three up or two down
I found three dollars in the back pocket of my jeans in work today. Normally I would not even mention this but it never happens. I mean, never. Money for me almost always goes in one place and one place only, in my wallet, and so this was a very pleasant surprise.
I regularly see people at the counter pay for their goods with a scrunched pile of notes they remove from their pocket, seeming somewhat surprised to find what denomination they are. In this instance I always think about how their personal finance issues manage to keep track of themselves. Worse still is the twat who fans out before me a huge folded wad of twenties and tens, only to pay for his two dollar non-fiction book with a couple of loose ones at the bottom. Shitehawks every single one of them.
Then later at the buy counter I was working through a large order of several boxes from a customer, leafing through a hard cover copy of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, condition checking it, when my eyes fell upon a brand new crisp five dollar bill concealed within its pages. I was working on this particular box alone. There was no one in close proximity.
Ethical question time then.
I considered what to do for a while and then decided to speak to James about it, one of the three assistant managers working on the same order with me a few feet along the counter. I really like this job and you never know, do you? I fanned the pages of the book in front of him and stopped at the page bearing bounty. His eyes opened wider. "What should I do?", I asked him. Like me he thought about it for a short while and then decided that honesty was probably going to be the better option.
I saw the customer walk across the front of the counter and told her about the money. She shouted for the gentleman nearby to inform him of what was found. It appeared to be his thing and not hers. He seemed almost nonplussed in a way. She handed him the money and thanked me for my honesty, and this was the last said by them about it.
But it really did make me wonder though.
I mean, what kind of a person is it that is going to use a five dollar bill as a fucking bookmark in the first place, for shite's sakes? To make it even worse the money wasn't even protruding out of the top of the book, you know, like a bloody bookmark is supposed to do. No, it was just nestled inside there alone and silent and waiting.
Is it possible to get so blase about your own money that you forget roughly how much you have at any given time? Can you just leave bits of it lying about around the place, forgotten in books or on top of doors, or stuffed down the sofa? Even more sinister still is that it appeared he hadn't even finished the book, as this note was found easy within the first hundred pages. I mean, how is one able to do that too?
Maybe I should just have kept the blasted money and have done with it. It was pretty clear to me that the couple would not have missed it for a single second. But no, my conscience is clear on this point, and my mother would have been proud of me for it.
So that's enough for me I suppose.
Three up or two down then. I'm still trying to decide.
I regularly see people at the counter pay for their goods with a scrunched pile of notes they remove from their pocket, seeming somewhat surprised to find what denomination they are. In this instance I always think about how their personal finance issues manage to keep track of themselves. Worse still is the twat who fans out before me a huge folded wad of twenties and tens, only to pay for his two dollar non-fiction book with a couple of loose ones at the bottom. Shitehawks every single one of them.
Then later at the buy counter I was working through a large order of several boxes from a customer, leafing through a hard cover copy of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, condition checking it, when my eyes fell upon a brand new crisp five dollar bill concealed within its pages. I was working on this particular box alone. There was no one in close proximity.
Ethical question time then.
I considered what to do for a while and then decided to speak to James about it, one of the three assistant managers working on the same order with me a few feet along the counter. I really like this job and you never know, do you? I fanned the pages of the book in front of him and stopped at the page bearing bounty. His eyes opened wider. "What should I do?", I asked him. Like me he thought about it for a short while and then decided that honesty was probably going to be the better option.
I saw the customer walk across the front of the counter and told her about the money. She shouted for the gentleman nearby to inform him of what was found. It appeared to be his thing and not hers. He seemed almost nonplussed in a way. She handed him the money and thanked me for my honesty, and this was the last said by them about it.
But it really did make me wonder though.
I mean, what kind of a person is it that is going to use a five dollar bill as a fucking bookmark in the first place, for shite's sakes? To make it even worse the money wasn't even protruding out of the top of the book, you know, like a bloody bookmark is supposed to do. No, it was just nestled inside there alone and silent and waiting.
Is it possible to get so blase about your own money that you forget roughly how much you have at any given time? Can you just leave bits of it lying about around the place, forgotten in books or on top of doors, or stuffed down the sofa? Even more sinister still is that it appeared he hadn't even finished the book, as this note was found easy within the first hundred pages. I mean, how is one able to do that too?
Maybe I should just have kept the blasted money and have done with it. It was pretty clear to me that the couple would not have missed it for a single second. But no, my conscience is clear on this point, and my mother would have been proud of me for it.
So that's enough for me I suppose.
Three up or two down then. I'm still trying to decide.