Doing the Right Thing
Last night, Maria and I went to Wild Oats. As we were walking in, the woman in front of us dropped a wad of cash. She didn't even realize it as she strolled on, talking on her cell phone. So, I picked it up, and set off to return it to her. This was a wad of about five 100 dollar bills. It was tough catching up with her, actually, because I had Maria in tow and this lady was clipping along quite briskly. So, finally, we caught up to her. She was still talking on her cell phone. "Ma'am," I said. She ignored me. "Ma'am!" I repeated a little louder. This time, she looked up from her phone conversation. "You dropped this," I said, handing her the significant stash of cash." "Oh, okay," she said weakly as she grabbed it from my hand and returned to her conversation ... Okay??? I'm telling you, if I dropped that large a sum and somebody returned it me, I would probably weep tears of joy. I know that returning the money was the right thing to do and I never considered any other option, but I was really wishing that we had walked in just 10 seconds later. Is that wrong?
Comments
And if you had walked in ten seconds sooner, I'm pretty sure that you would have taken the wad of cash to a manager, so the end result for you would have been the same, except that the manager would have probably thanked you.
Either way, you would have done the right thing and Maria would have learned a nice lesson.