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| How Honest Are You? |
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Recently my wallet came up $70 short. It was easy to see that I had forgotten
my change when I inserted a $100 bill for $30 worth of groceries at Smith's
grocery store the previous day. If I returned now, what are the
chances that someone would have found my money, turned it in,
and that it would still be there? Now that's a test in honesty!
If a customer had found it, he would have to be honest enough to
turn it in, to not simply pocket the money. If that customer
gave the money to an attendant, the attendant would also have to
be honest enough to turn the money in. It leaves no trail, cash is
so easy to keep, so tempting, so likely to evaporate! I
have had so many surprising experiences with getting things
back, that even though my money would have to sit there a full
day, I was optimistic that it might still be there. At the same
time I was also doubtful, after all, this time it was cash, and
for me to get it back would require that it to pass through one,
two, three, or maybe even four pairs of honest hands. I arrived at the grocery store and explained my loss to customer service. It was a Sunday, and the rep explained that the person who handles that sort of thing had gone home, and would be back Monday morning. She asked how much I had lost, and when I pulled the receipt from my pocket to give her the exact amount, she seemed pleasantly surprised and took my receipt into the back for a few minutes, returning with greenbacks in her hands. Wow! TV news reports would have you believe that we live in a corrupt world and that most people are dishonest. My own experiences have taught me that this is not true, that at least in the places where I have lived, most people are still honest. In fact, I read many years ago that commerce is based on trust, and that if trust evaporates, the entire economy will fail. This is not the first time I have witnessed honesty. A few months ago I had inserted a $100 bill into the self checkout at Walmart and walked away from the change. Fortunately for me, the next customer had walked up, seen the change, and immediately called me back. That's one of the reasons I started keeping a more organized budget. I have done a pretty good job of keeping all my receipts and recording my expenditures at the end of the day, but now I realize that I need to make sure I get my change before I pick up my receipt. If I am looking for my receipt, my wallet, and making sure I don't leave any groceries behind, it's easy to walk away from the change thinking I've got everything, especially if the dispenser is down low where it is difficult to see. I have written several interesting stories before that give us evidence that most people are still honest. On my "Stories" page I have decided to list all of these titles under each other with markers to help identify and group them. One strange story that I haven't written about, was that I left my backpack on a bus with my passport, Thai driver's license, expired Utah driver's license, birth certificate, social security card, and blank checks. Not only does that expose me to a serious threat of identity theft and give someone enough information to hack into my accounts, but it was my understanding that if my passport was ever lost or stolen, I could ever after only replace it with a temporary six month passport, that I could never get another permanent passport (which means I could never live in a foreign country again.) I was pretty distraught. Even the best case scenerio, just trying to replace all those documents would be a huge headache. It was a Friday and the U.T.A. office told me that they could not contact the the bus driver while he was driving and that he would not return until after closing. The only thing I could do was to check lost and found on Monday. Living with that suspense and giving my documents three extra days to disappear did not sit well with me, so I figured out exactly where the bus driver was going and what time he would be there. I hopped on another bus all the way to Salt Lake City where I hailed the driver at one of his stops and boarded the bus. All of that extra effort, however, did not produce any additional hope. The bus driver had seen no sign of my backpack. First thing Monday I showed up at the bus office and asked if anyone had turned in my backpack. They took a look around and came up empty. My heart sunk all the way to my knees. What had only been fear now become a reality. In case someone came by later and turned it in, I began writing my name and phone number on a piece of paper. One of the employees came by and saw my name, and asked what was in the backpack. I described a plastic folder that contained all my documents, and he said that he didn't have the backpack, but someone had turned in the folder. Wow, wasn't that a strange stroke of luck?! We'll never know why someone kept the backpack, but turned in the documents. Perhaps a homeless person needed the backpack, but just had no use for the documents. Perhaps someone decided to keep the backpack, but didn't want the legal liability of taking a passport. With twenty years of experience riding in Bangkok taxis, I'm usually very careful about my things, sometimes looking an extra two or thee times to make sure I haven't left anything behind. As best as I can reconstruct, I figure I probably got distracted with my phone or something and boarded the bus without my pack, leaving it there on the bench. Someone probably picked it up and got on another bus where behind the seats it would be easy to empty the contents and get off at the next stop. Then one of the passengers or the bus driver picked up the plastic folder and made sure it found its way to the office. In a strange twist of fate, I feel really fortunate to get back all of my important documents even though I lost the backpack. Someone was dishonest enough to keep the pack, but at least one or two other people were honest and caring enough to return its more valuable contents to me. It seems that Providence has smiled down upon me one more time, and yes, sometimes I do feel like someone up there is watching over me. |