergasted. How could he think I did that deliberately? What an orifice. The room with the drawer had been locked up, I should have had the manager come there with me to find the bill. The super must have thought I pulled it out of my pocket and said it came from the drawer. The fact was, I did not have access to that bill and if the mgr and I had found it together, there would have been a whole lot less suspicion of me. But I was naive, not only because I was naive in general, but I knew the truth and I had expected people to believe me.
Wow. This is cheaper than therapy.