finder’s keeper’s?
as I stepped up to the counter to request my locker at the fitness center, I saw it. a crisp, folded bill, staring up at me from the ground. without pause, I picked it up, handed it to the attendant at the desk, and said, “Someone dropped this. If someone comes by looking for missing money, it’s probably theirs.”
then I kicked myself. “DUDE. You just threw away $10! It was yours, all yours! No one is going to claim it. It’s just going to sit there. You bonehead.”
then I kicked myself for kicking myself. I know I did the right thing. conditioned and energized by the grace of the Spirit, I immediately turned the money in, hoping the “someone” would realize it fell out when they pulled their keys out of their pocket at that same desk.
what if a few key elements of this story were tweaked? what if:
someone found money outside the office I work in? they turned the money in to one of my staff personnel? it was ten times this amount?
at what point do I consider the money as officially, completely, irrevocably lost? when is it no longer “someone’s”?
August 1st, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Great questions. I’ve used a similar case study several times. Generally I start at a quarter (used to begin smaller but people often don’t even expend the energy to pick us less than a quarter). No one has ever argued that we should try to find the owner of the “lost” quarter. But everyone argues that we should try to find the owner of a bag of 100 dollar bills. (Most times a minority will argue that there is no obligation to find the owner of a c-note, so I always raise the ante to multiple hundreds.)
So, what is the amount at which “lost” money becomes “found” money? I say all that to hope that a conversation breaks out here about this ethical dilemma.
To kick it off: I think the amount is really beside the point. Whether a quarter or hundreds of dollars, the money does not belong to the finder. So, would I keep it? It depends how much it is. Yes, I am inconsistent and perhaps even a hypocrite.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
and there is an element of “it’s all relative,” too. at Baylor, someone who dropped $10 might consider it chump change (a quarter to you and me). if I dropped $10, I’d be hacked. that’s a lot of cash. to me, at least.
still, if we do remove the actual amount from the conversation…how long do we keep the “found” money in a drawer at our front desk before it’s useless? literally?